by Poseidon Aquatic Resource Management, a fishery and aquaculture consulting firm.
Ensuring that ships of any nation comply with environmental, labor, or other rules when they are in international waters is difficult, since no country has the jurisdiction or resources to police them so far from shore. Ocean conservationists warn that the voracious nature of fishmeal production is accelerating ocean depletion, contributing to illegal fishing, destabilizing the aquatic food chain, and sapping poorer countries’ waters of protein sources needed for local subsistence.
In addition to the potentially devastating environmental consequences of overfishing and fishery collapses, so many ships on the sea means more competition for fishing grounds, which can destabilize relationships between countries and lead to violent clashes. More than 200 of these militia fishing boats occupy the waters around the South China Sea’s disputed Spratly Islands—an area rich with fish, and possibly oil and natural gas too—to which China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan lay claim. Satellite imagery shows that the Chinese fishing boats in the area spend most of their time anchored close together in clusters and are not actually fishing.
We raced to catch up with what turned out to be not just one ship but nearly two dozen, all heading single file from South Korean waters into North KoreanOur captain was a short and wiry man, roughly 70 years old, with deep-set eyes and skin weathered like an elephant. On the morning of our scheduled departure, the hired crew told the captain that they would not be working the trip.