Implement an autonomous fishing moratorium on the high seas
China has taken the lead in making a gesture
Assumed corresponding responsibility
On July 3, at the fishing port of Zhoushan National Oceanic Fishery Base in the West Wharf of Dinghai District, Zhoushan City, Zhejiang Province, some oceanic fishing enterprises responded to their voluntary suspension of fishing, and ocean-going fishing vessels successively arrived at the port and anchored in the fishing port. Figure/Zhongxin
China's first high seas off fishing,
Can we still eat big squid?
"China News Weekly" reporter / Huo Siyi
Published in 2020.7.20, the 956th issue of China News Weekly
Recently, China has taken the first step of independent fishing closure on the high seas. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced that since July 1, China will implement a three-month moratorium on the high seas for the first time. Specifically, the fishing season of July-September is implemented between 32°S-44°S and 48°W-60°W in the Southwest Atlantic, and between 5N-5°S and 110 in the Eastern Pacific between September and November. Fishing is closed between °W-95°W.
The growth environment of squid has high requirements on water quality, temperature and food. Squid production areas are distributed in tropical and temperate waters between north and south latitude 40°. There are also offshore squid fishing grounds in the northern part of the South China Sea. Of the total marine squid fishing in China, offshore production accounts for about 40%, and the high seas account for 60%, and China’s self-caught squid are all shipped back to the domestic market.
The two sea areas where fishing is closed this time are the most important squid fishing grounds in China's offshore fishing industry. Among them, the open sea of the Southwest Atlantic Ocean is adjacent to Argentina, and its main product, Argentine squid, currently reaches 25,000 to 30,000 yuan per ton on the domestic market, and it is the highest price squid. In this high sea area alone, China has close to 200 squid fishing boats. The high seas of the East Pacific are adjacent to countries such as Ecuador and Peru and are rich in American red squid.
As early as the beginning of June, the documents on fishing off on the high seas were officially issued to the provinces, and the squid fishing boats still in the fishing suspension area began to evacuate one after another. At present, all operating fishing vessels have been withdrawn from the Southwest Atlantic fishing retreat. Liu Xinzhong, a first-level inspector of the Fisheries and Fisheries Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, told China News Weekly that about 90% of the evacuated fishing vessels transferred to the high seas such as the Southeast Pacific and North Pacific to continue operations, and 10% returned to China for ship repairs.
The fishing period may be extended in the future
"The suspension of fishing in this area from July to September can play a positive role in protecting squid spawning groups and restoring resource supplementation." said Zhang Xianliang, director of the Fisheries and Fisheries Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Chen Xinjun, dean of the School of Marine Sciences at Shanghai Ocean University and head of the squid fishing technology group of the China Ocean Fisheries Association, told China News Weekly that in the high seas of the Southwest Atlantic, from July to September, the main catchers in Argentina just finished spawning, and the fishing waters are closed. In its main spawning area and living area, the production of squid is extremely rapid, and within three months of the fishing season, it can protect juvenile fish from being caught, that is, "catch big and release small".
He explained that in recent years, Chinese companies have faced two threats to squid fishing in the high seas of the Southwest Atlantic Ocean: one is that the juveniles are caught in large quantities, which makes later fishing weak; the other is that the spatial migration of fishing grounds brought about by climate change makes the high seas fishery resources Further reduce.
Under the influence of global warming, the melting of Antarctic ice has accelerated, and the area of sea ice has fallen to the lowest point in history. The cold seawater has entered the ocean, making the bottom water temperature lower. On the one hand, it may increase the mortality of squid larvae and slow growth; On the other hand, fishing grounds are formed at the intersection of cold and warm ocean currents. The melting ice shifts the position of the intersection, and the resources in traditional fishing grounds plummet. In the Southwest Atlantic Ocean, there are three main fishing grounds for squid: the high seas, the exclusive economic zone within 200 nautical miles of Argentina, and the Malvinas Islands (referred to as "Falcons") 483 kilometers east of Argentina. Judging from the spatial distribution of resources in recent years, the output of the high seas is declining, but the output of the Argentina line is increasing, and the output of Falklands is also very high.
In recent years, the annual fluctuation of high seas fishery resources has been very large, which has exacerbated the operational risks of fishing enterprises. Zhang Hongbin, director of the Department of Oceanic Fisheries, Zhoushan Ocean and Fisheries Bureau, said that in 2019, the output of the high seas in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean is extremely low, and the average output of a single ship is only 50 tons. In 2017, the average output of a single ship returned to 2,000 tons per ship. Previously, in 2007, the highest peak in history, the average output of a single ship could reach 3181 tons per ship.
"Human beings cannot reverse climate change, and the only thing we can change is to reduce human damage to resources." Chen Xinjun said. He also explained that unlike other fish, squid is born annually and dies immediately after spawning, but the spawning volume is extremely large, and there are many groups, which basically achieve full-year spawning, so the resources fluctuate greatly and the decline is fast And recover quickly. "Like the weeds in the field, its ability to recover is very fast."
There are two main types of Chinese squid fishing boats on the high seas. The vast majority are professional squid fishing boats that can only catch squid. The working tools are nylon fishing lines, mostly from Zhejiang, Shandong and other places. The other is a trawl fishing boat, which adopts a large trawl operation, which can catch both squid, middle and upper layer fish such as herring and trevally. There are about 30 ships, all from Shandong.
According to Chen Bin, deputy chief commander of the Zhoushan National Oceanic Fishery Base, the biggest damage to the squid fishery resources is the trawl fishing boat. Once the net is down, big fish and small fish are hit, and the juvenile fish are caught before they grow up. It can only be sold at a low price, which has no commercial value and will destroy the ecological environment of the seabed. In contrast, the characteristic hooks of squid fishing boats have restrictions on the specifications of fish, and small fish cannot be hooked.
As early as 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs requested to focus on the transformation of fishing vessels that caused serious damage to marine resources, such as bottom trawling, and it was strictly forbidden to approve the manufacture of new ships. In fact, a considerable part of the large ocean trawlers used by domestic enterprises were foreign second-hand ships purchased in the past, and they were basically ships on the verge of being eliminated abroad. Chen Bin pointed out that the introduction of this policy is aimed at accelerating the elimination of trawlers and forcing companies to update their vessels.
The impact of this moratorium on trawlers is also greater because they operate all year round. The operating time of the squid fishing boat in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean was originally only in the first half of the year. Generally, it was the peak from February to May, and the fishing season lasted up to mid-July.
As far as squid fishing boats are concerned, the fishing closure in the Eastern Pacific from September to November has a greater impact on it. The fishing rest period coincides with the fishing season. According to previous estimates, the output within three months of the fishing rest period accounts for about one-third of the whole year, and the loss caused by each ship is at least several million yuan.
Huang Baoshan, president of the China Ocean Fisheries Association, told China News Weekly that although the fishing moratorium will have a temporary impact on enterprises, most enterprises are very supportive of it. The benefits of fishing off have been confirmed in many seas. In the waters of Argentina’s exclusive economic zone, 9 squid fishing vessels of the Ocean Family have been authorized by the Afghan government to fish online. Wang Xiaoqing, chief engineer of the Ocean Family, found that according to Argentina’s fishery management methods, fishing is closed from September 1 to the middle of January of the following year. After the fishing is closed, not only the body of squid becomes larger, but the output also increases, and the benefit of the yield is more it is good.
Chen Xinjun, who participated in the scientific demonstration of the fishing moratorium period and scope, said that in the future, the high seas fishing will be normalized and will be dynamically adjusted according to the effect of each fishing moratorium. If the effect of the fishing moratorium does not meet expectations, the moratorium may be extended to 4-6 months, and the fishing moratorium may be further expanded.
China took the lead in taking action
"We are on holiday, people are on endlessly." When Wang Xiaoqing first notified Xiuyu of the New Deal, some captains told him this way.
The development and utilization of high seas resources will inevitably face the "tragedy of the commons" contradiction, which is also the concern of some enterprises. Although they all acknowledge that the conservation of juvenile fish during the fishing moratorium is helpful to the sustainable use of resources, in the open seas of the Southwest Atlantic, in addition to Chinese ships, more than 100 fishing boats from South Korea, Spain and other countries and Taiwan are also Fishing. After China chose to suspend fishing on its own, the fishing boats of these countries and regions are still operating and continue to cause damage to resources.
Data show that since 2009, China's ocean squid production has ranked first in the world for 9 consecutive years. Liu Xinzhong pointed out that China has become one of the world's leading producers and consumers of high seas squid, and squid is also the largest fishing target for China's ocean fishery single species production. It can be said that the conservation of squid resources in the high seas comes first from China's own demand, which is crucial to the sustainable development of China's squid industry. "It has the greatest relevance to us," he commented. "China should take responsibility for this."
More importantly, the Southwest Atlantic is one of the few high seas in the world that lacks regional fisheries management organizations. As the largest stakeholder, China needs to consider how to maintain the sustainable use of resources by implementing some management policies independently in the absence of regional management. In the southeast Pacific, the second closed fishing area, although there is a South Pacific Fisheries Management Organization, strict and perfect squid conservation management measures have not yet been adopted.
The problems of the Southwest Atlantic are more complicated.
China has always wanted to promote the establishment of regional fisheries organizations in this area. According to the "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea", after the establishment of a regional organization, fishing can be restricted to maintain the catchable amount of fish resources, and fishing countries in the region are required to jointly conserve resources. However, due to the sensitive issues involved in the relevant waters, the multilateral mechanism has been slow to establish.
Liu Xinzhong emphasized that China has taken the lead in taking a stand on the high seas and has taken a corresponding responsibility. Now, the sustainable use of resources has become a consensus in the world. In the conservation of fishery resources, countries will definitely become more active in the future.
On the other hand, the normalization of fishing off on the high seas further limits the operating time and scope of domestic ocean-going fishing vessels.
Prior to this, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs had issued a policy "to control the total amount". According to the plan released in 2017, by 2020, the total number of China's ocean-going fishing vessels will be stable within 3,000, and the number of ocean-going fishing enterprises will maintain "zero growth" on the basis of 2016.
Strict policies, combined with the dramatic fluctuations in fishery resources, ocean-going fishery practitioners are forced to face a question more directly: If they can no longer rely on the sky to eat, where is the way out?
Chen Xinjun pointed out that under the background of weak fishing, it is possible to increase the efficiency of enterprises by extending the industrial chain and increasing the added value of products. Moreover, in years with high production, some resources can be stored through processing and released when production is low.
However, the industrial chain of China's ocean-going fisheries is relatively short, and fishing and processing are isolated from each other, and there is a lack of large leading enterprises that can realize the entire industrial chain. Chen Xinjun observed that some large state-owned enterprises and private enterprises are gradually transforming in this direction. However, for the offshore fisheries where private enterprises account for more than 90%, more small and medium-sized private enterprises are facing difficulties in transformation.
Hu Jianhua, the inspector general of the Fisheries and Fisheries Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, believes that the country’s increasingly stringent policies on ocean fishery management will force the entire industry to reshuffle, and small businesses that continue to violate the rules will go bankrupt or be rejected by large enterprises. merger. "In Zhoushan, such a trend can already be partially seen, but if you want to make a fundamental move, you still need the government's determination to launch more vigorous measures."
China News Weekly Issue 26, 2020
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