January 11, 2021 — A Chinese state-owned company has signed a deal to redevelop and manage a fisheries port in Brunei.
China’s Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group has signed a deal to expand and run the Muara Fish Landing Complex alongside its partner Brunei’s Darussalam Assets, a government-backed investment agency. The two jointly own the Muara Port Company Sdn Bhd, a joint venture set up in 2017.
January 6, 2021 — A major European seafood brand has joined a fishery improvement project (FIP) for squid in Chinese waters.
Saint-Geours-de-Maremne, France-based Labeyrie Fine Foods, a producer and distributor of value-added seafood and other food products to European retailers under the Labeyrie, Delpierre, Blini, Comptoir Sushi, and Ovive brands, has joined the East China Sea and Yellow Sea Squid Fishery Improvement Project, launched in 2018.
January 5, 2020 — A fleet of more than 300 mostly Chinese-flagged fishing ships that caused consternation among the governments of Ecuador and Peru this summer when it was spotted fishing around their respective exclusive economic zones, has continued to fish in the Pacific Ocean around South America, and affected countries are coordinating actions to stop it.
The fleet was spotted by Ecuadorian maritime officials in mid-July as it arrived outside of the Galápagos Marine Reserve in international waters near Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone. The fleet was subsequently accused of shutting off its GPS trackers to enable it to fish illegally in protected waters without being detected.
December 30, 2020 — There are very different and contradictory ambitions motivating the key players in the current World Trade Organization negotiations on a deal that would end harmful fisheries subsidies.
Those differences will have to be squared before any deal emerges out of the talks, which have been held over more than 20 years, and which are set to resume on 18 January, 2021.
December 21, 2020 — Long a topic discussed in connection with the South China Sea, illegal Chinese fishing vessels are of increasing concern for Pacific Island nations.
As recently as early this week, the archipelago nation of Palau, east of the Philippines and north of New Guinea, announced that it had intercepted and detained a Chinese fishing vessel and six smaller boats in its territorial waters after it was confirmed the vessel had entered unlawfully and was illegally fishing sea cucumber.
The fishing vessel was apprehended in Helen Reef, Palau’s most southernmost region, by a Guardian-class patrol boat that Australia had delivered to Palau in September.
“They did have sea cucumber on there… it’s estimated about 500 pounds (225 kilograms),” Victor Remengesau, director of Palau’s division of marine law and enforcement, told reporters. “It’s unlawful entry. We may care about COVID and the spread of COVID, but we can’t just let people do whatever they want, and disguise [illegal activity].”
December 17, 2020 — With the U.S. Electoral College certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump, the country has continued the transition of power, which will culminate in the 20 January inauguration.
As the Biden administration continues to announce its cabinet picks, analysts are expecting that the country’s current stance on international trade likely won’t shift nearly as much.
December 15, 2020 — The Marine Stewardship Council is targeting the private-label sector as a focus for its growth in China.
MSC co-organized a conference recently with the China Chain Store and Franchise Association (CCFA) to discuss the introduction of more MSC-certified products into its members’ plans for increased private-label offerings.
December 15, 2020 — China’s recent move to tighten inspections and controls of imported seafood is forcing Russian seafood exporters to begin to look at other markets.
Claiming it has found live coronavirus strains being carried by seafood imports, Chinese Customs has increased its scrutiny of all imported food, resulting in delays in the time it takes for products to get to market.
December 8, 2020 — Seafood markets in one of China’s largest cities are barring vendors from selling or stocking imported seafood after a string of incidents in which the novel coronavirus was detected on foodstuffs of foreign origin.
Vendors at the Xin Zhu Que wholesale market, located in the northwesterly city of Xi’an, have signed a pledge not to bring imported product into the market or to sell it, with fines set at CNY 10,000 (USD 1,500, EUR 1,300) per 500 grams of product if found in possession of imported seafood. Copies of the declarations shared on Weibo suggest the declarations – signed and stamped by each vendor – have been drawn up by the managers of the market rather than any government authority.
December 1, 2020 — On Aug. 5, 2017, China complied with a United Nations decision and formally imposed sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on seafood exports. Seafood, particularly squid, is one of North Korea’s few significant foreign-exchange earners, and the sanctions were expected to increase the pressure on the regime.
But just a few weeks after the ban came into effect, hundreds of squid-fishing vessels left Chinese waters and rounded the southern tip of South Korea. They entered North Korea’s 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), nearly doubling the number of Chinese fishing vessels operating there from 557 to 907, according a recent Global Fishing Watch report that tracked data from four different satellite systems. Even as China publicly claimed that is was complying with sanctions, many of the Chinese vessels continued to make trips to North Korea and back, including several round trips each year during both 2018 and 2019, said Jaeyoon Park, one of the report’s lead authors.
The Chinese fleet, made up of squid jiggers and pair trawlers, scooped up a staggering amount of squid—equal to almost as much as the entire squid catch in Japanese and South Korean waters combined over the same period, the report estimated. The Chinese decimated the squid population off North Korea to such a degree that Japanese and South Korean fishers saw their own take of the usually plentiful, migratory species plummet.
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