China syndromeChina catches 12 times more fish beyond its waters than it reports

Chinese fishing boats catch about $11.5 billion worth of fish from beyond their country’s own waters each year — and most of it goes unreported, according to a new study led by fisheries scientists at the University of British Columbia.

A UBC release reports that the paper, recently published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, estimates that China’s foreign catch is twelve times larger than the catch it reports to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, an international agency that keeps track of global fisheries catches.

Using a new method that analyzes the type of fishing vessels used by Chinese operators around the world and their catch capacity, the UBC-led research team estimates Chinese foreign fishing at 4.6 million tons per year, taken from the waters of at least ninety countries — including 3.1 million tons from African waters, mainly West Africa.

“China hasn’t been forthcoming about its fisheries catches,” says Dirk Zeller, Senior Research Fellow with UBC’s Sea Around Us Project and the study’s co-author. “While not reporting catches doesn’t necessarily mean the fishing is illegal — there could be agreements between these countries and China that allow fishing — we simply don’t know for sure as this information just isn’t available.”

“We need to know how many fish have been taken from the ocean in order to figure out what we can catch in the future,” says Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of UBC’s Sea Around Us Project and the study’s lead author.

“Countries need to realize the importance of accurately recording and reporting their catches and step up to the plate, or there will be no fish left for our children.”

— Read more in Daniel Pauly et al., “China’s distant-water fisheries in the 21st century,” Fish and Fisheries (23 March 2013) (DOI: 10.1111/faf.12032)