A new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has highlighted China’s weak efforts to revive fish stocks in its own waters, suggesting a need for China to implement more stringent controls on its fleet’s landings and collect better data to effectively measure the impacts of those controls.
Titled “Unselective, unsustainable, and unmonitored trawl fisheries?” the report states that efforts made in the past decade by China to replenish fish stocks in its domestic waters, such as scrapping vessels and instituting annual moratoriums on fishing in the East and South China seas, have not been enforced strongly enough to combat dwindling fish populations.
“Major challenges overall are that despite many good measures and regulations, implementation and enforcement remain weak,” the report said. “Moreover, there are few indications that management measures are working or that measures such as restocking or artificial reefs are beneficial to recovery in the marine environment.”
The report suggests China’s publicized plans to reduce the size of its fleet “largely failed to contain the growth momentum of fishing effort and the total power of fishing vessels.”
Additionally, there has been “little improvement of control on offshore fishing capacity” or in enhancing transparency, according to the report.
“[China] struggles to safeguard its marine ecosystems due to ineffective laws, conflicting and vague objectives, insufficient public participation, the dominance of economic values over ecological ones, and weak enforcement and administration,” it said.
China’s priorities also seem to be doing active harm to domestic fish stocks, according to the report, with its desire to expand its mariculture operations and, therefore, its seafood supply seeming to supersede its desire to institute sustainable fishery management practices...
