China has turned to foreign experts for advice on sustainable management of its fishery firms.
Sustainable fisheries expert Steve Gaines, dean of the environmental school at the University of California, Santa Barbara, spoke recently at a briefing in Zhoushan, China’s biggest fishery port.
Gaines was joined by fishery management figures from Belize and Japan at the seminar hosted by the local Ocean and Fisheries Bureau, a government office. A presentation from the Japanese Fisheries Research and Education Institute focused on that country’s development of its fisheries management system, while Beverly Wade, head of the Belize Fisheries Bureau, explained the damage of overfishing on her country’s economy.
China boasts the largest international fishing fleet, but management capacity is low, explained Tang Yi, a fishery legal expert from Shanghai Ocean University.
This is the second sign recently of China’s openness to international collaboration on fishery management. Speaking to Shanghai-based Xin Min Wan Bao to mark World Oceans Day, Shanghai Ocean University Professor Tang Jianye said it was an “onerous” task representing China at negotiations because his team is made up of part-timers – academics like himself – faced with “professional” diplomats and scientists sent by European and North American nations.
Tang heads up the “Shanghai Ocean University Long Distance Fishing International Promise-Keeping Team” (translation from Mandarin), based at Shanghai Ocean University, which has in recent years effectively replaced the Department of Agriculture’s Fisheries Bureau as China’s representative at meetings of bodies managing fisheries as well as organizations overseeing Antarctic and Arctic marine living resources.
Photo courtesy of University of California, Santa Barbara
