A massive Chinese fleet is fishing off the Galapagos Islands

Brut America

This fleet of 340 Chinese fishing boats has been depleting marine resources off the Galápagos Islands for years, raising fears for the archipelago's sea life…

Transcript

00:00We have been giving them complete freedom over the high seas and they can do whatever

00:07they can do.

00:21Most of the fishing and also the transshipment of fish happens at high seas without our servers

00:29and out of sight.

00:59One of the key things here is that this fleet has been actually outside of the country,

01:19haven't entered to the EEC, however, the resources have been affected as we know all the species,

01:27most of the species, many are highly migratory and they have to come out of these, they don't

01:32respect the borders of countries or anything.

01:34That is actually having a huge impact over sharks and many of the species that are iconic

01:39to Galapagos and they're important for the stability of the whole system.

01:45Galapagos are a key area, that's why some people or some fishers are going actually

01:50because they're rich, they're productive, they are fish.

02:20Some of it

02:50is not legal, for example, there has been reports indicating that these vessels switch

02:57off their satellite communications in breach of regulation, however, most of it is probably

03:05not illegal or just irregular.

03:10Illegal fishing is responsible for a lot of overfishing, but overfishing is a bigger

03:15problem.

03:35Fishing fleets have the technical capacity to fish and catch every single fish in the

03:42world.

03:43That's a problem for everyone, a very serious problem.

04:12We can't see the ocean just as a box of taking resources.

04:25We know now, science is very clear, we are losing the ocean.

04:30Ocean it's acidifying, it's getting warmer, less oxygen and now we're losing and that

04:37is actually the most important threat of the ocean.

04:40We are losing biodiversity by overfishing.

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