The joint investigation published by The Outlaw Ocean Project and NBC News reveals the world’s largest fleet of illegal fishing boats ever discovered that has been operating invisibly in North Korean waters in clear violation of UN sanctions.
What is even more alarming is that investigators may have discovered why so many “ghost boats” have been found drifting ashore in Japan – either empty or with the skeletal remains of North Korean fishermen.
According to NBC News, last year alone, “more than 150 of these macabre vessels washed ashore in Japan, and there have been more than 500 in the past five years.”
Authorities in Japan originally thought that climate change was pushing the flying squid, a major fishery for both Korea and Japan, farther away from the North Korean coast, forcing the local fishermen out into deeper, more dangerous waters where they were ending up stranded and dying from exposure.
The reason for the multinational investigation
Historically, Chinese vessels have fished the waters adjacent to North Korea. However, when the UN Security Council placed sanctions on North Korea in 2017, This brought a halt to the country’s exports.
The sanctions restricted North Korea’s fisheries and seafood trade as well as prohibited North Korea from selling or transferring fishing rights. This meant that Chinese vessels fishing in North Korea after September 2017 would constitute a violation of either or both international and domestic law.
Despite this prohibition, the South Korean Coast Guard has documented hundreds of vessels of Chinese origin passing through their waters – traveling to North Korean fishing grounds.
This obviously illegal activity by China prompted a multinational study, begun in 2018 – co-hosted by the international non-profit organisation Global Fishing Watch, Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency, and the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong.
The study was lead by Jaeyoon Park from Global Fishing Watch and Jungsam Lee from the Korea Maritime Institute, and included scientists, engineers and policy experts from Korea, Japan, Australia and the US, according to The Conversation.
The investigators employed an array of four satellite technologies, combining automatic identification system (AIS) data, optical imagery, infrared imagery, and satellite radar to create a damningly clear picture of what was happening off North Korea’s coast.
An armada of illegal Chinese fishing vessels
The research team focused on two types of vessels common to the area: pair trawlers and lighting vessels. The trawlerswork in pairs, dragging a net between them. The investigators employed a a machine learning approach called a convolutional neural network to pick out pair trawlers from high-resolution optical satellite imagery, verified with satellite radar and AIS data.
The team identified 796 distinct pair trawlers operated in North Korean waters in 2017, and 588 in 2018, and traced these vessels back to Chinese ports.
To track the lighting vessels, which use bright lights to attract fish, the team used high-sensitivity infrared imagery cross-referenced with high-resolution optical imagery and satellite radar. They were able to identify about 108 lighting vessels of Chinese origin operating in North Korean waters in 2017 and 130 in 2018.
BREAKING: @SafinaCenter Fellow @ian_urbina and Global Fishing Watch uncover the world’s largest illegal fleet hiding in plain sight: hundreds of Chinese vessels in North Korean waters, previously invisible, now documented. July 23, 2020
Since the research paper has been submitted for peer review, the research team wondered if the Chinese were still fishing illegally in North Korean waters. An analysis identified approximately 800 vessels from China fished in 2019 in North Korean waters, indicating that the illegal activity is ongoing.
“This is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s waters,” said Jaeyoon Park, the lead author of the study,
Interestingly, China is a member of the U.N. Security Council, which unanimously signed the recent North Korean sanctions. Yet, the fishing vessels identified illegally in North Korean waters :make up nearly a third of the entire Chinese distant-water fishing fleet,” according to Global Fishing Watch.
When asked to comment on the findings, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “China has consistently and conscientiously enforced the resolutions of the Security Council relating to North Korea.” The ministry added that China has “consistently punished” illegal fishing.
