CITIZENS FOR KEVIN SHEEHY issued the following announcement on July 22.
The battered wooden “ghost boats” drift through the Sea of Japan for months, their only cargo the corpses of starved North Korean fishermen whose bodies have been reduced to skeletons. Last year more than 165 of these macabre vessels washed ashore in Japan, more than double the number from the year before.
For years the grisly phenomenon mystified Japanese police, whose best guess was that climate change pushed the squid population further from North Korea, driving the country’s desperate fishermen dangerous distances from shore, where they become stranded and die from exposure.
But an investigation based on new satellite data has revealed what marine researchers now say is a more likely explanation: China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70 per cent.
The investigation, written in partnership with NBC News, was conducted by an international team of academic researchers; Ian Urbina a former New York Times investigative reporter who now directs the Outlaw Ocean Project; and Global Fishing Watch, a non-profit organisation that specialises in the use of satellite technology and artificial intelligence to track illegal activities on the high seas.
The Chinese vessels – nearly 800 in 2019 – appear to be in violation of UN sanctions that forbid foreign fishing in North Korean waters. The sanctions, imposed in 2017 in response to the country’s nuclear tests, were intended to punish North Korea by not allowing it to sell fishing rights in its waters in exchange for valuable foreign currency.
“This is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s waters,” said Jaeyoon Park, a data scientist from Global Fishing Watch.
China is a member of the UN Security Council, which unanimously signed the recent North Korean sanctions. But the flotilla violating this ban comprises nearly a third of the entire Chinese distant-water fishing fleet, according to Global Fishing Watch.Presented with the findings of the investigation, 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.
Original source here.
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