U.S. Agrees to Help Ecuador Fight Maritime Crime After Years of Illegal Chinese Fishing

The United States and Ecuador signed an agreement Wednesday to strengthen their security cooperation in the fight against transnational maritime activities, such as the persistent threat of illegal Chinese fishing ships in Ecuadorian waters.

Years of illegal fishing by Chinese ships and other illicit activities in those waters have endangered the maritime biodiversity of the Galapagos Islands.

The agreement, signed in Washington, will see the U.S. Coast Guard and the Ecuadorian Navy carry out combined maritime operations to crack down on drug trafficking, organized crime, and migrant smuggling in addition to illegal fishing.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gustavo Manrique said, during the signing ceremony, that the agreement reaffirms the commitment of the governments of Ecuador and the United States to fight against “one of the common enemies of humanity,” transnational organized crime.

Manrique added that the agreement should also serve as an “incentive to continue working towards the goal of dismantling corruption schemes, money laundering and other related crimes that promote such criminal actions.”

The control operations stipulated in the agreement will be carried out against suspicious vessels and stateless vessels or vessels considered without nationality and with specific regulations on vessels and aircraft.

The presence of illegal Chinese fishing boats in Latin American waters has dramatically increased in recent years. Every year, some 400 illegal Chinese vessels sail through the waters of the Pacific and South Atlantic seas, causing not just substantial monetary damages to the region’s local fishing trades but environmental damage and putting the lives of many endangered species of fish at risk.

In the case of Ecuador, the presence of Chinese illegal fishing boats began to grow exponentially in 2016 during the socialist administration of notoriously pro-China President Rafael Correa.

Ecuador has continuously denounced the fleets of illegal Chinese fishing vessels arriving at the Galápagos Islands and its no-fishing Exclusive Economic Zone to pillage its unique and protected resources.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Galápagos Islands a World Heritage site in 1978, as it is home to some of the highest levels of endemism on the planet, housing species not found anywhere else. The Galápagos Islands’ unique biodiversity inspired Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.

While the Chinese vessels reportedly claim that they only fish for squid and giant squid, their equipment has been proven to catch all kinds of species, including protected species that inhabit the Galápagos and are of great commercial value, especially in Asian markets, such as the scalloped hammerhead, dusky, and whale sharks.

A scalloped hammerhead shark off the Galapagos, Darwin Island, Ecuador. (Prisma Bildagentur/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Studies published by the Ecuadorian government in July 2022 indicated that illegal Chinese fishing vessels are also responsible for the majority of the man-made waste found near the islands. The studies found that “bottles, oil cans for boats and jute bags with Asian characters, mostly Chinese, have been found piling up on the shores of the Archipelago’s beaches, indicating that the waste from these boats is thrown into the sea.”

In August 2017, Ecuadorian authorities detained a Chinese vessel named “Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999” as it crossed the Galápagos Marine Reserve without due authorization. The authorities inspected the vessel and found that it contained over 7,600 sharks, of which 432 were fetuses, as well as 537 bags of shark find and 2,114 fish.

View of the Chinese-flagged ship confiscated by the Ecuadorean Navy in the waters of the Galapagos marine reserve on August 25, 2017. (JUAN CEVALLOS/AFP via Getty Images)

The capture of the Chinese vessel is considered the most emblematic of its kind in the country’s fight against illegal fishing and the trafficking of marine species. Ecuadorian authorities confiscated the vessel and sentenced its crew to serve prison time and pay a fine of $6.1 million in damages caused to the Galapagos’ marine ecosystem.

This month, Ecuador hosted GALAPEX II 2023, a multinational maritime authority exercise that aimed to strengthen interoperability between multinational forces and training towards neutralizing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

The encounter and training exercises, which took place between September 17-27, saw the participation of representatives of the navies of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the United States, England, France, Italy, Panama, Mexico, and Peru.