MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A Spanish investigation tracks how Asia's squid fleet is upending the South Atlantic market

Spain controls much of the world's Loligo squid catch, mainly through the roughly 16 licences granted by the Falklands to fish in their waters, with catches close to 50,000 tons a year

An international investigation published by the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, with an extensive interactive report, describes how the expansion of Asian fishing fleets in international waters —mainly Chinese— has transformed the global market for frozen squid, with a direct impact on the European fleet and consequences for fishing in the South Atlantic, one of the main sources of income for the Falklands.

According to the work, the Chinese fleet's fishing effort in the Southwest Atlantic grew 85% between 2019 and 2024. Against the roughly 25 jigger vessels that, according to Galician shipowners, Spain operates in the region, between 300 and 500 foreign-flagged ships —mostly from China, South Korea and Taiwan— fish at the edge of Argentina's exclusive economic zone, in the so-called “Mile 201.” Those fleets extract on the high seas between 1.5 and 3 million tons a year of Illex argentinus, one of the species known as pota, a volume that comfortably exceeds the maximum caught within Argentine national waters even in a record season.

The phenomenon is repeated in the Southeast Pacific, where the Chinese fleet leads the catch of the jumbo flying squid (Dosidicus gigas). The investigation notes that in Peru the number of vessels dedicated to that species rose from 31 in 2023 to more than a thousand in 2026. The fish is usually frozen on the high seas, taken to China for processing at plants such as those in Shandong province and re-exported, already processed, to Europe, a circuit that —according to the report— has cut costs to the point that Spain now imports more cephalopods from China than from Argentina.

The managing director of the Vigo Shipowners' Cooperative, Edelmiro Ulloa, said the European fleet is left “without much chance of competing.” ”There are hundreds of vessels that fish without quotas, spend several years on the high seas without setting foot in port (and) have no qualms about keeping their employees in deplorable conditions,” he said, noting that the cheaper fish ends up mixing with the European catch. The investigation also cites a University of Vigo study on the DNA of cephalopods consumed in Europe, which detected species mixing and little traceability regarding the origin and catch methods, which can be misleading for consumers.

The work introduces a fact relevant to the South Atlantic: Spain controls much of the world's Loligo squid catch (Loligo gahi), the so-called Patagonian squid, mainly through the roughly 16 licences granted by the Falklands to fish in their waters, with catches close to 50,000 tons a year. That resource is a key source of income for the Islands. The sector has warned that, if overfishing on the high seas depresses prices and depletes the Illex resource, some companies could stop sending vessels to the South Atlantic for lack of profitability and shift into importing the product already processed in Asia. Argentina, which claims sovereignty over the archipelago, questions the licensing regime the Islands administer and has denounced the operation of vessels with “dual registration.”