US Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Stone arrived Sunday in Uruguay as part of her South Atlantic tour to reduce illicit maritime activity and conduct joint exercises with Uruguay's Navy. The vessel's deployment seeks to develop partnerships and increase US interoperability with South American nations to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
Giant squid, squid or Dosidicus gigas, measures up to 3 meters in length and can reach 50 kilos in weight. It is one of the main species of the southeastern Pacific Ocean and at the same time it is one of the species with the greatest commercial pressure in the world. Thousands of tons are extracted every month, a large part, from the international waters located off the seas of Ecuador, Peru and Chile. The main player behind that voracious appetite is China: it has a declared fleet of 671 ships.
Over a hundred jiggers have crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic through the Magellan Strait reports the Chilean navy responsible for monitoring and safe navigation along the waterway.
A strong reaction from the Argentine squid industry following news published in Buenos Aires media indicated some Patagonian port were considering, and could be prepared to service the Chinese jigger fleet operating in mile 201 of the Argentine EEZ.
United States imposed sanctions on Chinese companies, including Nasdaq-listed Pingtan Marine Enterprises, Ltd., over what Washington says are human rights abuses linked to Beijing's illegal fishing.
The Chilean Navy said it is keeping track of the international fishing fleet (mostly jiggers), transiting through the Magellan Strait from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean which started in November.
A key intergovernmental forum on fisheries and aquaculture has endorsed new voluntary guidelines governing the transfer of fish between ships, in a move aimed at curbing the Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing that threatens the sustainability of global stocks.
Uruguay's National Directorate of Aquatic Resources (DINARA) Chief Jaime Coronel has told reporters all the evidence submitted by Uruguayan Navy authorities was being analyzed in the case of a Chinese fishing trawler caught while performing illegal catches in territorial waters earlier this month.
Last Tuesday, 11 tons of squid were found in a Chinese flagged vessel that was captured by the Uruguayan Navy, after a chase that took place between Sunday night and early Monday morning.
The Uruguayan navy arrested Monday dawn a Chinese flagged jigger caught illegally fishing in the country's EEZ. The arrest was done following a night chase as the jigger tried to escape despite having first accepted a party of inspectors to board the vessel.