Lack of transparency is a constant in the Chinese fleet dedicated to squid fishing in South American waters. Turning off their satellite-tracking systems, duplicating their identities within satellite-based monitoring systems, and transshiping their catch onto other vessels without informing the authorities: These are some of the strategies Chinese fishing vessels use to circumvent the law, according to organizations that monitor the fleet’s activities.

This is particularly worrying because several of the vessels that make up this huge fleet have a history of illegal fishing and forced labor.

What happens on board these vessels that operate in shadows?

In an attempt to answer this question, at least partially, Artisonal, a civil society organization based in Chorrillos, Peru, that’s dedicated to monitoring fishing fleets, followed the course of the Zhe Pu Yuan 98. The fishing vessel operates as a makeshift hospital attending to sick crew members from sister ships in the same fleet.

In the last three years, 37 crew members in critical condition and one who died were transferred from Chinese vessels to the Port of Callao on the central coast of Peru. The Zhe Pu Yuan 98 alone transferred 15 of the crew members in critical condition, according to the Artisonal report, which is based on disembarkation records.

A hospital at sea

“The vessel Zhe Pu Yuan 98 was repeatedly entering the Peruvian port, which was rather unusual,” said Eloy Aroni, director of Artisonal. Moreover, all of its entries were so-called forced arrivals, a protocol used when a ship needs to enter a port in an emergency. All this raised the organization’s suspicions.

According to Aroni, in July 2020 a team from The Outlaw Ocean Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit journalism group, confirmed that the Zhe Pu Yuan 98 was being used as a floating hospital for the Chinese fleet of squid vessels operating on the high seas.

“The ship was modified to provide medical assistance to fishermen who operate in the South Pacific. A small operation room was established, and a doctor was brought on board to attend to the sick or injured crew members,” Artisonal wrote in a summary of the report.

However, according to The Outlaw Ocean Project, when the patients’ conditions became critical and the only doctor on board was no longer able to assist them, the patient was transferred to port to be taken to a hospital on land.

With this in mind, Artisonal requested the inspection reports created with each disembarkation at port.

This information revealed that, in the last three years, 37 sick and injured and one deceased crew member disembarked in the Port of Callao. Of these, 15 disembarked in critical condition from the Zhe Pu Yuan 98, which entered the Port of Callao 13 times between Oct. 3, 2021, and Feb. 11, 2024.

The reports indicate that the crew members taken to port had symptoms such as abdominal pain, blood loss, difficulty breathing, intestinal obstruction, and injuries resulting from accidents such as a deep cut in one crew member’s arm and the loss of another crew member’s leg.

Aroni questioned why there’s no regulation for a vessel like the Zhe Pu Yuan 98, which has a permit to function as a squid vessel but at the same time acts as a hospital. “There isn’t any regulatory framework stipulating how this vessel should operate, if it should keep records and whether these documents should be provided to the regional authority. There’s no kind of regulation because there’s no precedent of a ship operating in these two spheres: as a fishing vessel and providing medical attention,” he said.

The vessel is registered with the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), an intergovernmental agency responsible for administering the fishing of jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) and jumbo flying squid (Dosidicus gigas) in an extensive area of international waters. However, as Aroni pointed out, it’s registered as a fishing vessel. And the SPRFMO only grants permits to fishing vessels and to support vessels responsible for the transshipment of catch, not to vessels providing medical attention, he said. “There are no registered vessels in this category of ships for the provision of medical attention. At the moment there isn’t any regulatory framework for this activity,” he said.

Aroni said this gap in regulation also facilitates illegal fishing, as vessels that don’t have their permits in order can attempt to attend to sick crew members without taking them to land where they might be discovered.

In 2020, Peru introduced legislation that requires foreign vessels docking in Peruvian ports to use an additional satellite tracking device to provide more accurate information about their itinerary. However, as Mongabay Latam reported in October 2023, the Chinese fleet doesn’t comply with this rule.

According to Aroni, the presence of a hospital vessel as part of the squid fleet is another way to avoid the controls that the Peruvian government requires of ships entering its maritime space. “Chinese ships are not complying with the new rules because sharing information about their position would create problems for the Chinese government. They are trying to find a way around this legislation and move their operations out to sea,” Aroni said.

Sanitary concerns

At the last meeting of the SPRFMO, in February 2024, a working group was set up to improve the labor standards of the squid fleet. Attendees backed a proposal by Ecuador, the United States, New Zealand and Australia to address alleged human rights abuses on squid fleets.

Milko Schvartzman, an expert in the operations of Chinese fleets, said he’s concerned about the sanitary conditions of the vessel that exercises this dual function. “You cannot have a hospital and at the same time be a fishing vessel; the sanitation standards are not the same,” he said. “The vessel transports injured, sick and deceased crew members to port; it might provide medical treatment on board, but it doesn’t have adequate facilities because it’s also used for fishing.”

Schvartzman said fishing vessels should transport their sick or injured crew members directly to a hospital on land, instead of transferring them to another vessel. “The transfer of crew members to another vessel takes time and can sometimes make the situation worse. It’s an unnecessary risk to human life.”

Another issue Schvartzman raised is the lack of information about sick or injured crew members who end up being taken to port.

Disembarkation reports don’t provide any information about which ships the sick and injured crew members originally came from.

“Some vessels have repeat incidents of injury and illness, and because we don’t know which ship the crew member came from, there’s no transparency; we don’t know which vessel is responsible. The fleet is withholding this information,” Schvartzman said.

If it were possible to know which ship the crew member came from, he added, authorities would know if there are vessels or companies with more cases of a particular illness or a higher incidence of accidents due to noncompliance with labor standards. They would also know about cases of abuse and poor living conditions on board.

In a written communication, Peru’s Ministry of Production (PRODUCE) said it “monitors all fishing vessels operating under foreign flags that dock in national ports” to check “if there is undeclared and unregulated illegal fishing activity.”

The ministry also said the Zhe Pu Yuan 98 had entered the Port of Callao three times by July 2024. With regard to the disembarkation of injured, sick or deceased crew members, PRODUCE said that “the maritime authority and other related bodies such as the ministries of health and migration, among others, are responsible for taking the appropriate actions.”

Mongabay Latam also contacted the Peruvian Coast Guard for its take on the same issues but did not receive a response.

A history of illegal fishing and forced labor

An article published in April 2023 by Mongabay Latam reported on the behavior of the Chinese fleet following the introduction of Peruvian legislation that requires foreign vessels to install a vessel monitoring system (VMS) satellite device.

The report indicated that just a small number of Asian vessels installed the satellite device and that many chose to remain longer at sea, between a year and a half and two years, instead of complying with the Peruvian provision for entry into its ports. According to experts at the time, this could have affected the health of crew members.

The separate October 2023 report by Mongabay Latam revealed that of 56 Chinese vessels that entered Peruvian ports between June and August 2023, at least 10 belonged to companies that have a history of illegal fishing or forced labor.

With regard to the poor working conditions on the Chinese vessels, Schvartzman recalled the case in 2017 of two crew members who escaped and filed a complaint with the Uruguayan judiciary about the poor working and living conditions on board the vessel on which they had worked.

“Unfortunately, nothing was done and a few months later the ship disembarked a deceased crew member in Montevideo. The following year another deceased crew member arrived off the same ship and a third deceased crew member from the same vessel was transferred via another boat,” Schvartzman said.

“The fleet doesn’t comply with the rules and doesn’t have observers on board. We hope that in the future the SPRFMO will begin to regulate squid fishing.”

 
Banner image of the Zhe Pu Yuan 98, courtesy of Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project.

This story was first published here in Spanish on July 3, 2024.