China-Philippines Fishery News and Discussion

[VALKRYIE]

2 days ago
Jason Strother / Malte Kollenberg

As Beijing’s military forces consolidate positions in the adjacent South China Sea, officials here say they are finding Chinese poachers in what is clearly their territorial waters.

“I have seen them as close as 15 kilometers off the coast,” said the Philippine National Police Maritime Group’s Captain Philip Suarez. “They are catching sharks, stingrays and endangered turtles.”

Suarez pilots one of six vessels that make up the Special Boat Unit. The 10-meter-long ships were given to the Philippines by the United States in 2010 and can cut through the sea at up to 40 nautical miles (21 kilometers) per hour.

“Sometimes when they saw us from afar, they try to escape,” he said. “But our boat is faster than their boat.”

Arrests of Chinese Fishermen

In 2014, Suarez and his crew responded to reports of foreign fishermen off the province’s southern shore. They apprehended 11 Chinese nationals who were carrying hundreds of a protected tortoise species.

The poachers later were convicted in a Puerto Princesa court and jailed after they were unable to pay fines for illegally fishing. They were released this past June after a year in confinement.

Philippine Reaction to Chinese Expansion

Sino-Philippine relations are already tense due to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Manila says Chinese forces are occupying rocks and reefs in its exclusive economic zone, while Beijing, which has built structures on top of several of these features in the region, maintains the area is part of its historical fishing waters.

The poaching and prosecutions only further strain bilateral ties.

China is “a threat to our internal security,” according to maritime police inspector John Labunog Aller, who says Beijing has taken over a part of Palawan.

Philippines: Chinese military units protecting fishermen

To avoid arrest by the Philippine police, Chinese fishermen and their country’s coast guard seem to sail side by side, say some local officials.

Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr. recalls in 2012 observing what he describes as a “Chinese warship” accompanying around 100 small fishing boats that were anchored at a coral reef that lies within his Kalayaan municipality in the South China Sea.

“The whole reef was smoking,” he said, due to diesel machines the poachers used to destroy the coral.

Manila says China has built military outposts on its new artificial islands, including an airplane landing strip. President Benigno Aquino has likened Beijing’s maritime advancement to the rise of Nazi Germany.

The Philippines also has a military presence in the region, but on the whole, the Chinese maritime forces are larger and more modern. One of the Philippines’ last lines of defense is the Sierra Madre -- a rusting, World War II-era cargo vessel that’s beached on an atoll and is home to a handful of Philippine soldiers.

Philippines Defiant, But Needs Help

The government has appealed to the United States to develop a small base on Palawan’s west coast that could be used by the American Navy to station ships. But the Supreme Court is currently deciding if a base-sharing agreement signed last year by presidents Aquino and Obama violates the country’s constitution.

Palawan’s Special Boat Unit hasn’t had any run-ins with the Chinese coast guard, so far. The province’s two-boat fleet is based in Honda Bay on the east coast, and it could take days to reach illegal fishermen and their military protectors in the South China Sea.

Some of the unit’s officers say a possible confrontation won’t deter them from policing Palawan’s waters.

“We are bound to implement the law,” said police sub inspector Raymund Abella. “No one could stop us.”

Chinese Fishermen Sailing Closer to Coast of Western Philippines

 

[Cossack25A1]

2 days ago
Jason Strother / Malte Kollenberg

As Beijing’s military forces consolidate positions in the adjacent South China Sea, officials here say they are finding Chinese poachers in what is clearly their territorial waters.

“I have seen them as close as 15 kilometers off the coast,” said the Philippine National Police Maritime Group’s Captain Philip Suarez. “They are catching sharks, stingrays and endangered turtles.”

Suarez pilots one of six vessels that make up the Special Boat Unit. The 10-meter-long ships were given to the Philippines by the United States in 2010 and can cut through the sea at up to 40 nautical miles (21 kilometers) per hour.

“Sometimes when they saw us from afar, they try to escape,” he said. “But our boat is faster than their boat.”

Arrests of Chinese Fishermen

In 2014, Suarez and his crew responded to reports of foreign fishermen off the province’s southern shore. They apprehended 11 Chinese nationals who were carrying hundreds of a protected tortoise species.

The poachers later were convicted in a Puerto Princesa court and jailed after they were unable to pay fines for illegally fishing. They were released this past June after a year in confinement.

Philippine Reaction to Chinese Expansion

Sino-Philippine relations are already tense due to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Manila says Chinese forces are occupying rocks and reefs in its exclusive economic zone, while Beijing, which has built structures on top of several of these features in the region, maintains the area is part of its historical fishing waters.

The poaching and prosecutions only further strain bilateral ties.

China is “a threat to our internal security,” according to maritime police inspector John Labunog Aller, who says Beijing has taken over a part of Palawan.

Philippines: Chinese military units protecting fishermen

To avoid arrest by the Philippine police, Chinese fishermen and their country’s coast guard seem to sail side by side, say some local officials.

Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr. recalls in 2012 observing what he describes as a “Chinese warship” accompanying around 100 small fishing boats that were anchored at a coral reef that lies within his Kalayaan municipality in the South China Sea.

“The whole reef was smoking,” he said, due to diesel machines the poachers used to destroy the coral.

Manila says China has built military outposts on its new artificial islands, including an airplane landing strip. President Benigno Aquino has likened Beijing’s maritime advancement to the rise of Nazi Germany.

The Philippines also has a military presence in the region, but on the whole, the Chinese maritime forces are larger and more modern. One of the Philippines’ last lines of defense is the Sierra Madre -- a rusting, World War II-era cargo vessel that’s beached on an atoll and is home to a handful of Philippine soldiers.

Philippines Defiant, But Needs Help

The government has appealed to the United States to develop a small base on Palawan’s west coast that could be used by the American Navy to station ships. But the Supreme Court is currently deciding if a base-sharing agreement signed last year by presidents Aquino and Obama violates the country’s constitution.

Palawan’s Special Boat Unit hasn’t had any run-ins with the Chinese coast guard, so far. The province’s two-boat fleet is based in Honda Bay on the east coast, and it could take days to reach illegal fishermen and their military protectors in the South China Sea.

Some of the unit’s officers say a possible confrontation won’t deter them from policing Palawan’s waters.

“We are bound to implement the law,” said police sub inspector Raymund Abella. “No one could stop us.”

Chinese Fishermen Sailing Closer to Coast of Western Philippines

Expect the PDF China Platoon will claim Palawan is "Chinese territory".

 

[Beast]

Expect the PDF China Platoon will claim Palawan is "Chinese territory".

Yes, yes, A thief acting as victim. That is only Pinoy can do. We send big patrol boat to protect and fish at our area. What can your crappy small patrol boat can do? I hope you will fired at our boat so we will have excuse to sink some pinoy cheap boat

 

[Cossack25A1]

Yes, yes, A thief acting as victim. That is only Pinoy can do. We send big patrol boat to protect and fish at our area. What can your crappy small patrol boat can do? I hope you will fired at our boat so we will have excuse to sink some pinoy cheap boat

Thank you for revealing the information that you also want to claim Palawan, a clear sign of an invasion.

Now we are only waiting for you Chicoms to attack us.

 

[Beast]

Thank you for revealing the information that you also want to claim Palawan, a clear sign of an invasion.

Now we are only waiting for you Chicoms to attack us.

No, we will send more Chinese fisherboat protected by China coastguard and we will fished right in front of Pinoy coastguard. See what you can do. You fired at us and you are asking for trouble. Your coastguard can only watch us fish.

We China are rich, we can afford 10times the amount of coast guard patrol fleet you pinoy can afford. And our ship is 4-5times bigger and can stay longer out at sea. What can you cry baby pinoy do? Just anchor and watch us fish

 

[Cossack25A1]

No, we will send more Chinese fisherboat protected by China coastguard and we will fished right in front of Pinoy coastguard. See what you can do. You fired at us and you are asking for trouble. Your coastguard can only watch us fish.

We China are rich, we can afford 10times the amount of coast guard patrol fleet you pinoy can afford. And our ship is 4-5times bigger and can stay longer out at sea. What can you cry baby pinoy do? Just anchor and watch us fish

Again with the arrogance from a Chicom.

 

[Beast]

Again with the arrogance from a Chicom.

Is better than ignorant and foolishness pinoy

 

[Cossack25A1]

Is better than ignorant and foolishness pinoy

Oh we are not ignorant. I wonder about you, who likely believes everything Chairman Xi and his lackeys say.

 

[Beast]

Oh we are not ignorant. I wonder about you, who likely believes everything Chairman Xi and his lackeys say.

yes you are ignorant, you are a lacky being whatever corrupted Aquino say. Despite lynching all ordinary pinoy. You still so foolishly believing about external China threat?

At least China can boast abt 2nd largest economy , super computer and space rocket technology and better lifes for most Chinese with Xi in hand. What thing can pinoy be proud of beside believing so faithfully of your corrupted leader? Proud of your huge amount of exported maid?

 

[Pinoy]

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News, South China Sea

December 16, 2015

What I came across on a reef far out in the middle of the South China Sea has left me shocked and confused.

I'd been told that Chinese fishermen were deliberately destroying reefs near a group of Philippine-controlled atolls in the Spratly Islands but I was not convinced.

"It goes on day and night, month after month," a Filipino mayor told me on the island of Palawan.

"I think it is deliberate. It is like they are punishing us by destroying our reefs."

I didn't take it seriously. I thought it might be anti-Chinese bile from a politician keen to blame everything on his disliked neighbour - a neighbour that claims most of the South China Sea as its own.

But then, as our little aircraft descended towards the tiny Philippine-controlled island of Pagasa, I looked out of my window and saw it. At least a dozen boats were anchored on a nearby reef. Long plumes of sand and gravel were trailing out behind them.

Pale plumes stretch out behind the small boats in the foreground


"Look," I said to my cameraman, Jiro. "That's what the mayor was talking about, that's the reef mining!"

Even so, I was unprepared for what we found when we got out on the water.

A Filipino boatman guided his tiny fishing boat right into the midst of the Chinese poachers.

They had chained their boats to the reef and were revving their engines hard. Clouds of black diesel smoke poured into the air.

"What are they doing?" I asked the boatman.

"They are using their propellers to break the reef," he said.

Again I was sceptical. The only way to see for sure was to get in the water.

It was murky and filled with dust and sand. I could just make out a steel propeller spinning in the distance on the end of long shaft, but it was impossible to tell exactly how the destruction was being carried out.

The result was clear, though. Complete devastation.

This place had once been a rich coral ecosystem. Now the sea floor was covered in a thick layer of debris, millions of smashed fragments of coral, white and dead like bits of bone.

I swam on and on. In every direction the destruction stretched for hundreds of metres, piles and piles of shattered white coral branches. It seemed so illogical. Why would fishermen, even poachers, destroy a whole coral system like this?

Then, down below me, I spotted two of the poachers, wearing masks and trailing long breathing hoses behind them. They were manhandling something heavy.

As they struggled up the sandy underwater slope, through a stream of bubbles, I caught sight of what they were carrying - a massive giant clam, at least 1m (3ft) across.

They dropped it on to a pile near their boat. Next to it lay three others they had pulled out earlier. Clams of this size are probably 100 years old, and - as I discovered later on an internet auction site - can sell for between $1,000 (£665) and $2,000 a pair.

We motored out to a group of much larger fishing boats anchored just off the reef. These are "mother ships" to the small poacher boats on the reef. On board the big boats I could see hundreds of clam shells stacked high.

On the stern of each boat, two large Chinese characters spelled out the name, Tanmen.

I'd heard of Tanmen before. It's a fishing port on the large Chinese island of Hainan.

In May 2014 another boat from Tanmen had been caught by Philippine police on another reef close to the Philippines called Half Moon Shoal. On board, the police had found 500 Hawksbill sea turtles, most of them dead.

Hawksbill turtles are critically endangered and protected under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

A Philippine court sentenced the nine Chinese poachers to a year in prison.

Beijing was furious. The foreign ministry demanded the convicted poachers be immediately released and accused the Philippines of "severely violating China's sovereignty… by illegally detaining Chinese fishing vessels and fishermen in waters off China's Nansha Islands".

None of this proves China is protecting the poachers. But nor does Beijing appear to be doing anything to stop them. The poachers we saw showed absolutely no sign of fear when they saw our cameras filming them.

Back on Pagasa, a Philippine marine corps officer told me the destruction of the reef has been going on for at least two years, day and night.

"You men are armed," I said to him. "Why don't you go over there in your speedboat and chase them off or arrest them?"

"It's too dangerous," he said. "We don't want to start a shooting war with the Chinese Navy."

I still found it hard to understand why these Chinese fishermen, who have a long tradition of fishing on these reefs, are now destroying them.

Greed may be one answer. In newly wealthy China there is far more money to be made from looting and trading in endangered species than in catching fish.

There is another sad fact about what is going on out here.

However shocking the reef plundering I witnessed, it is as nothing compared to the environmental destruction wrought by China's massive island building programme nearby.

The latest island China has just completed at Mischief Reef is more than 9km (six miles) long. That is 9km of living reef that is now buried under millions of tonnes of sand and gravel.

Images: CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative / DigitalGlobe

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes flies over China's new artificial islands built on coral reefs in the South China Sea, and gets a furious and threatening response from the Chinese Navy.

Why are Chinese fishermen destroying coral reefs in the South China Sea? - BBC News

 

[xunzi]

Those guys look like a Pinoy to me. LOL

 

[C130]

China might be more dangerous to the environment than the U.S/West in the last 200 years

 

[21stCentury]

After political and military intimidation did not work, now they use a different tactic. SCS island build up is as 'polluting the environment' as a bunch of guys urinating out their swim trunks in a river. China is willing to sacrifice this for national security.

 

[21stCentury]

Building on coral reefs is a good idea because it already has a good foundation. It is a smart engineering choice. Coral reef helping mankind out

Btw, it is better colonizing coral reefs than colonizing people, am I right? @US/Britain/West

 

[大汉奸柳传志]

Great. The US is gone and the Brits and Aussies are coming.. How can we trust any of them to be a friend?

I hope the world sees their true face and one day gang up on this Anglo clan.