Elsevier

Fisheries Research

Volume 236, April 2021, 105849
Fisheries Research

Exploring the management policy of distant water fisheries in China: Evolution, challenges and prospects

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2020.105849Get rights and content

Abstract

China's distant water fisheries management policy has made significant contributions to the development of distant water fisheries since 1985. Analyzing the evolution of China's distant water fisheries management policy is conducive to solving China's IUU problems and promoting further development of sustainable fisheries. This paper first summarizes how China's distant water fisheries management policy has evolved, which can be divided into four stages: the start-up period (1985–1990), the rapid development period (1991–1997), the sustainable development period (1998–2007), and the optimization and adjustment period (2008-present). Then the characteristics of current distant water fisheries management are summarized, including how management has adapted to international rules, emphasize sustainable fisheries, diversification and facilitation of management methods. China's distant water fisheries management policy still faces severe challenges in terms of technology, marine rights, management system, industrial structure, and employee capabilities. Finally, this paper highlights the importance of attaching importance to science and technology, re-evaluating distant water fisheries subsidies based on environmental policies and IUU activities, establishing a polycentric governance mechanism with stakeholders at the core, improving the supervision system, and establishing overseas distant water fisheries bases to strengthen international cooperation.

Introduction

China has been the world's largest fishing country since 1990, which is mainly due to overexploitation of offshore fishery resources (Xue, 2006; Yang et al., 2016). In recent years, the depletion of offshore fishery resources and the deterioration of the marine environment caused by overfishing have severely restricted the development of China's fisheries (Zhao and Shen, 2016; Ding et al., 2020; Kang et al., 2018). Therefore, the development of distant water fisheries and aquaculture has become an important way to reduce the pressure of overfishing in China (Liu et al., 2014). In addition, as a strategic industry, distant water fisheries are of great significance for meeting the domestic demand for high-quality aquatic products, ensuring food security, increasing fishermen's income, and promoting the development of the fishery economy (Mallory, 2013; Zhang et al., 2019; Yue et al., 2016).

About 90 % of the world's fish stocks have been over exploited or are fully developed, but there is still potentials for distant water fisheries resources, especially small pelagic fish, cephalopods and Antarctic krill (FAO, 2016; Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2012). Although the industrial fishing of Antarctic krill is controversial, the Chinese government regards the harvesting of Antarctic krill as one of its important strategies for distant water fisheries (Schiermeier, 2010; Tang and Shi, 2010; Nicol and Foster, 2016). Accurate resource assessment, effective catch control and sound fishery management are essential for sustainable fisheries (Nicol et al., 2012). In 2019, China had 170 distant water fisheries enterprises, operating 2654 distant water fishing vessels, and the output of distant water fisheries was 2.257 million tons. The scale and total output of the fishing fleet were among the highest in the world. China has become an important distant water fishing nation (DWFN) (Chesnokova and McWhinnie, 2019). In 2017, among the seven principal tuna species1 in the world, the fraction of the stocks at biologically sustainable levels was 66.6 percent, which has increased by ten percent compared with 2015. It proves that fisheries management is effective (FAO, 2020). If China's distant water fisheries can achieve reasonable management, it will make a significant contribution to the world's marine fisheries.

The protection of the marine ecological environment, the sustainable use of marine fishery resources, and the establishment of a fishery management system have become international consensus (Tickler et al., 2018; Danielsen and Agnarsson, 2018; Zou and Huntington, 2018). China's distant water fisheries management involves the development, production, processing, sales, and trade of fishery resources, and needs to consider both domestic and international fields (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2017). Since 1985, China has continuously improved its management policies for distant water fisheries, which has promoted the rapid development of them (Huang and He, 2019). However, under the background of increasingly strict management measures of regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) and occurrence of IUU activities, the shortcomings of China's ocean-going fishery management policies are being gradually exposed (Okafor-Yarwood and Belhabib, 2020; Miller and Sumaila, 2014; Ma et al., 2018). In the future, China's ocean-going fisheries management will still face huge challenges.

This paper reviews the development of China's distant water fisheries and explains the evolution of ocean-going fishery management policies. In addition, it discusses the challenges faced by China's distant water fisheries management policies in terms of technology, marine rights, management systems, industrial structure, and employee capabilities. Finally, this paper determines the prospects of China's distant water fisheries management policy in terms of attaching importance to science and technology, optimizing subsidies, stakeholder participation in decision-making, improving the supervision system, and strengthening international cooperation.

Section snippets

Start-up period (1985–1990)

On March 10, 1985, China's first distant water fleet consisting of 12 production fishing vessels and a refrigerated transport vessel sailed to West Africa, which marked the official start of China distant water fisheries. Subsequently, China launched fisheries cooperation with Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone and other countries. On July 23, 1985, China and the United States signed the "Sino-US Fishery Agreement" in Washington. According to the agreement, Chinese fishing vessels could fish

Restriction of equipment and technology

In general, the distant water fleet is composed of large-scale processing mother ships, fishing sub-ships, bunkering ships, and transport ships with high automation and strong endurance (Liu et al., 2020). This kind of fleet with refrigeration, processing, supply and other functions poses extremely high requirements on the equipment and technology. Moreover, the competitive fishing and fishing-aid equipment can improve production efficiency effectively and reduce production safety risks. As of

Attaching importance to science and technology

After more than 30 years of development, China's distant water fisheries has initially formed a scientific and technological support system in the fields of fishing technology, fishery exploration, fishery equipment, and fishery forecasting (Chen et al., 2019). The government actively promotes the innovation of distant water fisheries science and technology as an important part of distant water fisheries management, which has effectively promoted the rapid development of distant water

Conclusion

After more than 30 years of development, China's distant water fisheries has begun to scale up and the management level of distant water fisheries has been improved significantly. Meanwhile, China’s rapid development of distant water fisheries and IUU activities have exerted a certain influence on the sustainable development of global fisheries. As an important means for the government and fisheries organizations to guide and regulate the development of distant water fisheries, fishery

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jinkai Yu: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Project administration, Supervision. Qingchao Han: Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Methodology.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71673259), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (201862004).

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