Scientists To China: Cooperate Or Prepare For Collapse Of South China Sea Fisheries

[hatrack]

For years, sovereign rights in the South China Sea have been an object of fierce contention among the states that border it: the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam (all members of the 10-nation ASEAN group), China, their giant neighbor to the north, and Taiwan as well. But while the bordering states jockey for advantage, with China now clearly the dominant local power, scientists have been warning that the sea is fast becoming the site of an environmental disaster, the impending collapse of one of the world’s most productive fisheries.

Now a group of experts that includes geopolitical strategists as well as marine biologists is calling on the disputing parties to come together to manage and protect the sea’s fish stocks and marine environment. All can do so, the experts argue, without compromising their territorial claims. The success of any management scheme hinges on China’s whole-hearted participation, but it remains unclear whether that country, a major power with a big appetite for seafood, will cooperate.

“In the South China Sea, fish may spawn in one nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), live as juveniles in another’s, and spend most of their adult lives in a third. Overfishing or environmental destruction at any point in the chain affects all those who live around the sea,” the experts wrote this fall in a brief outlining their recommendations. “The entire South China Sea is teetering on the edge of a fisheries collapse, and the only way to avoid it is through multilateral cooperation in disputed waters.”

EDIT

“Steady catches mask a serious problem,” U.S. Air Force area specialist Adam Greer wrote in the Diplomat last year. The amount of effort required to sustain production has risen sharply, and “catches increasingly consist of smaller species whose populations have boomed as natural predators have been overfished — a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘fishing down the food web.’” A report led by University of British Columbia professors Rashid Sumaila and William Cheung concluded that biomass in the SCS has been fished down to between 5 and 30 percent of its 1950 level, and that perhaps 40 percent of the total catch is either illegal or simply unreported.

EDIT

https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/experts-to-china-cooperate-or-south-china-sea-fisheries-may-collapse/

[DetlefK]

1. Prediction: We will see the same result as with the oil-price.

The price of oil is too low because Saudi-Arabia is producing too much.

Saudi-Arabia and Iran held a conference to cut oil-production, to ramp up the price again.

Except no side trusted the other to stick to the deal.




And that's what will happen in Asia: No country will trust the others to stop fishing. So nobody will stop fishing.