2023-10-11 03:20:00
A complaint prepared by the Latin American Foundation for Fisheries Sustainability (FULASP) warned of the possibility of a “serious diplomatic conflict” between Argentina and the United Kingdom due to illegal fishing in the Malvinas Islands. In that sense, they indicated that more and more fishing vessels are operating under the closed season off the South Georgia Islands with illegitimate British licenses and that they act outside the framework that governs activity in the area.
In their complaint, FULASP highlighted “the urgent need to demand that the British government immediately stop the indiscriminate granting of fishing permits in the exclusion zone”. In this regard, they explained that fishing activity in the area has been regulated since 1982 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), and that the vessels operate outside the framework established by the multilateral organization made up of 26 member countries, including them Argentina and the United Kingdom.
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As a result of the situation, FULASP began negotiations to submit the request to the CCAMLR authorities, basing the request on the results of a report carried out by combining public and private data, its own and third parties, access to available satellite information, and records. official and journalistic. According to them, the investigation obtained evidence “that supports that the reported illegal act not only undermines Argentina’s conservation efforts, but also has a devastating impact on its economy and coastal communities“.
Along these lines, they indicated that in the waters surrounding the archipelago Almost half of what is caught in all of Argentina is being illegally extracted. “The Malvinas Islands granted 106 squid licenses and 16 loligo licenses. Currently there are more than 120 boats fishing in the archipelago with licenses granted by the British government,” Raúl Cereseto, president of FULASP, explained to PERFIL.
In this regard, Cereseto held a meeting with the Falklands fishing authorities where he was able to “confirm in person that the The United Kingdom has established a true illegal extraction system in the Falkland Islandsannually granting almost one hundred fishing licenses and quotas known as ITQB (Individual Transferable Quota) with a validity period of one year.”
“They sell permits by the ton through a quota system and are millionaires. They are handing out licenses in the archipelago where we have a sovereignty conflict. While we have that conflict, they license and sell the resource. They are fishing a lot and they are taking a lot of resources,” stressed the president of FULASP.
In that sense, Fishing represents approximately 60% of the Falklands’ income, which makes it its most significant economic activity. “The income obtained places the archipelago among the top ten GDP/per capita on the planet, well above the indicator for the inhabitants of the United Kingdom,” can be read in the complaint, to which Cereseto said: “It is very striking that the islands do not have any type of processing on land, so it is clear that their activity is limited only to fishing and selling.
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That way, hundreds of Taiwanese, Korean and, especially, Spanish flag vessels They have authorization to capture various marine species. “70% of everything caught goes to Spain, while 20% is unloaded on island territory and the remaining 10% travels to other latitudes,” Cereseto explained.
According to the data in the report, during the first part of this year’s fishing season, Spanish vessels caught in the area 53,500 tons of squid, which would suggest the most productive volume of catches in the last two decades. In the count for all of 2022, the Spanish fishing fleet recorded a volume of 101 thousand tons of the same species, the second historical record since 1989. Added to this, the catches of fin fish reached 62,000 tonsmarking the highest figure since the implementation of the exclusion zone.
The sanctioned ships and the mile 200 conflict
Part of the complaint refers to the fleets that exploit the region, and, according to FULASP, many of them were sanctioned. “The list of licensed ships is not publicly accessible,” the text adds.
“When I asked the director of fisheries of the Falkland Islands the number of vessels, the tons, the catches… all of that is public access, it is published in a transparent manner. When I asked her the name of the vessels, the status of pavilion, that is, the flag of the ship, they did not want to tell me. I might not find the payroll on the published pages nor did they want to provide them to me“Cereseto specified.
In addition to this, the FULASP text denounces that “many of the vessels have been sanctioned by other countries and international organizations for overfishing, slavery and torture activities on board”. In this sense, the president of the organization stated that “many vessels have been detected that, in addition to operating in the area controlled by the United Kingdom, also do so in an undeclared and unregulated manner in international waters, on the edge of the mile 200”, noting that “this shows that licensed vessels are participating in poaching in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of our country.”
“In the Malvinas Islands they do have close control over the working conditions of the fishing vessels, but not over the situation at mile 200. When they go to mile 200 they do what they want, but when they go to the Falkland Islands they have a lot of restrictions. However, they are granting licenses to the boats that later or before fish without control at mile 200,” added the fishing businessman.
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In this regard, Cereseto considered that Falkland Islands fishing authorities “manage” exploitation at mile 200 by granting licenses to ships that extract resources in that area. “We have seen this nocturnal activity at mile 200 on more than one occasion. Many of those boats, mainly with the Chinese flag, come, do a season off Argentina and fish everything they can from our EEZ. Then they go, they are given a license in the Malvinas Islands, they fish as much as they can there and leave,” he explained.
And he remarked: “First they do a season in international waters and When there is nothing left to fish, they go to the archipelago to wait for the season in the Malvinas Islands”.
The lack of communication with the United Kingdom and the consequences for Argentina
Another aspect that Cereseto highlighted is the lack of communication between Argentina and the United Kingdom regarding the legal framework for fishing exploitation. “They do all this illegally, but illegal for whom? For us without a doubt, but not for them,” he stated, while highlighting the need for the Foreign Ministry to intervene in the control of exploitation.
“There is a sustainability commission, for the conservation of the resource that we do not know if it is being fulfilled. At some point we even had information exchange between the Islands and Argentina, but Now we are at a point where we don’t even talk to each other between governments“he explained.
And he added: “They establish their own policies, we have ours and since we don’t talk to each other, no one knows what the other’s limit is. So we might be setting a certain limit and they might set a double limit, and we might be self-flagellating the opportunity to fish more, for example.”
Beyond the fact that the licenses “encourage” the exploitation of mile 200, the president of FULASP also listed another series of consequences for the country. In that sense, he mentioned that “there is no type of environmental and sustainability control over the resource”, which is seen, for example, in the absence of biological stops to ensure the preservation of the species. “We have a lot of policies to take care of the resource and they on the other side do what they want,” she stressed.
In addition to this, he indicated that there is a risk of there being less national catch when competing in the same markets with foreign fleets because the species cross beyond sovereign limits. “There is absolute unfair competition because then they go with those catches to the same markets and they collapse your market. Many times our catches are subject to fishing at mile 200,” he explained, and remarked: “Economically it affects us in terms of catch and in terms of productivity.”
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He also spoke of the social consequences, stating that it is “fewer people who have jobs, income and economic activities. “It hurts us a lot in that regard.” “If the Malvinas Islands grant them licenses, they come, fish on our coasts and then go to the archipelago,” he said.
These aspects are also contemplated in the complaint, which states that “the environmental, economic and social impacts of this unregulated activity are serious, and affect the future of fishing in the region, as well as the balance of the entire ecosystem of the South-West Atlantic, directly and indirectly affecting dozens of species of fish, mollusks, birds and marine mammals.
“In June 2022, the Argentine Government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, categorically rejected these unilateral measures bilaterally and multilaterally, considering them a serious breach of the rules of the Antarctic Treaty System. However, the United Kingdom has ignored it and the situation has only worsened.“, adds the text.
The complaint will be made effective in the coming days before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although Cereseto considered that “it is very difficult for us to succeed,” he acknowledged that “that does not mean that we have to stop the fight.” “We have to insist, there are tools that we can work on, such as solving the removal of boats from mile 200, asking the Malvinas Islands to make their fishing management transparent, to establish conditions for whoever grants licenses, that we can participate or that they can be subjected to a more transparent analysis,” he mentioned in this regard.
“The sovereign issue is not going to be resolved in the short term, but fishing continues to occur. “If we don’t talk regarding a question of sovereignty, why not talk regarding fishing issues at least to agree on what we want to do in the meantime?” he concluded.
MB / ED
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