Correspondence
Email sent to two contact addresses at the CNFC.
The email said: "I’m contacting you in light of our latest investigation, which concerns abuses in China’s distant water fishing fleet. Our investigation has found scores of squid fishing ships which are engaged in various forms of abuse and crimes - ranging from human rights concerns such as avoidable deaths and fatal neglect, to IUU (illegal, unregulated and unreported) fishing concerns including raiding other country’s waters and not stopping when law enforcement instructed them to do so.
The CNFC is the transshipment entity that moves a lot of the fish coming from these vessels and which has ties to processing facilities where much of this catch gets handled before export.
Does the CNFC believe it has any duty to vet its partners and move away from bad actor ships that engage in these sorts of behaviors?"
The Outlaw Ocean Project emailed: "I’m writing to you in light of our latest investigation, which concerns the Chinese squid fishing fleet and the treatment of a crew member on board the squid fishing vessel, the Wei Yu 18. A crew member whose employment contract was signed with CNFC Co. Ltd., the China Fishery Group Co. Ltd. and the manning agency PT. Shafar Abadi Indonesia, died in September 2019 after falling ill on board and being refused medical treatment for over two weeks. Does your company have any comment or statement to make about this? Please let us know by close of business July 21, 2023."
The Outlaw Ocean Project emailed three contact addresses for the China National Fisheries Corporation: "We are contacting you now in light of our research on the practice of ‘flagging in’, whereby fishing vessels owned by companies in one country are flagged to another country in order to access that second country’s waters.
Records indicate that the China National Fisheries Corporation (CNFC) is the beneficial owner of dozens of fishing vessels around the world which are flagged to other states, including Argentina and Senegal.
According to our research, there are also more than three dozen cases of CNFC ships which have fished in West Africa without licenses or in prohibited areas, using forbidden net types, and underreporting their catch in the past decade.
We have the following questions for the CNFC:
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While we understand that you may not be aware of the above issues, we want to ask if the CNFC has any comment in response to the information in this email?
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We are not indicating explicitly or implicitly that flagging-in is illegal, we are just taking a look at the issue of flagging-in globally. Can the CNFC confirm that it is the beneficial owner of fishing vessels which are flagged to Argentina, Senegal, Mauritania and Madagascar?
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How does the CNFC monitor its own fleet for possible fishing violations including incidents of fishing without licenses, fishing in prohibited areas, using forbidden net types, and underreporting catch?
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What repercussions are there, if any, for captains of CNFC vessels found to have engaged in illegal fishing or underreporting their catch?
Please let us know your responses to the above questions by close of business on July 10, 2024, noting that all interactions remain on record."