It is my first time sailing in West Africa, and encountering Chinese vessels on the other side of the world made me feel a bit curious. Although I have been researching China’s distant water fishery industry for a while, I always felt I needed more direct experience with Chinese fishermen in the field. I believe communicating with them directly would give me not only more knowledge on the fishery situation per se, but also a better insight of fishermen’s mentality.
Luckily the opportunity came when we were sailing near Nouakchott, Mauritania. We spotted a Chinese vessel named Fuyuanyu. I got permission from Esperanza’s Captain Mike to go to talk to the crew and try to get on board .
As we were approaching the Fuyuanyu, all the fishing crews stopped working and stared at us. To ease them down, I greeted the Chinese crews in Mandarin and they seemed to be quite surprised and happy to see a new face from China. They talked back and I asked the captain of Fuyuanyu if we could get on board to see what kinds of fish they were catching. Knowing that we were not local fishery authorities, the captain of Fuyuanyu gave us the permission to board.
The Chinese captain, named Zheng, became quite candid with us about his satisfaction regarding the catch. Usually, fishing was good and he even told us that “ Sometimes we catch too much. The freezer are full of fish and there is no space left for more, so we have to throw away tons of caught fish”. As it takes up to 3-4 hours to sort out the caught fish, it means that by the end of the process, the unwanted species will be dead. While there are less and less fishes in West African waters, it is just heartbreaking to imagine tons of fish caught and thrown back to the sea, dead.
It was midday, and due to strong sunlight, most of their target fishes were not active near the surface of the sea. We were thus told that no fishing activity would happen for a while. However, the captain offered us another opportunity to visit the ship again after sunset to see the whole process of catching fish.
At around 6pm, we contacted captain Zheng via radio to confirm we still had his permission to get on board. As the answer was positive, our photographer, videographer, and myself left with an inflatable and got on board Fuyuanyu again. The Chinese captain warned me before that if we wanted to record the whole fishing process, we would have to stay on his ship until midnight – which meant spending almost 6 hours on Fuyuanyu. Considering this was a priceless chance to document a full set of fishing activity and to interview a Chinese fishing captain, we decided to stay.
After the crew put the fishing gears into the water, we went to captain Zheng’s cabin and started the 4 hours waiting process. We talked a lot about his crew, ship, company, and even his family. He told us that on the 20 crew members on board, half of them were Chinese and half of them from Mauritania. Most of the Chinese crew has been away from home for nearly 2 years. Aside from work, the two groups of crew barely talk to each other, and they live in separate rooms. The Captain confessed he was obliged to hire them because of the agreement the company had with the government (more on the life on board a Chinese fishing vessel in West Africa). One thing I found was very interesting during our conversation was that even he, a Chinese fishing vessel captain, knows how destructive the nowadays industrial fishing vessels are. He said straight to our camera, seeming a bit proud that “Wherever we sail, there will be no fish left in the ocean.”
As we were leaving Fuyuanyu that night, the captain was just ordering his crews to sort out two huge bags of newly caught fish which already took nearly all the space on the deck, and there were still three more big bags of fish in the water that were awaiting to be collected. Looking at the mountain of fish on the deck, I could not stop wondering. Besides Chinese vessels, there are hundreds of other foreign vessels fishing in West African waters as well. Do their crews share same opinions with Chinese captain Zheng? How much destruction have they made to fishery resources in the region? And without proper management plan by the local authorities, how long can the West African fishery resource sustain such fishing efforts?
By Bolei Liu, Ocean Campaigner, Greenpeace East Asia
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