The Galapagos Islands, one of the world’s most important marine reserves, has accused China of pillaging the area’s vital food supplies on an industrial scale.
Satellite and radio tracking data has shown that almost 300 vessels, part of China’s massive “distant-water” fishing fleet, which includes refuelling vessels and fish processing plants, were stationed off the islands in July and August. The ships are understood to have caught several thousand tonnes of squid, tuna and billfish.
The fish are critical to the diet of several protected species in the Galapagos, which belong to Ecuador, and essential to the islands’ economy.
“This is an attack on our resources,” Ángel Yánez Vinueza, the mayor of the Santa Cruz province on the islands, told the Los Angeles Times
