China Merchants Group Limited, a group controlled by the Xi Jinping Government, controls the management of the Ivory Coast port of Abidjan, built by China Harbor Engineering Company (also publicly traded). This is an extremely important location for the tuna fleet of the Spanish capital, owned or participated by groups such as the Galician Calvo or Jealsa or the Basque Albacora. Or it was because migration continues. “There is a big problem in the field of fishing” “Asian ships are being invaded and they are destroying everything.”they rely on one of the affected shipowners.
“Nine ships have already left, it’s not profitable.” With bases all over the west coast of Africa Chinese fishing groups expand their global hegemony and in place of Spanish ships they have their own bases from Tangier (Morocco) to Durban (South Africa). And they’re not doing it alone, because Korean expansion has also done its part. This is the escape.
“We are currently in Las Palmas while agreements are being negotiated to go to the Pacific.” Once a warehouse for boats like the Sant Yago Tres or the Albacora Caribe (both of which are nowadays moored at the León and Castillo docks in the port of Las Palmas), there is no longer room.
Shipowners condemn the failure of Asian fleets, especially those of China and Korea, to comply with restrictive measures to protect fisheries
In last year’s management report, the company headed by Jesús Manuel Alonso Escurís had already warned about this. The challenges of operating in the region are increasing. “The combination of restrictive measures applied to us by the Regional Fisheries Organization [en referencia a la Comisión Internacional para la Conservación del Atún del Atlántico, ICCAT]This, together with the recent fishing shortages of this ocean, makes the Atlantic an ocean of relatively more complexity in terms of fishing and with more modest results than the Pacific and Indian oceans.
There has also been an improvement in fishing in recent months. tuna size problem. “They are plundering everything, other resources in the sector are too abundant and the fish are getting smaller and smaller.” Only Calvo is left to “compete with the Asians,” at least for now.
More facades
The scenario for tuna companies is complex in every respect. Because there is a visible decline in demand on land and, in the opinion of some operators, there is an increasing and “enormous” import. Pre-cooked tuna fillets from China or Ecuador are much cheaper.
This last factor is one of those cited by Atunes y Lomos (Atunlo) to justify the closure of half of its group dedicated to the supply of canned food and an extinct ERE that would have consisted of around 200 people. Albacora is a shareholder of Atunlo through Compañía Internacional de Pesca y Derivados (Inpesca).
“Like FAD, we have a regulation that we comply with.”, concludes one executive of the industry. This stands for Fish Aggregation Device, a type of localized bait placed by auxiliary vessels (massers) which is then placed around the rig taking advantage of the fish concentration. ICCAT, on behalf of the Atlantic, limited the daily use of these devices to 300 per ship. “So who fulfills this? Because those fleets do not do this,” condemns the same source.
China currently controls all fishing logistics in Africa, managing and operating 60 ports
The fact is that it is not only fleets operating in the Gulf of Guinea that face an increasingly urgent deployment of Asian ships. The same scenario is also reported by shipowners based in Senegal (Dakar), Mauritania (Nouadhibou and Nouakchott), Angola (Lobito) or Morocco. “The fishing ground we are abandoning is the fishing ground they are occupying,” says another executive at one of the country’s main companies. As FARO analyzed, China now controls all fishing logistics in Africa, managing or operating 60 ports. Only the coasts of Gambia, Benin, Congo, Liberia, Somalia and Somaliland were spared. Now.