"Chinese Fleets Illegally Fish in West African Waters, Greenpeace Says"

"BEIJING — Chinese fishing fleets, driven by plummeting catches close to home, are flocking to distant West African waters, where they engage in ecologically ruinous bottom trawling, subterfuge and other illegal activities that threaten marine resources in a region already under pressure from overfishing, according to a report issued on Wednesday by Greenpeace.

The study, the result of a two-year investigation, accuses hundreds of Chinese-owned or Chinese-flagged vessels of taking advantage of weak enforcement by African governments to indiscriminately net untold tons of fish off the coasts of Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Among the worst offenders, Greenpeace said, is the state-owned China National Fisheries Corporation, whose ship operators were said to have lied about their locations, underreported the amount of fish in their holds and used damaging fishing methods that are largely banned in Chinese waters. The report said that government regulators in Beijing had been lax in enforcing regulations that govern overseas fishing."

Andrew Jacobs reports for the New York Times May 20, 2015.