China fishing fleet defied US in standoff on high seas | World News,The Indian Express
China’s foreign ministry said it has zero tolerance for illegal fishing and that it was the US that is flouting international norms by carrying out unauthorized inspections that don’t follow COVID protocols.
Thousands of miles away, a heavily-armed U.S. Coast Guard cutter sailed up to a fleet of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing boats not far from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. Its mission: inspect the vessels for any signs of illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing.
Boarding ships on the high seas is a perfectly legal if little-used tool available to any sea power as part of the collective effort to protect the oceans’ threatened fish stocks.
But in this case, the Chinese captains of several fishing boats did something unexpected. Three vessels sped away, one turning aggressively 90 degrees toward the Coast Guard cutter James, forcing the American vessel to take evasive action to avoid being rammed.
“For the most part they wanted to avoid us,” said Coast Guard Lt. Hunter Stowes, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer on the James. “But we were able to maneuver effectively so that we were safe the entire time.”
Still, the high-seas confrontation represented a potentially dangerous breach of international maritime protocol, one the U.S. sees as a troubling precedent since it happened on the Coast Guard’s first-ever mission to counter illegal fishing in the eastern Pacific.
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