Ecuadorian Navy was tracking a ‘massive formation of 525 Chinese vessels’ sailing in international waters since January in the South Pacific Ocean before 147 vessels went ‘dark’ in July
@Kunal_Chonkar
New Delhi: Chinese ships carrying out deep-sea fishing few nautical miles off the Ecuadorian coast have become an everyday sight for Quito’s navy and coast guard. Since 2017, Chinese fishing ships have been regularly crossing the international dateline by bracing the rough south Pacific waters and casting nets in the waters around the Galapagos Island in their hunt for Tuna and Sharks.
Since then not only Ecuador but even Peru and Chile have been positioning a naval ship each in front of the Chinese vessels, preventing them from entering the waters of their respective country. Apart from physical monitoring, these nations also press their electronic surveillance into action. Radars track and trace the movements of the Chinese vessels – represented by green and blue dots – on digital screens. In addition to this, naval helicopters spin and sway over these vessels, while coast guard speed boats zip past their nets warning the Chinese fishermen to hold their line.
Realizing that their presence and trade in international waters are under scanner, the Chinese have been calm and cooperative. Beijing’s vessels have been maintaining radio contacts, flying their flags, and have always kept their Automatic Identification System (AIS) alive – till the month of September, after which they sail back.
The Ecuadorian maritime records indicate that, apart from a stray incident in 2017, the past three years have gone without any major incident reported on the Pacific horizon. In 2017, Quito’s navy seized a Chinese vessel for breaching into Ecuador’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). They recovered over 300 tons of marine species fished by the vessel by violating international maritime law.
Going Dark
Even so, a month ago around 147 ‘calm and cooperative’ Chinese vessels went ‘dark’ in the South Pacific Ocean, few nautical miles of the Ecuadorian EEZ.
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According to the information, the Ecuadorian Navy was tracking a ‘massive formation of 525 Chinese vessels’ since January. In the past seven months, these vessels had crossed international waters off the coasts of Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. However, in the days between 23 – 26 July, the ‘formation broke’ with a ‘fragment of vessels’ – after which they kept ‘radio silence’, ‘lowered their flags’ and eventually ‘switched off their AIS’.
Speaking to TheNews21, on this maritime anomaly, a senior Ecuadorian officer from the Southern Naval Base of Guayaquil said that the country’s maritime security forces have pressed all efforts in attempts to track these ‘ghost’ ships.
“Our surveillance officers and over a dozen intelligence analysts have been working almost 24-hours to locate these ships. A couple of weeks ago, these 147-plus ships momentarily disappeared from our screens. We first thought that it could have been some atmospheric disturbance or technical issue, however, it was after 72-hours that our officers realized that the Chinese ships had turned off their equipment and even changed their call signs,” the officer said in a telephonic conversation.
His statements came a day before Ecuadorian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Darwin Jarrin in an official presser announced that his men and sophisticated machines were indeed trying to locate 149 Chinese ships that had ‘cut off communications’ in the recent months. Jarrin, in his brief to media also added that these Chinese ships had even ‘changed their names’ to avoid detection.
More than Just Fishing
The Ecuadorian officer claimed that these Chinese fishing ships are more than just ordinary deep-sea trawlers. “There are something’s, which are very strange when it comes to these Chinese ships coming all the way to South Pacific waters. Like their formation, the size of this formation, the dimensions of their ships, devices onboard, etc,” the officer said, while adding that this ‘strong contingent’ of ships always moves along with a good number of fuel tanker vessels and small support vessels.
“A group of ships between the counts of 300 to 350 can easily have more than 2500 to 3000 sailors on board. They chart the course for south Pacific waters in December, and fish in these waters for nine months straight. Our primary investigations in their logistics have shown that the Chinese fishermen carry a good amount of food, and electronic devices,” the officer said.
Base Vanuatu
A year after the Chinese fishing vessels started voyaging in waters near Galapagos Island, the Chinese state-owned company China National Fisheries Corporation (CNFC) launched a new tuna processing plant in Vanuatu, an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean.
Several Pacific-rim nations and international analysts had then marked that the deal was a cover story on Vanuatu allowing China to ‘militarize’ a portion of their coast. However, the then Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu had refuted these remarks calling them ‘baseless’ and ‘paranoia about China’.
Meanwhile, even as Vanuatu continues to rebuke the charges of ‘hosting Chinese military base’ on its land, the nation made up of 80 islands pocketed between Fiji and New Caledonia, has backed Beijing’s position on the South China Sea. A close look at their financial report card reflects that the island nation home to 307,000 people is grappling with inherent economic challenges including poverty, fewer commodity exports, and extreme weather events.
In 2006, Beijing signed an economic cooperation agreement with Port Vila, wherein PRC vowed ‘to assist Vanuatu and its people to developing a better economy, eliminating poverty, and building a wealthy country on the basis of mutual respect and mutual understanding’. The statement further read that ‘China will continue to provide assistance to Vanuatu as Beijing’s ability permits in the future’.
Since then the relations between the two nations have soared to new heights. In June 2019, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Charlot Salwai paid his first official visit to China. During the maiden visit, Salwai not only met with Chinese President Xi Jinping but also signed documents in the fields of economic and technical cooperation, consular services, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Under the agreement between Vanuatu and the CNFC – Port Vila authorities have agreed to allow ‘all Chinese ships’ to be serviced and restocked in their ports.
