China is Eating the World

Video Transcript:

What you see behind me is not a city skyline that is an illegal fleet of Chinese fishing vessels. China says the official numbers are something like two and a half thousand fishing vessels. That's out of the Chinese government's mouth. But myself personally, having been to many different fishing ports around China, just with my own eyes have seen that that's absolute bullshit. They are way more than two thousand five hundred fishing vessels because I personally have seen more than two thousand five hundred fishing vessels. And I'm not talking about in one place like I've been to different ports around China in the north, in the south, and the east. I've seen it myself. And on top of that, independent sources have estimated that it's up to seventeen thousand fishing vessels. This fleet is so massive that it can actually be seen from space. Most people don't even know they're there because they're doing all sorts of nasty little things like turning off their transponders, breaking you in maritime laws in order to go dark and not allow people to monitor what they're doing. This is unprecedented and you have to pay attention to this everybody. They are not only destroying the ecology around the Galapagos Islands again, but all over the world. And they're using a mechanized factory-like system to do it, which allows them to go out there for years at a time, absolutely destroying parts of the world's oceans. And it's something that's happening so rapidly that if we don't pay attention to it right now, ready the damage is irreparable. I'm just going to put that out there. But if we don't pay attention to this right now, it's really going to have a massive impact on all of us in the very near future. Now, before I continue, the work I do here is very dangerous. The CCP doesn't like what I have to say. They constantly try to shut me down. And one of the ways they shut me down is by making sure that no sponsors work with me. But I finally do have a sponsor who's willing to ignore the CCP threats and has agreed to sponsor this video. It's a very subtle adverts to see if you can spot it. Anyway, back to what I was saying. I get incredibly frustrated that these clandestine fishing fleets from China just get to go to the Galapagos and completely destroy the biodiversity there. I mean, this is a treasure. It's a treasure of the entire globe. The biodiversity there is something that should be protected and looked after, not exploited and raped and destroyed just because it's easy. And unfortunately, this is what the Chinese fleets are doing. Now, I have to explain to you how this whole system works. Before we get into the nitty gritty and I explain what's been going on, this mechanized system that the Chinese fishing vessels are using. It's devastating for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's high tech. But it's dirty, dirty, high tech. We're not talking about clean, very well put together vessels. All of the vessels that you see are filthy, disgusting, rundown pieces of trash. But they use high tech methods of fishing, which are very effective to pull all the fish out of the sea using these big trawlers that go a couple of hundred meters apart with a massive net and just drag net the ocean, pulling absolutely every single creature out with it indiscriminately. They also use very effective squid jigging vessels which use stadium lights to light up the sea. That's why you see all these lights on the horizon because it attracts the squid. And of course they use jiggers which just pull these things out and also indiscriminately everything else. Sophisticated fishing methods aside, the way that they skirt around the laws by breaking the laws, they're not skirting around them. They're just break them by turning off their transponders and so on. It is a big worry because they can then go into national territorial waters at night, fish there without being spotted or without being monitored and then go right outside the boundary the next day having already destroyed a ton of the ecology within for instance the Galapagos protected zones. That's not the most devastating thing however it's how these operations work. They usually send massive big oil tankers or massive big refueling tankers to go to these fleets to keep them going so they never have to leave the area. They can stay in an area for months years at a time because they get fresh fuel which keeps their engines running, keeps all their equipment going and then they have these refrigerated restocking vessels and what they do is they send in these massive big you know ships that can take all the catch from all the different fishing vessels so they'll go around and collect the the holes from all these different fishing vessels, throw them in this refrigerated massive tanker looking thing, take it all the way back to China and mind you they always turn their transponders off so that you can't keep track of where they're going. There's been numbers of cases where people have monitored these things and seen how it happens but they take these big holes of fish back to China empty it out turn around go straight back to the fishing fleet and stock up again go back and forth this way this way these fishing vessels can actually stay out at sea for years at a time because not only do they get resupplied with fuel but their big holes get taken off of the boats and taken back to China and then you know you see how this could be a terrible situation it's a mechanized factory-like system this means that the fishing does not stop it's 24, 7, 365 days a year it never ever stops and that's why it's so devastating what they're doing here is unprecedented this is something on a scale that's never ever been done before you know sure they were exploited of fishing techniques in the 50s and the 40s and the 30s by the Soviet Union by the US by every country imaginable but they did not have such a mechanized high-tech fishing fleet and the numbers they never had the numbers you see when you're talking about a small illegal fishing setup maybe you've got a couple of illegal I don't know Brazilian fishermen going out there and their little boats and they catch a bunch of protected species and stuff and then they they go back and they have to go and offload it at the shore and stuff the dent they're making is very small but when you've got such a huge fleet and I mean huge China says the official numbers are something like two and a half thousand fishing vessels that's out of the Chinese government's mouth but myself personally having been to many different fishing ports around China just with my own eyes have seen that that's absolute bullshit they're way more than two thousand five hundred fishing vessels because I personally have seen more than two thousand five hundred fishing vessels and I'm not talking about in one place like I've been to different ports around China in the north in the south and the east I've seen it myself and on top of that independent sources have estimated that it's up to 17,000 fishing vessels I mean okay that's a lot especially considering that the USA only has around 300 fishing vessels 300 versus a possible 17,000 you can see the difference here now surely every country has the right to go and you know fishing the open waters and yes there isn't really any international law that prevents people from fishing in the open waters of the sea the difference is is that we've never faced this kind of devastation before and it's not just about the open sea because what is happening here is of course if you go into the deep ocean there's not really that much to catch it's always around the coastal areas and within the national borders of waters of certain countries that you're going to get the most amount of fish and sea life to capture and so that's why they go very very far away from China I mean think about it the Galapagos and Argentina and all these places Peru where they're constantly caught fishing illegally and I have to say that when they do catch them they're always finding thousands upon thousands of tens of thousands of protected species like hammerhead sharks and all of that in the holds of these boats they have absolutely zero regard for protected species zero regard for ecologies they just want to take as much as they can right now and in fact we all know China the rareder the fish especially things like shark fin and rare sea animals the more that it's going to fetch the higher the price it'll fetch in the mainland so they actually want these things they want to capture dolphins so they can use them as bait for sharks to get the shark fins that kind of thing so there's an incentive for them to actually capture protected species of course they're protected for a reason but tell that to the African elephants and the the rhinos and the tigers and everything else it's being devastated around the world because of a demand from mainland China for traditional Chinese medicine parts so the issue here the main issue is that this is all being done maliciously and deviously purposefully breaking the laws and regulations you know the UN maritime law states that a fishing vessel of certain size and vessels of a certain size must always have their transponders active so that they can be tracked this of course is not what the Chinese fishing fleets do sure they have transponders but they turn them off all the time in order to do their clan destined and their devious little illegal fishing jaunts here and there not only do they turn them off but they spoof them as well so in other words they'll put a fake transponder to say that they're from another country or say that they're multiple vessels or that multiple vessels are a single vessel they do all of these different things breaking the law in order to get away with absolute murder around the coast of Africa we've seen the same exploitative fishing and they skirt the laws in different ways there you know you know for instance off the coast of Ghana you're not allowed to register foreign fishing vessel to fish in the waters of Ghana so what do they do they use some kind of loophole crap where they register a company in Ghana and then they register the Chinese fishing vessels as ghanese ships and they fly the Ghana flag but they're captained and stuffed by Chinese of course they they also hire local people there's a lot of human rights abuses that go on on these ships as well by the way that's another completely different aspect that we haven't looked at yet perhaps for another time but what they do is once the the local people and they take Indonesians and Africans and various other you know cheap labor that they find once they're on the boat they're kind of slaves they're captured there they cannot escape the boat and the boat sometimes like I said stay out for years at a time so there's no way for these people to escape and they get stuck there working ridiculous amounts of hours you know a physical abuse all that kind of stuff happens but like I said that's maybe for another time we're talking about the devastation they're wreaking so they get these loopholes a flyer ghanese flag even though the the ships will be clearly Chinese with names like the Minghua the Shah Ditu or whatever it's going to be called they're going to have Chinese names on them they're Chinese vessels but flying a different countries flags not just Ghana they do it all over the place they love going for corrupt leaders and corrupt parts of the world so you'll find them also fishing off the coasts of North Korea because they've got under the table agreements in violation of sanctions you'll find them fishing all over to South American waters African waters and they keep getting further and further away from China because they've destroyed and depleted the fish stocks all around China and in that entire region and so they go for the the fish rich waters for instance around the Galapagos and now this is the second year in a row that they've gone there and they are just pulling out squid and whatever else 24 seven and destroying the ecology this can never come back mind you what they've done already is completely devastating it just cannot recuperate it's not sustainable and so that's why we have to focus on China I know that there are apologists out there we're going to try and pull this this whole thing about oh but other countries have been doing it and China's only recently started in the 80s is when they started there sort of fishing fleets and stuff like that you know what that doesn't matter because this is unprecedented this has never happened before we've never seen such a massive force wreaking this much destruction on the world's ecology and oceans unchecked that's the problem and not only are they just breaking you in maritime law by doing things like turning off their transponders but they're breaking different nations laws by fishing in the waters off of these different nations it happens in my own country South Africa that happens all the time they turn off their transponders go into the national waters fish go out turn the transponders back on again people know it happens people that are observing them knows it happens but you know what they're never held to task and guess what it's not even illegal in China there is no charge against you if you caught fishing illegally in another country or breaking maritime laws it's not against the law so the Chinese government won't punish them they put out some kind of stupid white papers for the rest of the world to see oh we're going to you know standardize things a little bit we're going to crack down on you know illegal fishing a bit but by cracking down these people might receive a fine or something like that they're not going to see jail terms there's not going to be really any incentive for them to stop so I really want everybody who's watching this video to just stop making excuses stop trying to think that it's okay for China to be doing this first of all wake up and see that they are doing this this is really a huge issue and it's one that's not going away and it's only getting worse we cannot allow China to get a free pass on this because what they're doing to the world's oceans right now is going to affect every single one of us and our children our families our neighbors and all over the world doesn't matter where you live doesn't matter what country you're in this will affect you we have to talk up we have to speak up and we have to put an end to this