Ecuador’s navy circles a Chinese fishing vessel suspected of fishing illegally (Image: Alamy)
On a sunny day in June 2019, the seven crew members of the artisanal fishing boat Mercedes Rosario spotted big international vessels off Peru’s Pacific coast. Captain Jorge Jacinto Galán decided to anchor nearby and wait for nightfall, when these vessels turn on their powerful lights to attract Humboldt squid in large numbers.
“These boats were 50 miles off the coast of Callao,” Jacinto recalls, well within Peru’s 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which foreign vessels cannot enter without permission.
Jacinto, who is also the president of the Association of Shipowners and Artisanal Fishermen of San José, recorded the encounter in two photographs that he later showed at a meeting with Peruvian authorities. The vessels did not carry flags, Jacinto said, a practice common among vessels suspected of engaging in illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing.