Focus on Arts and Ecology

The fishing company responsible for an illegal haul of thousands of shark carcasses in the Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve has been identified, a year after 20 Chinese fishing crew were arrested there. In an interview with Caixin, one of the imprisoned crew from the refrigerated storage vessel Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 claimed that the carcasses on board were caught by Fuzhou Honglong Ocean Fishery Company and exposed the company’s cover story, which blamed Taiwanese vessels. Of the five boats involved, he said three belonged to Honglong and two to the NASDAQ-listed Pingtan Marine Enterprise. The two companies are owned by brothers and headquartered in the same office in the provincial capital of Fujian, Fuzhou. The Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 was detained on 13 August last year with 6,223 shark carcasses, including 600 endangered hammerhead sharks. The crew’s prison sentences in Ecuador ranged from one to four years. Caixin’s source served one year and returned to China on 16 August this year. (A shorter version of the article is available in English on Caixin Global).