All Fished Out

Taiwan will meet with Japan next week to try and calm the waters surrounding the disputed Diaoyutai archipelago. Both countries, as well as China, claim ownership of the island chain. And though the islands themselves are nearly deserted, the waters around them are an historic fishing ground.

But the recent headlines created by frustrated fishermen and crusading politicians have ignored a larger problem with the Diaoyutai archipelago: the fish being fought over are dwindling in number.

According to both government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, the amount of fish caught around the Diaoyutais — as with all fishing grounds around the world — has dropped as a result of overfishing. The bigger problem, they say, isn’t that fishermen’s rights are being impinged, but rather that fishermen have plied their trade all too well.
Taipei Times