Hearings to examine conflicts over ocean resources.
Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, Climate Change, and Manufacturing
2025-06-12
Source: Congress.gov
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Good morning. The subcommittee on Coast Guard Maritime and Fisheries will now come to order. This subcommittee is meeting today for our inaugural hearing of the newly created subcommittee on the Coast Guard Maritime and Fisheries. I'm honored to be chairing this subcommittee and excited to be serving with my ranking member colleague Senator Blunt Rochester as the ranking member of this important subcommittee. I look forward to working with Senator Blunt Rochester and her team and all the members of this subcommittee in the 119th Congress. Today's hearing will focus on international conflict, criminal activity, and yes, even slave labor associated with the ocean. We're particularly focused on the fight for fisheries resources, geopolitical flashpoints, where conflict is likely to arise in the role of both state and non-state actors involved in conflict with criminal activity in the fishing sector. And, of course, we want sustainable, lasting fisheries. Additionally, we'll discuss measures being taken to address the growing challenges and criminal activity surrounding these resources and conflicts and what more can be done. Illegal, unreported, and unreported. regulated fishing, also known as IUU fishing, poses a significant threat to global marine ecosystems, economies, sustainable fisheries, and food security. It is estimated that IUU fishing accounts for up to 20% of the global catch, which translates to global losses between 10 billion and 50 billion annually for fishing fleets that actually fish legally, like ours in America.
The scale of IUU fishing varies by region, with some areas experiencing more severe impacts due to lax enforcement, corruption, and high demand for seafood. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party in China plays a significant role in this problem. in the global fishing industry and is the worst offender of IUU fishing by far, no surprise. The Chinese government has provided billions of dollars in subsidies to its distant water fishing fleets, gray fleets as we sometimes call them, enabling their fishing sector to grow exponentially. According to Global Fishing Watch, China operates approximately 57,000 fishing vessels, 57,000, which accounts for 44% of the world's total fishing activity. Operating in tandem with the Chinese military to protect its fishing fleet, the Chinese fishing boats benefit from the protection of the Chinese Coast Guard and Navy, ensuring their ability to pilfer resources around the globe. And if you care about environment, and healthy ecosystems, this should be a top concern of yours. China ravaging our oceans. The scale of China's fishing activities raises concerns about the sustainability of global fish stocks around the world and the geopolitical tensions that can arise from maritime disputes. China is a concern, but Russia is as well. Close to Alaska, Russian and other vessels conduct IUU fishing near our exclusive economic zone, our EEZ. And although Russia banned imports of U.S. seafood into Russia over 10 years ago, Russia has been able to bring their seafood into the U.S., sometimes using loopholes through China, as recently as the late 2023 and late 2023.
IUU fishing is not an issue just for the United States. U.S. fisheries are the most sustainable fisheries in the world, but sustainably sourced, legally caught, high-quality seafood can't compete with illegally sourced seafood that is being plundered from our oceans. And I might add, due to some great reporting, and I'm going to reference it here in this hearing from Politico magazine, the New Yorker, China also uses slave labor on many of its fishing vessels. Pretty hard to compete against slave labor if you're an American fisherman. IUU fishing not only distorts the true cost of seafood sold in markets, but it is often linked overseas with transnational crime, forced and slave labor, and even human and drug trafficking. So the key to preventing IUU phishing is to lead international efforts to address the issues at its sources globally. And through the years, Congress and the executive branch, Democrat and Republicans, have worked together with global partners and have focused on IUU phishing. I'm proud to see my colleague and friend Senator Whitehouse here, He and I recently introduced our Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvests, also known as the Fish Act, a bipartisan bill that just recently in this committee passed unanimously. It puts IUU fishing vessels on a blacklist, raises costs for IUU vessel owners and importers, and supports increased Coast Guard enforcement and work with our partners. It builds on previous bipartisan legislation that this committee has championed particularly Senator Wicker's Maritime Safe Act. In April, President Trump signed an executive order entitled Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.
My office and my team and I were proud to work closely with the Trump administration on this important executive order. This order aims at strengthening measures to combat IUU fishing, including preventing IUU seafood from entering the U.S. market and supporting international efforts to address the issue at its source. We look forward to working with the administration on these efforts. But it's not all bad news.
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