China’s Squid Fleet Shifts to Chile, Alarming Its Fishermen

Environment

One of the world’s largest Chinese fishing fleet operations has quietly changed its base of operations, and the shift has landed on Chile’s doorstep. Its fishermen are not happy.

Every year a huge fleet of Chinese squid-jigging vessels travels the Pacific to fish just outside the waters of Ecuador, Peru and Chile. It chases Humboldt squid, a species South American coastal states depend on.

China runs the world’s biggest distant-water fishing fleet, with more than three thousand vessels operating beyond its own seas. Its scale alone makes it a fixture of maritime politics off South America.

Why the Chinese fishing fleet moved south

The striking change is where the ships now dock. According to the conservation group Oceana, Chinese vessels made only a handful of port calls in Chile in 2023 and 2024, but that number has jumped to well over a hundred this year.

The mirror image is in Peru. The same fleet had been using Peruvian ports heavily, with a couple of hundred calls a year, before tighter inspections there appear to have pushed the ships toward Chilean facilities instead.

Chilean data confirm the pressure. The national fisheries service says that between 2024 and 2025 it received one hundred and seventy-five port-access requests, with more than eight in ten of them coming from Chinese vessels.

Beijing frames the visits as legitimate and even helpful. Its embassy in Santiago says the port calls comply with Chilean law and international treaties, and that resupply and crew rotation generate local income and jobs.

What it means on the water

For small-scale fishermen, the effect feels immediate. Leaders in the northern port of Iquique say they went months without finding any Humboldt squid, and blame the fleet’s powerful lights for pulling the catch away from the coast.

The wider worry is enforcement. Conservation groups say the ships sometimes switch off their satellite tracking, making it hard to prove whether any of them stray inside the two-hundred-mile zone where foreign fishing is barred.

Chile’s navy monitors a maritime area of more than twenty-six million square kilometers, a scale officials admit strains their surface and air units. The fisheries service has rejected some port requests over missing or inconsistent information.

Outside help is arriving. Japan pledged around one point nine million dollars in early 2026 to strengthen surveillance in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay, providing drones, patrol boats and image-analysis tools.

For a foreign reader, the stakes go beyond squid. This is a test of whether mid-sized states can police their own waters against a fleet backed by the world’s second-largest economy, a grey-zone contest that Washington now treats as a security matter.

There is a trade angle too. The squid the fleet targets underpins an export industry for Chile, Peru and Ecuador, so a depleted stock threatens jobs and foreign earnings well beyond the artisanal boats that notice it first.

The regional pattern is telling. The same fleet swings between oceans by season, working the edge of Argentina’s waters in the Atlantic summer before moving north and west toward the Pacific squid grounds off Chile and Peru.

Neighbours have tried to coordinate before. Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia agreed years ago to share real-time information on the fleet, but enforcement has lagged the ambition, and the ships keep returning each season.

Science adds urgency. Catches of Humboldt squid in the southeast Pacific hit a record in 2023 before falling sharply, and because the high-seas fishery faces no binding catch limits, biologists warn the stock could be pushed past safe levels.

For Chile’s new government, it is an awkward bind. President José Antonio Kast has courted trade and investment ties across the Pacific, even as the same ocean brings a fleet his coastal communities want pushed back.

Expect the issue to keep surfacing. As long as Chinese demand for squid stays high and enforcement stays thin, the fleet has every incentive to return, and Chile’s fishermen will keep pressing Santiago for drones, patrols and regional coordination.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Chinese fishing fleet operating illegally off Chile?

There is no confirmed proof the vessels fish inside Chile’s exclusive economic zone, and China says they comply with the law. Conservation groups note, however, that ships sometimes disable tracking, which makes incursions hard to verify and enforcement difficult.

Why does the Chinese fishing fleet worry Chile?

The fleet targets Humboldt squid that local fishermen rely on, and its recent shift toward Chilean ports has multiplied its presence. Fishermen report vanishing catches, while officials struggle to monitor a vast maritime area against so many vessels.