The scene was something out of a fairytale battle genre: one heavily-armed opponent against a few hundred foes. Yet this was not embedded in a novel amongst ink and white paper. Instead, this battle was playing out in the Pacific Ocean not far from the Galapagos Islands.

This? This was very real.

The heavily-armed U.S. Coast Guard cutter sliced through the dark blue waves, imposing in size against the fleet of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing boats despite being outnumbered. It was the Coast Guard’s first-ever mission to counter illegal fishing in the eastern Pacific and those onboard had strict orders: to keep an eye out for any signs of illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing. Prompted by growing alarm from activists and governments in Latin America over the activities of world’s largest fishing fleet, the boat had come to help. Since 2009, the number of Chinese-flagged vessels reported fishing in the south Pacific has surged eightfold, to 476 last year. Some of these fishing excursions are quick. Some last months at a time. According to U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Hunter Stowes , the United States had warned fisheries officials more than a year ago that it intended to conduct these boardings in the area. The paperwork had been filed, and a quick look shows that they even included the flag the ship would be hoisting and the badges the crew would be wearing. “Just our being out there and doing the boardings really makes a statement,” Stowes said.

The high seas are not lawless. While it seems unorthodox or illegal, boarding ships on the high seas is perfectly legal. Ship boarding is an accepted part of the collective effort to protect oceanic fish stocks by verifying that fishing vessels are following rules, including not targeting threatened species (such as sharks). Five other countries, including Chile and New Zealand, filed similar paperwork under rules allowing members fishing in the south Pacific to inspect each other’s vessels.

Most don’t have an issue with this – others, do.

Suddenly, those onboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter James were slammed into anything that was nearby them. A wall, a table, around in their beds. “What was that?” they asked one another, scrambling to any window or portal that would give them eyes to the world outside the boat. One vessel had turned aggressively 90 degrees toward their boat, forcing the Americans to take evasive action to avoid being rammed. The Chinese captains of several fishing boats took advantage of this to speed away.

“For the most part they wanted to avoid us,” said Stowes, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer on the James. “But we were able to maneuver effectively so that we were safe the entire time.” Many on the boat believe this incident was a potentially dangerous breach of international maritime protocol. As revealed later in an AP-Univision investigation, those vessels in the flotilla were some of the seafood industry’s worst offenders. Boats with extensive records of labor abuse, illegal fishing and several other violations of maritime law.

While they were not able to catch up to those boats that had fled, officials on the James were able to board some in the flotilla. The icy freezers were filled with threatened and endangered fish… and fins… so many fins.

Many countries around the world have legislation in place banning shark finning, the practice of cutting a shark’s fins off and then dumping the animal back into the ocean. Shark fins are the key ingredient in shark fin soup, a delicacy in much of Asia (especially China) where the dish was seen as a status symbol. While demand for the dish has recently fallen due to bans on serving it at government functions and growing public conservation awareness thanks to the efforts of celebrities, it remains a substantial market — and much of it is met by black market producers.

While China’s foreign ministry told the AP that it has zero tolerance for illegal fishing, the country has repeatedly blocked efforts to strengthen inspection procedures in the south Pacific. And now Mongabay reports that Chinese boats secretly caught more shark than the official total reported by China for the country’s entire longline fleet there. An investigation by Mongabay looked into boats belonging to Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), a partially state-owned company that has long claimed to be China’s biggest supplier of sashimi-grade tuna to Japan. Based on interviews with dozens of men who worked as deckhands throughout its fleet of some 35 longline vessels, not only were the boats using banned gear to “deliberately catch tens if not hundreds of thousands of sharks each year, including protected species such as the critically endangered oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus),” but they were finning them. The practice is outlawed in all high-seas tuna fisheries and by China itself, on sustainability and animal welfare grounds.

“That a handful of fishing boats may be taking more sharks than their entire flag-state is reporting as the total catch for the year is risking sustainability, threatens scientists’ understanding of the status of shark populations, and puts responsible fishing operations at a competitive disadvantage,” Rachel Hopkins, project director for international fisheries at The Pew Charitable Trusts, wrote in an email to Mongabay after reviewing the findings.

Scientists have previously estimated that humans kill 100 million sharks each year; overfishing has driven the global abundance of oceanic sharks and rays to decline by nearly three-quarters (71%) in the past 50 years, according to a recent study. China reported in 2019, that the country’s entire longline fleet in the western Pacific caught 735 metric tons of shark in 2019. But the interviews showcase that five of these DOF boats collectively harvested around 5.1 metric tons of dried shark fin during that same year – indicating that just a small percentage of China’s fleet took more shark than what China reported its entire longline fleet. The numbers aren’t adding up. “From a perspective of protecting and rebuilding oceanic shark populations, this kind of behavior is a disaster,” Andy Cornish, senior international marine conservation leader at WWF-Hong Kong, told Mongabay.

It is unlikely that China’s communist government will punish their fleet – and with this new report (which can be read in totality here), it will be interesting to see how countries will react and if any will confront China in the political space.