“They fish and fish, day and night,” said Chiroque, 49 years old, the head of the squid-fisherman association in Paita, a city on Peru’s far northern Pacific coast that is home to its squid-fishing industry. “The plundering is awful.”

The woes of Peru’s squid fishermen mark the latest round of international tensions involving China’s overseas fishing fleet, by far the world’s largest. U.S. officials and conservationists say China’s thousands of industrial-size vessels endanger ecosystems and threaten fishing industries from Africa to Latin America.

Overfishing has become a flashpoint of geopolitical friction between Beijing and the U.S., which has sided with countries such as Peru. The Biden administration has sanctioned Chinese-flagged ships for so-called illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which the U.S. says has surpassed piracy as the leading global maritime-security threat. 

The U.S. Coast Guard has conducted operations against illegal fishing off the coast of South America. For the first time, the Coast Guard recently boarded fishing vessels off the coast of Peru and Ecuador.

“It’s unfair competition,” said Elsa Vega, president of an association of Peru’s artisan fishermen. “It’s like David and Goliath.”

Beijing sees its distant-water fleet, made up of thousands of heavily subsidized ships, as crucial to its drive to become a maritime superpower while providing millions of jobs and feeding its 1.4 billion people. Overfishing in Asia has pushed Chinese ships farther from home. Beijing has also said the development of its fishing fleet is critical to safeguarding China’s maritime rights. 

China’s Foreign Ministry said the Chinese fleet isn’t responsible for the decrease in squid catches, pointing out that Peru’s own government has attributed the decline to changing ocean temperatures. 

The ministry said China has always respected Peru’s maritime zone, strictly abides by rules for fishing in international waters, and closely monitors the position of distant-water fleets. It said it has a zero-tolerance approach to combat illegal fishing.

“China is a responsible fishing country,” the ministry said. “Fishery cooperation is a highlight of China-Peru cooperation.” 

China’s fishing dominance has fueled a backlash across countries of the global South, where Beijing has generally outmaneuvered Washington but risks overreaching. Off Ghana, Chinese ships have exhausted small, sardine-like fish vital to coastal communities, according to local officials and conservationists. In the Indian Ocean, Chinese tuna ships have been accused of forced labor and shark finning, a practice banned by the U.S. In 2016, Argentina’s coast guard sank a Chinese ship it accused of illegal fishing.

“In all of the world’s seas, this fleet is known for committing grave infractions,” said Alfonso Miranda, head of Calamasur, a group made up of squid industry representatives from Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. “It could result in the disappearance of Peru’s artisan fishermen.”

In Peru, wooden boats that would normally be out at sea now float idly alongside pelicans and seagulls in Paita’s bay. Out-of-work fishermen are burning through savings. Some try to make a living driving three-wheeled moto-taxis. 

Segundo Meza, a 54-year-old squid fisherman, said he initially paid little attention to the Chinese ships during bountiful years, when Peruvians caught so many that they dumped squid back into the sea.

“We aren’t saints either,” he said, believing that Peruvians also overfished squid. 

Meza now spends his days helping to care for his grandson. The boy’s father, also a fisherman, left to work on a blueberry farm. To save money, his family stopped paying utility bills and skips breakfast. 

“The sea is my life,” he said. “But the situation right now is chaotic.”

The Pacific Ocean off Peru once supported the rise of ancient civilizations that sailed out to sea on reed boats. More recently, the cool, nutrient-rich waters have spurred a modern industry exporting seafood worldwide, but that trade has taken a hit this year. Peruvian seafood company Seafrost has processed just 25% of the squid that it had planned for this year, said Baruch Byrne, operations manager of its Paita plant.

The first Chinese fleet of 22 ships arrived off the western coast of South America in 2001, traveling across the Pacific for jumbo squid, a voracious animal that can grow to nearly 10 feet over a lifespan of 12 to 18 months. 

Those ships caught 17,700 tons of squid that year, according to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, a New Zealand-based intergovernmental group that includes the U.S. and China and that oversees fisheries in the Pacific. Now, the Chinese fishing boats haul in some 500,000 tons of squid annually from those waters. 

The fleet has since grown to around 500 ships. They use bright lights to attract squid to the surface at night. From space, the ships look like a floating city. A mother ship transports the catch back to China. Other vessels provide fuel. One serves as a hospital for crew members, says Eloy Aroni, a fishing expert at Artisonal, a Peru-based organization that tracks the fleet. 

Satellite images show the fleet spends much of the year just outside the 200 nautical miles that are part of Peru’s maritime territory, hugging the border as it follows the squid north and south.  

Peru’s ships have little chance of competing. The squid move both inside and outside of Peru’s maritime waters, meaning that even if Chinese ships don’t enter Peruvian waters, their catch has repercussions for locals. 

Some fishermen here say they have seen the Chinese ships fishing inside Peru’s waters, accusing them of shutting off their tracking devices to avoid detection. 

In July, local fishermen jumped on their wooden boats to surround and yell insults at the crew of an industrial Chinese ship that tried to dock in Paita. 

The fishing industry says it has received little support from the government of President Dina Boluarte, who traveled to Beijing in June to deepen ties with China.

Today, Chinese companies own some of Peru’s biggest copper mines, while others will control virtually all of the power distribution in the capital, Lima.

In November, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is scheduled to inaugurate a Chinese-owned megaport in Peru during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Peru’s Production Ministry, which oversees the fishing industry, didn’t respond to an interview request. Minister Sergio González has played down the impact of China’s fishing fleet, publicly saying that the squid shortage has been caused by changes in the ocean triggered by the El Niño warm weather phenomenon. The population should bounce back next year, he said. 

Juan Carlos Riveros, a biologist who is the science director in Peru for Oceana, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation organization, said that while squid are susceptible to changing temperatures, overfishing is the culprit. Peru’s squid catches declined during a 2016 El Niño, but not as much as today.

“In reality, what we are witnessing is a case of overfishing,” he said

After he finished high school 15 years ago, fishing squid was one of the few jobs in Paita for Elvis Chiroque (who isn’t related to Francisco Chiroque). Back then, his boat could haul up about 15 tons of squid in a week.

But in recent years, Chiroque, 34, noticed the squid were getting smaller. And he had to stay out longer to catch the same amount as before.

During his last trip in August, Chiroque was at sea for 22 days. He came back with a ton of squid, a fraction of what was needed to cover costs. 

“We felt sad, thinking of our families, how we weren’t going to make any money,” he said 

Now, the father of three plans to leave Paita for a job picking mangoes. “We have to do something,” he said.