THE PACIFIC – A political tsunami is building in the South Pacific over the growing presence of Chinese fishing boats, Fairfax’s Pacific correspondent Michael Field has reported.

More than 1300 heavily subsidised Chinese boats are now licensed in the region with plans for a further 300 this year, he writes.

Fishing with long-lines, many are targeting albacore tuna with distant nations set to take over the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of the Cook Islands and Samoa.

“I call it marine genocide, something needs to be done about it soon,” Samoa fish exporter and expatriate New Zealander John Luff said.

Alarm over the expanded Chinese fleet was part of the logic for New Zealand appointing former Labour MP Shane Jones as an ambassador to the region, but Pacific countries appear to be indifferent to Wellington’s warnings.

In Rarotonga politicians are actively working to exclude New Zealand fishing operations, preferring the Chinese, Field says.

Sources were shocked even though a year ago diplomatic dispatches were pointing to China’s openly declared plan to increase its deep-water fishing fleet to more than 2300 boats.

Luff said they have been told two long-liners were about to arrive in Samoa’s 129,000 square-kilometre EEZ, the Pacific’s smallest. They’ve also been told they will be allowed to operate inside the smaller territorial waters.

“It is outrageous for this approval to get done,” he said. “They won’t tell us what flag it is – we are assuming it is China.”

Another 20 boats have also been licensed by regional authorities and Samoa, but Luff said officials told him they would only let one or two in at a time.

“The whole South Pacific fishery is in trouble and yet these guys are inviting them in,” he said.

Luff said that with such a small EEZ, no matter where the newcomers fished, they would wipe out the domestic fishery.

“The South Pacific stock is getting hammered and if nothing is done soon, it will be beyond recovery,” he said.

Pacific nations were facing powerful nations and were “reluctant to upset them for fear of losing their candy”.

One of the big problems with the Chinese boats is that they are heavily subsidised by Beijing, meaning they can take fish long after it has become uneconomic for other boats.

A large tuna fishery exists in the northern Cooks’ EEZ but Rarotonga politicians have given licenses to a large number of Chinese boats, and last week approved South Korean purse-seine, or net fishing, boats, to take tuna, Field reports.

New Zealand’s Labour Party fisheries spokesman Reno Tirikatene said giving away Pacific fisheries resources to unproven Chinese companies was bizarre.

“Kiwis are chasing toothfish pirates in Antarctic whilst the Cooks are hopping on the Oriental Express of seafood fraud,” he said. “More galling is the fact Kiwi taxpayers, pay for it.”

Part of that taxpayer money is in the form of a New Zealand Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into the granting of tuna licenses being carried out on behalf of Cook Island Police. Neither party would comment.

Charges of corruption among politicians and civil servants are under the spotlight and in a formal submission made by interests groups and non-government organisations to the Marine Stewardship Council, concern was expressed at what China was doing and questions asked over the SFO’s “ongoing investigation into corruption allegations”.