Monthly Archives: February 2022

Out on the lawless high seas off South America’s Pacific coast, a quiet war over the overfishing of endangered squid stocks is being waged – and China is winning. Environmentalists have long warned that the naturally bountiful Humboldt squid – named for a nutrient-rich current of Antarctic waters – could be vulnerable to unsustainable plunder. Similar stocks have already vanished from Argentine, Mexican and Japanese waters. But a “major” recent increase in Chinese-flagged vessels in the South Pacific has raised the stakes. There were 707 such fishing boats detected in 2020, according to the latest public data from…Read more …

LIMA, Peru—As the thick black slick of crude oil first swept up Peru’s coast, decimating wildlife, poisoning marine reserves, and destroying livelihoods, it seemed Repsol’s reputation in the country had hit rock bottom. Yet the Spanish energy company’s response to the spill—Peru’s worst environmental disaster in recent memory—has been more egregious than the original accident itself. In the early hours of Jan. 15, thousands of barrels of oil gushed unnoticed from a leak at a loading buoy moored off Repsol’s La Pampilla refinery in Lima, Peru’s capital. As a tanker carrying crude from Brazil unloaded at the…Read more …