Assessment of ecological damage from illegal fishing and judicial practice for damage compensation

Abstract

In the context of China's comprehensive trial of an ecological damage compensation system, the lack of a widely accepted assessment model for assessing ecological damage caused by illegal fishing will inevitably affect the fairness of judicial rulings and the success of ecological restoration. In this study, we examined a typical illegal fishing case with a significant impact in China to illustrate the multi-dimensional damage caused by bottom trawls to the offshore ecosystem during a fishing moratorium as the first step in establishing a unified enforcement standard. Based on existing research, damage is divided into two types: quantifiable and unquantifiable. The former mainly refers to the ecological damage corresponding to illegal catches, while the latter includes habitat damage, mortality after escape, disturbance of spawning behaviour, and potential egg losses related to illegal catches. Quantifiable damage is the main basis for judging ecological environmental damage compensation cases, but it has not been fully utilized due to the lack of guiding documents. For unquantifiable damages, the “judicial discretion” of judges may be an effective measure to deal with this challenge. In addition, a preliminary amount correlation among two damage types was established based on a weight-based expert scoring method. This study provides a reference for China to establish a compensation mechanism for the ecological damage caused by illegal fishing in the future and can be applied to other regions plagued by illegal fishing around the world.