Small Fry: Peru’s Fishermen Battle China’s Overseas Fleet

A Chinese-flagged ship fishes for squid at night on the high seas off the west coast of South America, on July 2021. Isaac Haslam/Sea Shepherd via AP

PUCUSANA, PERU—Aboard the Ocean Warrior in the eastern Pacific Ocean, José López proudly remembers his first catch: he was 13, and a local skipper, pitying his ragamuffin look, hired him as an extra hand. When he returned home, his pockets stuffed with a day’s wages, his mother protested.

“She thought I had stolen the money,” López recalls between boisterous greetings to younger comrades who know him simply as “Pépe.” “I had to take her to the fisherman so she would believe me.”