Entering ChinaIn the Pacific fishing grounds in the middle of the night, dozens of distant-water fishing boats are lit up with blinding blue and white lights, like floating stars. These pillars of light penetrate the surface of the sea, attracting tens of thousands of squid to gather frantically.
In just a few hours, more than 200 tonnes of squid can be caught in a 100-metre-diameter purse seine net – the bloodiest “light hunt” in the world’s distant-water fisheries. In the past 30 years, humans have fished nearly 1 million tons of squid from the ocean every year, creating a “soft gold” industry with an output value of more than 100 billion yuan.
But when we tear apart the industrial chain behind squid rice balls and teppanyaki, we see not only an attractive food economy, but also an approaching ecological crisis.
Until the 1980s, squid was awkwardly marginalized on the global fishing landscape. In the fishing grounds of Hokkaido, fishermen will chop up squid by mistake as feed. On the shores of the Mediterranean, tons of squid are dumped into the sea without being asked.
According to the Japan Fisheries Agency, the global annual catch of squid at that time was less than 500,000 tonnes, accounting for only 1.2% of the total marine catch. At that time, the fishing giants were more obsessed with tuna, cod and other “noble fish species” – a bluefin tuna sold for a whopping $3 million on the black market, while the same weight of squid was worth only $500.
This value gap stems from the bias of the consumer market: European and American countries regard squid as “low-end seafood”, and East Asia only uses it as an ingredient for pickled side dishes.
The entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1992 was like a nuclear bomb dropped into the deep sea, completely reconstructing the distribution pattern of marine resources. With the establishment of the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of various countries, traditional fishing grounds such as the North Sea and Newfoundland have been cut into “private national property”, and 70% of the world’s fishery resources have been instantly enclosed in the restricted area of territorial waters.
Japan’s distant-water trawler fleet was forced out of Alaskan cod fisheries, and Spanish tuna purse seiners were repeatedly evicted off the west coast of Africa. It is under this pressure that humanity has turned its attention to the depths of the open ocean, where more than 30 million tonnes of cephalopods swim, 80% of which are squid that have not yet been exploited on a large scale.
The biology of squid makes them a perfect target for industrial fishing.
This mollusk, which has three hearts (two gill centers for oxygen supply and one body heart for circulation) and nine brain ganglia (the head brain controls complex behaviors, and each of the eight tentacles has its own ganglia), shows an amazing survival strategy: the life cycle is only 1-2 years, the female will lay 70,000 eggs into the gelatinous egg sheath before death, and the larvae will mature sexually in only 6 months after hatching.
At the confluence of the Peruvian cold current and the equatorial warm current, the population density of Argentine slippery fish can reach 30 tons per square kilometer; The Sea of Japan squid in the northwest Pacific Ocean has an annual migration route of more than 5,000 kilometers. This high fertility and clustering make them ideal targets for pelagic fisheries.
The ocean-going fleets of China, South Korea, Spain and other countries were the first to smell business opportunities, setting off a silent technological revolution. In 1995, China’s Zhoushan Fishery experimented with the “fish collection lamp + purse seine net” operation mode, hanging 20 2000-watt metal halide lamps on the side of the ship, using the phototaxis characteristics of squid to induce its aggregation.
When the density of squid reaches 50 per cubic metre, the 1.5-kilometre-long deep-water purse seine nets are closed like pythons, and the catch exceeds 80 tonnes per net.
The technology was soon upgraded to a “light cover net” system: the South Korean fleet developed LED fish collection lights with adjustable spectrum to increase the trapping efficiency by 3 times by simulating the wavelength of moonlight; Spanish engineers invented an automatic fish suction pump that works with sonar positioning to achieve 24-hour continuous operation. By 2005, the annual catch of a modern squid fishing vessel had jumped from 3,000 tonnes to 15,000 tonnes, equivalent to five times the capacity of a conventional trawler fleet.
This technological frenzy has completely reshaped the global squid trade landscape. In Peru’s Chimbaut port, the export price of dried squid has skyrocketed from US$800/mt in 1995 to US$4,500/mt in 2023, giving rise to a “squid dollar” economy – 12% of the country’s foreign exchange reserves come from the squid industry chain.
The Port of Busan, South Korea, has extended the shelf life of frozen squid to 18 months with -60°C ultra-low temperature freezing technology, and its trading volume accounts for 70% of the world’s share, with 300 containers shipped to 120 countries every day.
China’s Zhoushan archipelago has risen to become the “squid capital of the world”, with 500 processing plants turning squid into 2,000 products: from high-protein squid meal for astronauts, to collagen masks that sell well in beauty salons, and even biodiesel burned on ocean-going fishing boats.
The collapse of the ecological chain
The ostensibly thriving squid industry is actually built on a fragile ecological balance. Squid play a key role as an “intermediate consumer” in the marine food chain: they are both the main food of apex predators such as tuna and sailfish, and control the population of plankton such as krill and copepods.
According to a study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a 10% decline in squid populations in the North Atlantic leads to a 3.2% reduction in the survival rate of dolphin cubs in the area.
Overfishing is triggering a domino effect. In Peruvian fisheries, theaverage size of squid shrank from 45 cm to 32 cm between 2016 and 2023, and the age of sexual maturity was advanced by three months – a typical sign of population collapse.
Even more dangerous are the ecological costs of modern fishing techniques: each purse seine vessel consumes enough diesel fuel per night to power 2,000 households, while abandoned fish collection devices kill 300,000 sea turtles and albatross every year.
When we buy frozen squid rings in the supermarket, each package on the shelves represents 0.5 square meters of the ocean’s “web of death”.
The current state of the Antarctic waters is a wake-up call. According to a 2022 report by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), Antarctic squid catches have exceeded the sustainable limit by 15% for five consecutive years, resulting in a 40% drop in penguin populations in the area.
Models from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences predict that the world’s major squid fisheries will face a systemic collapse by 2040 if current fishing intensities are maintained.
In the face of the crisis, China’s distant-water fishing industry is undergoing a difficult transformation. In 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs implemented the “Total Squid Fishing Vessel Control System”, which will freeze the number of operating fishing vessels at 2,700. China Water Group and other companies have piloted “electronic fencing” technology, which automatically locks fishing equipment when fishing vessels enter ecologically sensitive areas.
The international community is also exploring new paths. The High Seas Biodiversity Agreement, which entered into force in March 2023, includes squid in the global network of marine protected areas for the first time. The European Union’s “eco-label” certification has resulted in a 30% premium on sustainably caught squid.
The most innovative solution came from the foodtech sector: the American start-up Caliwave synthesized artificial squid from seaweed protein not only reproduces the real taste, but also reduces the energy consumption of production by 70%.
When we stand in front of the supermarket seafood cabinet, every choice is writing the future of the ocean. Perhaps one day, children will only be able to see schools of squid swimming in the sky in the documentary. But at this moment, we still have time to make a change – reduce squid consumption by 25%, support traceable eco-certified products, and protect this blue with everyday choices. After all, the ocean is never an inexhaustible treasure trove, but a cradle of life that needs to be guarded for generations.
