Lack of co-operation between Buenos Aires and Falklands leaves trawlers free to pillage the South Atlantic.
It was a rare victory in the squid wars: Argentina's coast guard cutter Thompson fired warning shots at two Chinese trawlers, blocking their escape into international waters. Ten tonnes of squid were found in the holds of the Lu Rong Yu 6177 and 6178 after they were hauled into port on Christmas Day.
But this was just the first such capture in two years, a minor disturbance to the hundreds of unlicensed, unregulated fishing vessels that exploit the South Atlantic, pulling out an estimated 300,000 tonnes of ilex squid a year.
The species, which roams across the maritime boundary between Argentina and the Falkland Islands, is key to a food chain that sustains penguins, seals, birds and whales. Managed well, it could sustain a vigorous fishing industry and steady revenues for both Governments.
But the two sides aren't even talking.
Argentina pulled out of a fisheries management organisation it had shared with Falklands in 2005. The lack of co-operation has left both sides ill-equipped to deal with the fleet scooping up squid just beyond their maritime boundaries, and sometimes within.
"It's like the Wild West out there," said Milko Schvartzman, who campaigns against overfishing for Greenpeace International. "There are more than 200 boats out there all the time," and many routinely follow squid into Argentina's economic exclusion zone, he added. "Unfortunately the Argentine Government doesn't have the naval capacity to continually control this area."
The Falklands are defended by British warships, planes and submarines, giving the fisheries agency considerable muscle to enforce licences in its waters. But Argentina's navy has never recovered from its 1982 war against Britain for the islands, and its coast guard has just eight ships to cover more than 2.8 million square kilometers of ocean, said its chief of maritime traffic.
The problem is so big that it can be seen from space: Images of the Earth at night, taken by a Nasa satellite last year, show darkness at sea the world over, except for this spot in the South Atlantic. There, 300km from the nearest coasts, the lights of this renegade fleet shine as brilliantly as a city.
Overfishing is a global scourge: The United Nations estimates that more than 70 per cent of the world's fish species are threatened.
The countries that share the North Atlantic co-operate, with scientists, regulators, fishermen and armed forces working together to monitor fish populations and enforce limits on what can be caught each season.
Not so in the South Atlantic, where Argentina ended 15 years of joint fisheries management in 2005 because it didn't want any Government relationship suggesting a recognition of the islanders' claim to the British-held islands.
"We consider this to be Argentine territory under a situation of colonial occupation, and because of that we discount any of their claims towards sovereign jurisdiction," explained Juan Recce, who founded the Argentine Centre for International Studies in Buenos Aires.
And so each Government goes its own way, licensing boats and trying to enforce its stretch of the sea, while refusing to co-operate against the much larger fleet that's just beyond their individual reach.
"It is one of the most pressing questions facing us on the Falkland Islands," Governor Nigel Haywood said. "We've seen the collapse of whiting stocks, we've seen the collapse of hake stocks ... that bridge Argentine waters and Falkland islands waters. We see that the Ilex squid stocks are similarly threatened."
Inside the fisheries office in the islands' capital of Port Stanley, a computer monitor shows the location of each boat licensed to fish in Falklands waters. Similar GPS devices installed in Argentina's licensed fleet show their locations in an office in Buenos Aires. But the lack of co-operation has left both nations relatively blind and powerless to control the outlaw fleet.
Each Government has licensed about 100 boats a year to go after ilex squid, which spawn off the coast of Uruguay each year.
Squid licences have provided about half the Falklands Government's revenues over the years, ever since it showed it meant business by chasing an unlicensed Vietnamese shrimper all the way to South African waters, and firing into its hull along the way.
In Argentina, however, most fishermen can't compete against the outlaws, said Guillermo de los Santos, the chamber president of Argentina's squid fishing fleet. More than 20 fishing businesses based in the port city of Mar del Plata alone have had to declare bankruptcy since 2005, when the unregulated international fleet, much of it from China, swelled.
"China has the world's largest fleet, and Argentina hardly has a single boat in its own waters," Schvartzman said.
Squid wars
• 70 per cent
Of the world's fish species are threatened, according to the United Nations
• 300,000
Tonnes of ilex squid estimated to be taken each year by hundreds of unlicensed, unregulated fishing vessels that exploit the South Atlantic
- AP