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Fishing for illex squid about 100 miles NW of Stanley aboard Hsiang Fa No. 8, a Taiwanese squid jigger. This 77M long ship was built in 2018 especially for this fishery, with 62 jigging lines per side. This is a highly targeted fishery, with almost no by-catch due to its particular technique. The boat uses high-intensity lights to attract swarms of plankton, which the squid feed upon. The ship has a string of 140 3,000-watt high-intensity bulbs along each side, plus eight sets of lights that are dropped hundreds of meters below the surface at night to attract plankton and illex squid from the deep. The jigging lines are reeled up and down over small ramps of netting which extend out from the boat. They go down about 180M and then back up again with a jigging motion that attracts squid to their barbed fluorescent lures. On a good day they can bring in 56 MT of squid. The squid are sorted by size below deck and then frozen in trays and stowed in cold storage at the bottom of the vessel. The boat has 52 men on board. The squid season here goes from Feb 15 to June 15, and then the boat returns to Taiwan via Cape Town for offloading and repairs.

In the Falkland Island Economic Exclusion Zone, which extends 200NM from land, there are 75 Taiwanese and 29 Korean licensed squid jiggers. Illex squid are seasonal and migratory, and spawn/hatch near the mouth of the Rio Plata in Argentina, which also controls its squid fishery. In international waters, outside the UK and Argentine EEZ, there are some 600 squid jiggers working the squid migration in international waters without any control. This is the largest squid fishery in the world, with so many brightly illuminated boats that it can be seen from space. Squid populations have been rising in recent years as various squid and jellyfish species exploit parts of the marine food web that are being heavily exploited for other kinds of seafood.

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Global Fisheries
Fishing for illex squid about 100 miles NW of Stanley aboard Hsiang Fa No. 8, a Taiwanese squid jigger. This 77M long ship was built in 2018 especially for this fishery, with 62 jigging lines per side. This is a highly targeted fishery, with almost no by-catch due to its particular technique. The boat uses high-intensity lights to attract swarms of plankton, which the squid feed upon. The ship has a string of 140 3,000-watt high-intensity bulbs along each side, plus eight sets of lights that are dropped hundreds of meters below the surface at night to attract plankton and illex squid from the deep. The jigging lines are reeled up and down over small ramps of netting which extend out from the boat. They go down about 180M and then back up again with a jigging motion that attracts squid to their barbed fluorescent lures. On a good day they can bring in 56 MT of squid. The squid are sorted by size below deck and then frozen in trays and stowed in cold storage at the bottom of the vessel. The boat has 52 men on board. The squid season here goes from Feb 15 to June 15, and then the boat returns to Taiwan via Cape Town for offloading and repairs.<br /> <br /> In the Falkland Island Economic Exclusion Zone, which extends 200NM from land, there are 75 Taiwanese and 29 Korean licensed squid jiggers. Illex squid are seasonal and migratory, and spawn/hatch near the mouth of the Rio Plata in Argentina, which also controls its squid fishery. In international waters, outside the UK and Argentine EEZ, there are some 600 squid jiggers working the squid migration in international waters without any control. This is the largest squid fishery in the world, with so many brightly illuminated boats that it can be seen from space. Squid populations have been rising in recent years as various squid and jellyfish species exploit parts of the marine food web that are being heavily exploited for other kinds of seafood.

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