<p>Dock workers use cranes to off-load frozen tuna from a Chinese-owned cargo vessel at the General Santos Fish Port, in the Philippines. Tuna stocks in the South China Sea have plummeted in recent years because of overfishing.</p>
Dock workers use cranes to off-load frozen tuna from a Chinese-owned cargo vessel at the General Santos Fish Port, in the Philippines. Tuna stocks in the South China Sea have plummeted in recent years because of overfishing.
One of the World's Biggest Fisheries Is on the Verge of Collapse
Major disputes in the South China Sea are putting critical habitat—and the food supply of millions—at risk.
ByRachael Bale
Published August 29, 2016
• 14 min read
A version of this story appears in the March 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine.
PUERTO PRINCESA, PhilippinesOne time Christopher Tubo caught a 660-pound blue marlin in the South China Sea. That was years ago, when the fishing there was good, he says. He would come home from a trip with dozens of valuable fish like tuna and a haul of other species.
“Here there’s none of that,” he says, looking toward the Sulu Sea, the Philippine sea where he’s been fishing for the past four years. His two boats, traditional Filipino outriggers called bancas, float in the shallow water nearby, new coats of white paint on the decks, drying in the sun.
Tubo sits on a wooden bench in front of his home, which is perched on stilts above the bay. One of his four kids wraps an
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