Paying close attention now to China’s annual unilateral fishing ban in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) amid the heightened tensions with China would spare us needless panic and outrage later if matters get nasty.

The ban may not have the allure of an Alice Guo mystery, but consider the subsequent uproar if China, in strictly imposing her illegal ban, causes harm to our intrepid fishermen at Panatag Shoal and elsewhere in the WPS.

China’s fishing ban at Panatag Shoal, by the way, was deemed illegal by the arbitral tribunal.

Permanent Court of Arbitration judges ruled that Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese fishermen are all entitled to their historic fishing rights at the shoal.

This year, China’s annual unilateral fishing ban over most of the South China Sea (SCS), including the WPS, started on 1 May and is expected to last until 16 September.

Last Monday, our Foreign Affairs department duly and routinely filed another diplomatic protest on the ban, complaining it violated international law and undermined the country’s sovereignty and maritime rights.

The Philippines and Filipino fishermen have defied China’s fishing ban since it was first unilaterally imposed in 1995.

China maintains the ban applies not only to Chinese fishermen but also to foreign fishermen. And each year of the ban — which initially was a loose three-month ban but was later lengthened to the stricter four-month ban — sparks anger among China’s neighbors since it involves the sensitive political issues of sovereignty and encroachment of traditional fishing rights.

In its latest protest, the DFA rightly said China’s self-imposed fishing ban unduly “raises tensions in the West Philippine Sea and the South China Sea.”

Particularly so since tensions are likely to spike further in light of China’s new draconian law that threatens arrest and detention for anyone it regards as “foreigners trespassing” in its self-proclaimed nine-dash line territory.

By all accounts, China’s objectionable “trespassing” law further fortifies its strategy to effect de facto changes to the legal status of the disputed waters.

China often paints the fishing ban as necessary to conserve fish stocks and resources in the SCS. But China’s good governance posture is hypocritical: it stands accused of unchecked IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing, land reclamation, clam extraction and oil hydrofracking in the SCS.

Anyway, innocuous China’s claim may be, it nevertheless has political ends. The ban “simultaneously carries with it undertones of what is often referred to as China’s gray zone warfare” abetting China’s expansionist agenda, points out a research paper on the issue.

Nonetheless, China’s self-serving and intractable fishing ban is partly explained by the fact that there’s now a wholesale depletion of fish stocks in the coastal waters of most of Asia’s littoral states like Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, and China itself.

In fact, as a research paper on the ban argues, some claim that the SCS disputes are, for all intents and purposes, fisheries disputes.

Fighting over fish isn’t unreasonable since roughly 50 percent of the fish stocks in the SCS have either collapsed or been over-exploited, forcing fishermen of various nationalities to go farther out into the SCS to fish.

Fish is crucial to all concerned. In China’s case, for instance, fishing makes up about three percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and is vital to the food security of her coastal communities.

We face the same predicament. Dwindling domestic fish stocks recently forced the Marcos administration to temporarily allow the importation of fish.

In the face of dwindling fish resources, China is clearly attempting to control her neighbors’ fishery resources by unilaterally imposing rules on fishing in the region — clearly an overreach.

China, however, is backing her overreach by the sustained harassment of fishermen as well as through high-handed diplomacy to force her neighbors to acquiescence. China’s overreach thus reeks of bad faith.

Moreover, the overreach poses serious risks of miscalculations in the high seas which could have potentially disastrous consequences for lives and livelihoods in the region.