Masinloc, Philippines: On a scorching recent afternoon, fishermen from this sleepy Philippine town hauled blocks of ice onto a rickety, wooden fishing boat bobbing just off the shore. By nightfall, the boat would be on its way to coveted fishing grounds, and to a cat-and-mouse game with the Chinese coast guard.

The nine-metre boat, with bamboo outriggers to keep it stable in the often rough waters of the South China Sea, was bound for a reef known as Scarborough Shoal. Claimed by both the Philippines and China, the area has long been the stuff of legend here - a haven for blue marlin, red grouper, lobster, skipjack, yellowfin tuna and more.

Hard times: Children sit in front of idle fishing boats on the shore of Masinloc, a town in the Philippines that depends on catches from the disputed Scarborough Shoal area. Credit:Jes Aznar/New York Times

"In Scarborough, you don't have to catch the fish," Jerry Escape, the town's fisheries officer, said with a grin. "They just swim up to you and greet you and let you take them out of the water."

Fish tales aside, the beleaguered boatmen here in Masinloc have found themselves caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight that their country appears to be losing, at least for now. For the past two years, the shoal has been controlled by the Chinese coast guard, and the Philippine fishermen who made their livings there find themselves mostly shut out of fisheries they depended on for decades.