Saving Seafood

Opinion

LAURA DEATON: One key to moving the Biden agenda: Bring all three sectors to the table

January 20, 2021 — The incoming Biden administration unquestionably will bring new focus to sustainable development goals at home and abroad. Joe Biden has produced plans in an array of key areas — environmental protection, clean energy and racial equity among them — and has promised action in his first 100 days as president. His administration will be playing catch-up in all these key areas, and the best way to make rapid progress is one that doesn’t get talked about enough: building three-sector collaboration into every major initiative.

Government partnerships are nothing new, but they’re usually binary: Government agencies work with nonprofits or with businesses or gather feedback separately from each. Collaborations across all three sectors are less typical, but they generate more deeply informed, comprehensive solutions and yield wider support.

The clearest way to illustrate the value of cross-sector collaboration is to contrast what happens when one sector isn’t at the table with what’s possible when all sectors are present. The following examples of initiatives related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals show the consequences of leaving out or engaging key stakeholders — and point to how the Biden administration can do better.

Environmental NGOs have been lobbying for the 30×30 initiative to conserve 30 percent of the world’s ocean habitat by 2030, and the Biden administration is embracing that goal.

Sounds great, right? The problem is, the legislation on deck was created without meaningful input from the small-scale fishermen who have helped make U.S. fisheries the most sustainable in the world. This proposal would ban commercial fishing in at least 30 percent of U.S. marine areas, overturning the successful fisheries management system, harming coastal communities and cutting off consumer access to sustainable local seafood. The end result could be to increase long-distance imports from far less sustainable sources.

Contrast that with an example of what can happen when all three sectors work together: The nonprofit program Catch Together partners with fishing communities to create and launch community-owned permit banks, which purchase fishing quota (rights to a certain percentage of the catch in a fishery) and then lease that quota to local fishing businesses at affordable rates.

Read the full opinion piece at GreenBiz

KRISTEN MINOGUE: Shark tags reveal an endangered species returning to natural refuge

December 28, 2020 — In the coastal waters of the mid-Atlantic, an endangered shark is making a comeback. Led by former Smithsonian postdoc Chuck Bangley, scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) tagged and tracked nearly two dozen dusky sharks over the course of a year as part of the Smithsonian’s Movement of Life Initiative. They discovered that a protected zone put in place 15 years ago is paying off — but with climate change, it may need some tweaking.

Dusky sharks are what Bangley calls “the archetypal big, gray shark.” Born 3 feet long, as babies, they’re already big enough to prey on some other shark species. But they’re slow-growing. It can take 16 to 29 years for them to mature. If their populations take a hit, recovery can take decades.

An endangered species, duskies aren’t very common in Delaware waters. When they do surface, they’re easily mistaken for sandbar sharks. But in this new study, the Smithsonian tracked dusky sharks swimming past the southern tip of Delaware on their migrations up and down the Atlantic. For conservationists, it’s a sign that protections put in place are slowly starting to pay off.

The sharks’ numbers plummeted in the 1980s and 1990s, when well-intentioned managers offered sharks as an “alternative fishery,” while other stocks, like cod, were collapsing. The overfishing that followed wiped out anywhere from 65% to 90% of the Chesapeake’s duskies, said Bangley, now a postdoc at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Managers banned all intentional dusky shark fishing in 2000. Five years later, they created the Mid-Atlantic Shark Closed Area along the North Carolina coast. The zone prohibits bottom longline fishing, which can ensnare dusky sharks, for seven months of the year.

Read the full story at Delaware State News

CATHERINE CASSIDY: Is Alaska open for business? Not from where I stand.

December 18, 2020 — A freak storm descended on Cook Inlet this month. The fallout threatens my family business and hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital investment. Over a thousand other similar businesses around Cook Inlet face the same peril. The disaster? Earlier this month, Gov. Mike Dunleavy made the bizarre decision to effectively shut down the commercial salmon fishing industry here.

At the very end of a four-year process intended to bring the Cook Inlet salmon fishery into compliance with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the state announced that it would refuse to cooperate with the program and basically forced the closure of federal waters in Cook Inlet to commercial fishing.

Before you conclude that this action was some kind of noble defiance to federal overreach, you should know that the state of Alaska already has multiple collaborative agreements with the federal government on managing numerous other fisheries in Alaska, including crab, cod, rockfish and salmon.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

CHRIS MCCARTHY: Is Vineyard Wind Dead or Just Playing Dead?

December 17, 2020 — The New Bedford fishing industry is celebrating the announcement that Vineyard Wind has withdrawn from the federal permitting process and the process has ended.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a part of the Department of the Interior, issued a statement on Tuesday, December 15, that finalizes the end of the permitting process to build an 800-megawatt wind energy turbine off of the coast of Massachusetts.

Because Vineyard Wind withdrew from the process on December 1, 2020, the permitting process “is no longer necessary and the process is hereby terminated.”

Termination of the process “is effective immediately” and that exact verbiage is used in the letter to the government by Vineyard Wind and by the government in its announcement.

Read the full story at WBSM

PETTER JOHANNESSEN: The blue whiting and herring fisheries didn’t have to lose their MSC certification. Here’s what should happen next.

December 15, 2020 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) announced in early December that it would suspend its certification of Atlanto-Scandic herring and blue whiting fisheries as of Dec. 30, affecting eight certificates across European fisheries. This follows the suspension of the MSC certificate on mackerel fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic in 2019.

This had been expected for quite some time and the action taken by all involved stakeholders, starting with the MSC certificate holders (i.e. the fishing industry), including other industry representatives, during the last years, was sadly not enough.

What does it mean, really?

Let us be clear: the MSC suspension does not reflect an issue related to illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing at an individual fishery level. No one has overfished their allocated quota.

Read the full opinion piece at IntraFish

FRANCISCO ALDON: A decade on, and the marine ingredients industry standard continues to evolve

December 15, 2020 — Francisco Aldon is the CEO of MarinTrust, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Now over 10 years old, the MarinTrust standard (formerly IFFO RS) is no longer the new kid on the block. Entering Version 3.0, the standard continues to improve to reflect both the growing demands of the industry and customers, ensuring integrity and traceability of marine ingredients from start (fisheries) to finish (feed plants, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and pet food sectors).  Having joined the standard at its birth, I know it has changed a lot and owes a great deal to all the stakeholders who have contributed to shaping it. The story goes on and the standard will continue to be a reflection of how the society is evolving.

The 2000s was a period of great excitement: free trade was becoming a tangible reality throughout the world. Globalization was on everyone’s lips and aquaculture was booming. There was a growing feeling that some guidance was needed, as people’s welfare and the future of natural resources were at stake. The FAO’s Code of Conduct for responsible fisheries, published in 1995, sent a decisive signal. MarinTrust was born from a need to reassure the aquaculture value chain about the origin and integrity of raw materials going into the production of fishmeal and fish oil. The industry’s trade body, IFFO, the Marine Ingredients Organisation, took the lead in facilitating an industry and NGO Technical Committee with the aim to develop an independent third-party standard. The first plant got its certification in February 2010, and by the end of the year, around 30 plants were certified. At that time, the certification covered the assessment of the fisheries management, the supply and processing of only whole fish and the recognition of third-party certification programs such as GMP+, FEMAS, and IFIS. We moved further up the value chain with the launch of the Chain of Custody (CoC) Standard in 2011, enabling the full traceability of certified marine ingredients from source to end user. This same year, we included by-products (heads, guts, and frames) as a new raw material source to produce certified marine ingredients, encouraging the responsible sourcing and utilization of this valuable ingredient, which otherwise would end up as waste.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SETH DANIELSON: The importance of University of Alaska-based monitoring of our oceans

December 15, 2020 — Data is the lifeblood of science. It provides scientists with a way to prove, refine, or disprove our ideas about how the world works. Data from the University of Alaska Fairbanks is providing valuable information for oil spill response, public safety and economic development efforts in the 49th state.

UAF passed a remarkable milestone this month, when scientists from the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences completed a half-century of regular observations at a Gulf of Alaska oceanographic station. Station GAK-1 is located near Seward at the mouth of Resurrection Bay, and it has the longest set of sustained measurements of surface-to-seafloor temperature and salinity in all of Alaska’s coastal and offshore waters.

What does this mean for our state? GAK-1 is providing data to drive good decision-making and help us evaluate risks to Alaska’s marine ecosystem and economy as the ocean becomes warmer and more acidic due to climate change. This monitoring contributes to our understanding of melting glacier runoff in the ocean, variations in Alaska’s commercial fisheries, and the population status of marine mammals.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

MJ JACKSON: Bristol Bay: ‘Now is the time to prioritize protection’

December 14, 2020 — As a 32-year Bristol Bay fisherman and vice president of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA), I appreciated The Seattle Times editorial “Salmon-rich Bristol Bay deserves permanent protection” [Dec. 2, Opinion].

Thousands of fishermen like myself have struggled alongside Bristol Bay tribes, Alaskans and beyond for more than a decade fighting Pebble Mine. The recent denial of Pebble’s permit was a huge victory, yet Bristol Bay remains vulnerable until permanent protections are in place. Now is the time to prioritize protection of Bristol Bay’s renewable economic engine and Indigenous culture.

Read the full opinion piece at The Seattle Times

GIB CHASE: Right whale, wrong decisions

December 4, 2020 — There is no second chance with extinction. So why is it taking the National Marine Fisheries Service so long to implement protective measures for the endangered North Atlantic right whale?

The species was considered endangered in 1970, three years before the Endangered Species Act was legislated. For the past 50 years it has been a constant struggle to fulfill the obligations of this law and provide adequate protection for its recovery. Four years ago, NOAA declared the drastic increase in right whale deaths an “unusual mortality event” and supposedly a concentrated effort was to be made to reverse the trend and save the species. We’re still waiting. The act is clear on what needs to be done, but decisions being made do not uphold the law.

Instead of carrying out its congressional legislative mandate, the Fisheries Service has repeatedly authorized actions harmful to continued existence of the whale. As a result, we have witnessed lawsuits and legal complaints against the agency for not doing the job entrusted to it. Among the claims made are: making false and misleading statements, omitting scientific research findings and recommendations from its own staff, falsely implying a consensus of scientists that reopening of a restricted fishing area wouldn’t adversely affect the species, refusing to close certain areas to reduce entanglements, controlling information being released to the public and, most importantly, granting priority to the lobster fishery responsible for the majority of whale deaths. Downplaying effects of fishery activities on the species, inadequately addressing ship strikes and failure to notify ships to reduce their speed are other accusations. These actions violate the legal requirements of the Endangered Species Act and reflect poorly on the agency, its mission, integrity and employees.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

SEATTLE TIMES: Salmon-rich Bristol Bay deserves permanent protection

December 2, 2020 — After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision last week to reject a key permit for Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine, it’s clear that federal protection is now needed to permanently preserve this uniquely valuable resource. The project threatened too much destruction to the immense salmon runs of Bristol Bay.

The list of reasons to protect the bay’s watershed is long. Its annual chinook and sockeye salmon runs are the largest on Earth. All five species of Pacific salmon live in Bristol Bay, and its watershed produces about half the world’s annual sockeye harvest. The commercial and recreational fisheries support large portions of the region’s economy, and Bristol Bay’s salmon have sustained Alaska natives for many generations. Thousands of Washingtonians fish those salmon each year, for work and recreation.

The bay’s diverse salmon runs feed other populations, too — from orcas to the thousands of brown bears on the Alaska peninsula. The mine was predicted to disrupt this food chain mightily in the name of extracting rich veins of copper and gold, and potentially molybdenum and rhenium.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times