Saving Seafood

Opinion

Robert Vanasse: Former AccuWeather CEO has managerial skills NOAA needs

April 25, 2019 — The USA Today editorial board asked Saving Seafood Executive Director Robert Vanasse to participate in an editorial debate on the nomination of Barry Myers as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The following is an excerpt from that op-ed:

Our members view Barry Myers’ experience at a family-based business as an asset. Many American seafood companies are multigenerational, family businesses, and his understanding of them is unique.

Myers has managerial skills that NOAA needs. NOAA already has top-notch scientists on staff, but it has been plagued by mismanagement.

It was managerial failure, not scientific lapses, that: created a law enforcement program found to have “overstepped the bounds of propriety and fairness,” resulting in a 2011 Cabinet-level apology to fishermen and a return of $649,527 in fines; allowed the destruction of more than 100 files while abuses were under investigation; and built research vessels too large to survey near-shore fish populations.

NOAA needs a strong manager. Barry Myers can do the job.

Read the op-ed at USA Today

MARK EUSTIS: Maryland overfishing imperils rockfish population

April 25, 2019 — On Tuesday, Virginia did what Maryland should: close its 2019 spring recreational striped bass trophy season.

“The recent stock assessment shows that early action is needed to slow the decline and restore this fishery to sustainable levels,” Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner Steven G. Bowman said in a statement.

Yet Maryland, one of the worst offenders when it comes to overfishing Atlantic striped bass — what we like to call “rockfish” — has chosen to go forward with a trophy season this year despite mounting evidence of the dangers.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just released a peer-reviewed report that finds striped bass are overfished and that manmade overfishing — taking too many fish too fast — is accelerating the decline. (When a fish population is overfished, there are fewer fish in the water than that population needs to replace itself.)

Read the full opinion piece at The Baltimore Sun

JONATHAN WOOD: Here’s why Congress, not the president, should lead on environmental protection

March 26, 2019 — Last month, Congress approved a massive, bipartisan federal lands bill, designating five new national monuments, 1.3 million acres of wilderness, 620 rivers as wild and scenic, and permanently reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This legislative undertaking “touches every state, features the input of a wide coalition of our colleagues, and has earned the support of a broad, diverse coalition of many advocates for public lands, economic development, and conservation,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). That consensus is impressive in these partisan times, and it suggests these protections will endure.

It is unimaginable that these designations by Congress will be as controversial in two decades as, say, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument remains today, 20 years after President Clinton unilaterally proclaimed the monument under the Antiquities Act. The long-simmering political dispute over Clinton’s actions ultimately led to President Trump substantially reducing the size of the monument last year. That, too, is the source of significant conflict.

These two cases reflect conflicting visions of how environmental decisions should be made. When Congress decides, the outcome likely will reflect consensus and compromise. Everyone may not get exactly what they want, but no one completely loses, either. The compromise also is more likely to reflect careful deliberation (the recent public lands bill was in the works for four years) and open debate.

When the executive alone decides, however, the result is more likely to be a one-sided outcome, made with limited public process and without considering opposing views. That’s what happened with the Grand Staircase, which was denounced by former Rep. Bill Orton (D-Utah) as “going around Congress and involving absolutely no one from the state of Utah in the process. There was a major screw-up in the way it was done and how it was drafted.” Utah’s governor and congressional delegation opposed the monument, which is entirely contained within the state. When Clinton announced his decision, Utah officials were excluded in favor of celebrities and environmental activists, including Robert Redford.

Read the full story at The Hill

SEN. DAN SULLIVAN: Northern Lights: A global seafood superpower

March 26, 2019 — The seafood industry is the lifeblood of many of Alaska’s communities. The industry is the third largest economic driver in Alaska and the top employer. Alaska accounts for more than 50 percent of total U.S. commercial fishery harvest in volume and contributes more than 78,000 jobs to the Alaska economy. We are also the top exporter in the country of fish and seafood products.

Enhancing Alaska’s seafood powerhouse is one of the primary reasons I have fought to sit on the Senate Commerce Committee — which has fishing under its jurisdiction. As a member of that committee, I have worked relentlessly to continue the important work of my predecessor, Sen. Ted Stevens, who co-authored the Magnuson-Stevens Act. But there is a whole host of fisheries issues that also come before me, including ensuring that our fisheries remain healthy and vital, fighting burdensome regulations that would needlessly restrict access to our fishing resources, and, importantly, expanding the markets for our fisheries.

In my time as a senator, I’ve been working diligently on all of these priorities, and we’ve had some important successes. For instance, the Save Our Seas Act, a bill that I coauthored with Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to help keep plastics out of our seas, was signed into law by the president in October. I recently negotiated a provision, known as the Vessel Incident Discharge Act, to provide Alaska fishing vessel owners and operators relief from a patchwork of overly burdensome and confusing federal and state regulations for vessel ballast water and incidental discharges.
We’ve also had important successes in Congress to expand markets for Alaska fisheries.

When I arrived in the Senate, I was surprised to learn that while the national school lunch program requires school districts to buy American-made food, fish had been largely excluded from those requirements in practice. It was a major loophole that allowed, for example, Russian-caught pollock, processed in China and injected with phosphates, to be sent back to the United States for purchase in the National School Lunch Program. And it qualified for a Product of USA label because it’s battered and breaded here.

Not only was this bad for Alaska’s fishing industry, the chemical-laden, twice-frozen fish that was served to students just didn’t taste good. It literally turned a generation of kids in America off of seafood.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

Taking the sea out of seafood

March 15, 2019 — Land-based aquaculture can sound like a mirage — shrimp farms in the desert, salmon swimming “upstream” in an alpine village tank, tilapia swishing over the plains. And for a long time, ample production of sea delicacies in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) has been more dream than reality. Yet the technology and its innovators steadily have gained momentum and finally may be hitting their tipping point.

The allure of fish grown on land is easy to understand: Like all aquaculture, it reduces demand for wild fish, but unlike with sea-based pens, closed-loop RAS farms (PDF) run no risk of fish escaping to dilute the native gene pool, spread diseases or discharge waste and antibiotics into the wild. RAS farmers have near-full control over growing conditions, so they can optimize for growth and quality. And with its amenability to unlikely locations, RAS can sit near major consumer markets, providing fresh local seafood even when the shore is hundreds of miles away.

So why aren’t we eating it already? RAS entrepreneurs face three big challenges: energy; contamination risks; and money. Mimicking a natural system within strictly regulated parameters is an energy-intensive endeavor, and sustainability (not to mention costs) demands locating RAS facilities next to cheap, abundant energy sources. A pathogen let loose in a closed system can be a disaster, so RAS farmers have to be extra scrupulous about avoiding contamination.

Money may be the biggest hurdle: RAS operations need high volumes and relatively long ramp-ups to reach profitability, and the pile of patient capital needed to build and grow large, high-tech facilities can be as elusive as Moby Dick.

Read the full op-ed at GreenBiz

Don’t let wind industry disrupt fishing industry

March 14, 2019 — As owner of Empire Fisheries, one of Connecticut’s largest commercial fishing companies, I testified recently at a hearing before the General Assembly’s Energy and Technology Committee on two bills (SB 875 and HB 7156) in support of the state’s plan to procure clean energy from offshore wind turbines in federal waters.

While in support of the bills, I cautioned, as many other fishermen have, that any authorization from the state for procuring wind energy must first guarantee protections that keep fishermen, fish and the ecosystems they rely on, safe. At a minimum, the legislation should require that before any procurement authorization, Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection commissioner consider the latest science at the time of a proposal, to avoid or mitigate impacts to wildlife, natural resources, ecosystems and traditional or existing water-dependent uses, like commercial fishing. The DEEP should start collecting information about the needs of fishing fleets and develop criteria for the wind energy developers to ensure that this traditional water-dependent use is not compromised.

We need to first find the balance that protects our fisheries and fishermen to ensure that one renewable resource, wind energy, does not displace another, fishing.

Read the full story at The Day

How to keep conservation policies from backfiring in a globally connected world

March 13, 2019 — For many years environmentalists have urged the public to “think globally, act locally” — consider the health of the planet, then take action in your own community.

But this approach can have unintended consequences. In a recent study, I worked with colleagues from academia, government and the nonprofit world to gather examples of fishery, forestry, agriculture and biofuel policies that appeared successful locally, but on closer inspection actually created environmental problems elsewhere, or in some cases made them worse.

For example, in my field of fisheries ecology and management, one strategy for managing the problem of bycatch — when fishermen accidentally catch non-target species, such as sharks, sea turtles, and dolphins — is to reduce local catch limits. But when the United States curtailed Pacific swordfish catch between April 2001 and March 2004 to protect sea turtles, U.S. wholesalers imported more swordfish from other countries’ fleets operating in the Western and Central Pacific.

Read the full story at GreenBiz

Maine can have both environmental stewardship and aquaculture innovation

March 11, 2019 — There is a 90 percent deficit in fresh seafood trade in the U.S. A large amount of the fresh salmon consumed in the U.S. is flown in from Europe, Chile, and New Zealand, leaving a considerable carbon footprint. Along with an expected 7 to 8 percent annual growth in seafood consumption, there is a strong incentive for creating new, sustainable food systems in the U.S.

While the demand-supply gap keeps growing, there is no growth in sight from wild catch fisheries or net pen operations. Thus, solutions must take a new approach to fish farming and be sustainable. This is where local, land-based aquaculture comes into the picture.

Nordic Aquafarms was started in Norway with a mission to create a more environmentally sustainable way of producing fish — a solution for the future. Nordic Aquafarms is an international front-runner in the land-based fish farming industry. Land-based facilities are indoor production facilities where fish are raised to harvest size in a series of independent tank systems. It is not possible for the fish to escape from our facility, while other potentially harmful effects on wild salmon populations are eliminated.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Op-ed: Boosting women in seafood and ending gender inequality

March 8, 2019 — International Women’s Day, on 8 March, has become the day of the year to highlight what women do and review progress. Some workplaces have joined in celebrating this day, featuring heartening commitments to gender equality. But it is also frequent to see in the workplace the omission, forgetfulness, or ignorance of what this day commemorates: the international day of women’s rights. We are living in a historic moment where the fact that women still participate in society and in the labour market on an unequal footing with men is more topical than ever. The seafood sector, in which at least 100 million women participate but wield little authority, is, like other male-dominated industry sectors, a fertile environment for reform.

Seeking to achieve gender equality and to set up a gender agenda that recognizes and empowers women in the seafood industry, many institutions and organizations in the fishing and aquaculture sector globally have organized. While this is an important step, we still need the participation of all relevant seafood actors for real change. Today, we want to call attention and ask the seafood community, private as well as public, to engage more actively in achieving true gender equality.

Where are the women?

The seafood industry is clearly women intensive but male-dominated. Female workers are consistently over-represented in low-skilled, low-paid, low-valued positions, while men dominate the power positions. Women account for more than 15 percent of all those directly engaged in the fisheries primary sector, with the percentage exceeding 20 percent in inland-water fisheries; they dominate in the labor-intensive processing industry, representing 85 percent to 90 percent of the total workforce worldwide, play a crucial role in aquaculture, with some 30 percent in salmon farming in Chile, 50 percent in Zambia, and 72 percent in Asia. By contrast, the other end of the value chain is the realm of men, with 99 percent of CEOs, 90 percent of board members and leaders of professional organizations being men.

Participation and visibility

So far, those who have been supporting and working for the visibility of women in this industry and the improvement of their working conditions have been organizations (NGOs and associations) and some trade unions. Among them, the following stand out for example: Women In Seafood Australasia (WISA) which works to build the capacity of women to achieve impact in the development and growth of the seafood industry; the Fisherwomen’s Group of Saga City (Japan), which seeks to process value-added seaweed products, is separated from the local cooperative because women in mainstream cooperatives have low status, whereas women in their own groups and businesses have prospered in farming and creating and marketing new value added products; and the Central Fish Processors Association in Barbados, which represents mainly women processors of flying fish, has succeeded in securing a dedicated working area in the market to make members’ jobs more efficient.

On the research front, the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society held every second year a global conference. The “Expanding our Horizons” conference held in October 2018, showcased new and better research methods that empower women, how new technologies can boost women’s productivity, such as tubular nets for seaweed production in Zanzibar, and growing action by women’s groups.

In recent years, female professionals are being made even more visible in the seafood media, although often still confined to the section “women in seafood” or “woman of the month.” Initiatives that increase the visibility of women showcasing the diversity and the importance of the role that they play in the industry deserve to be underlined, celebrated, and replicated in workplaces! And this is happening. For the first time in 2019, gender discussions will feature in worldwide seafood shows (Seafood Expo North America in Boston, Massachusetts in March 2019, and Seafood Expo Global Brussels, Belgium in May 2019).

In an effort to bring together stakeholders, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries held a worldwide congress in November 2018 for and about women in fisheries. The highlight of this event – attended by 200 professionals- was the signature by several countries and organizations of a strongly engaged document, “The Santiago de Compostella declaration for Equal Opportunities in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sectors,” which included 11 detailed recommendations. Aiming to install a gender agenda for the seafood stakeholders, this event is intended to be held every year: Morocco, signatory of this declaration, has announced to host the second worldwide Women in Fisheries congress in 2020.

Recently, large private companies are claiming their commitment to gender equality by highlighting the existence of their women’s networks. In June 2018, Nueva Pescanova group, Europe’s largest fishing and fish processing company, created WIP (Women in Pescanova) to boost the visibility of women, improve working conditions, integration and promotion practices, and support female talent. The Salmon Industry Association of Chile (SalmonChile) has created a working group with the objective of increasing the participation of women in the industry, aiming at gender equity and advancing in the management and identification of gaps. Women in Fisheries is a group of women from Ireland, formed in 2018, to provide a voice and a forum for women from all sectors of their industry.

Read the full opinion piece at Seafood Source