Saving Seafood

Top Canadian official considers moving salmon aquaculture sites for sake of wild fish

February 22, 2019 — Salmon aquaculture should be moved out of sensitive native salmon migratory habitats out of concern for the impact it may have on wild fish, according to Canadian Minister for Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard Jonathan Wilkinson.

In recent public comments, Wilkinson expressed alarm related to wild salmon stock declines.

“We need to move to area-based management, which means we are actually thinking about sitting these facilities in areas where you don’t run into issues around migration pathways, areas where communities are actually interested in the economic development that comes through [fish farming] rather than in areas where those communities are very much opposed,” Wilkinson told The Globe and Mail.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

European price-fixing investigation focused on Norwegian salmon industry

February 21, 2019 — A European Commission investigation – which was announced yesterday after E.C. officials raided Scottish and Dutch corporate offices of several seafood companies – is focused on anticompetitive practices in the Norwegian farmed salmon sector, according to SeafoodSource sources and public statements issued on Wednesday, 20 February.

European Commission investigators, along with U.K. and Dutch national competition authorities, took part in raids on Mowi’s facilities in Rosyth, Fife, Scotland and in Sterk, The Netherlands; at Grieg Seafood’s plant in Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands; and a facility in Stirling, Scotland that is operated by Scottish Sea Farms, which is jointly owned by SalMar and Lerøy Seafood.

On Tuesday, 19 February, Mowi, Grieg, and SalMar issued public statements responding to the raids; Lerøy Seafood issued its own on 20 February.

“E.U.’s competition authorities (European Commission Director General Competition) has conducted an inspection at the premises of Scottish Sea Farms Ltd. – a company owned 50 percent by Lerøy Seafood Group ASA (LSG). The purpose is, according to the competition authorities, to investigate accusations of anti-competitive cooperation in the salmon market,” the company said. “In connection with the inspection, the E.U. competition authorities [have] also requested for information from the shareholders in Scottish Sea Farms Ltd. LSG will assist the authorities in order to facilitate an efficient completion of the investigations.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Petition, gathering kick off new push for US federal aquaculture bills

February 19, 2019 — Another push for passage of a new US federal aquaculture law is in full swing with a petition to Congress signed by 122 professionals mostly from aquaculture or other seafood-related industries.

An informational gathering on Capitol Hill has been scheduled for lawmakers and their staff early next month.

Both the US Senate and House of Representatives’ versions of the Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture (AQUAA) Act that were introduced during the 115th Congress expired in December along with the session, but Margaret Henderson, campaign director for the Stronger American Through Seafood (SATS), told Undercurrent News Friday that she believes new bills will be introduced in both chambers within the next two months.

Senators Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and representatives Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, and Steve Palazzo, another Mississippi Republican, all of whom championed the earlier bills, are back, and support is already being built.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

European Commission investigating potential price-fixing in European farmed salmon sector

February 19, 2019 — The European Commission has confirmed it carried out unannounced inspections on the morning of Tuesday, 19 February at the premises of several companies involved in the farmed Atlantic salmon sector in Europe.

In a statement, the E.C. said it “has concerns that the inspected companies may have violated E.U. antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices.”

The E.C. did not say what sparked its investigation, nor did it identify which companies are being investigated or which sites its investigators visited. However, Mowi (formerly Marine Harvest) and Greig Seafood confirmed to SeafoodSource their facilities were among those visited on Tuesday. Additionally, a Scottish Sea Farms facility jointly owned by SalMar and Leroy Seafood was also inspected, SalMar CEO Olav-Andreas Ervik confirmed to Reuters.

“We have been informed that The European Commission DG (Director General) Competition is exploring potential anti-competitive behavior in the salmon industry. They have performed an inspection today at Grieg Seafood Shetland,” Grieg Seafood Global Communications Manager Kristina Furnes told SeafoodSource in an email. “The salmon market is very competitive and we are not aware of any anti-competitive behavior. We are co-operating with the European Commission DG Competition’s investigation.”

Furne referred further questions about the investigation to the European Commission DG Competition.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NWAA’s Hugh Mitchell: Aquaculture is being unfairly demonized

February 14, 2019 — Aquaculture is being unfairly demonized, and that’s not good for industry or the planet, according to Hugh Mitchell, a newly appointed board member of the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance.

Mitchell, a fish health expert and co-owner the Kirkland, Washington, U.S.A.-based fish health supply distributor and consultancy company Aquatactics, said he joined the board of the organization formerly known as the Washington Fish Growers Association to help fight the stigma surrounding aquaculture, which he said is particularly virulent in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

“The message [regarding aquaculture] right now is wrong,” Mitchell told SeafoodSource. “I think aquaculture is the key to saving the aquatic ecosystems. It’s not a threat by any means.”

Mitchell, a veterinarian with a bachelor’s degree in marine biology and a master’s degree in aquatic ecology, has been working in the field for 30 years. He said he looked forward to trying to make a difference in his role as a board member for the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA). Founded in 2009, the NWAA is a trade association that recently went through a rebranding and now represents regional fish famers and aquaculture across the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, as well as the province of British Columbia, Canada.

NWAA Board President John Dentler said that Mitchell’s appointment to the board is “an endorsement of our mission to bring a science-based discussion to the important conversation about aquaculture that is happening here and around the world.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Investors are backing Southeast’s largest oyster farms

February 12, 2019 — The largest ever oyster farms in Southeast Alaska could be coming soon. That’s in line with the state’s Mariculture Task Force that sees the potential for a $100 million industry in Alaska.

Silver Bay Seafoods has been buying and processing salmon and herring at its plant in Sitka for the past decade.

The company says it wants to do something new.

“Alaska waters produce the highest quality seafood products in the country, if not the world,” said Tommy Sheridan, a former state fisheries biologist who now works as a company representative. “There is significant demand for Alaska oysters.”

Silver Bay recently chartered a boat to take a group of local business people, academics and seafood industry boosters to see the site of its oyster venture about 13 miles from Sitka’s harbor.

It’s in a cove near rocky shoreline. Not much to see – yet.

“If this were to go through, what you’d see here would be a series of rafts that we’d use to suspend oysters from,” Sheridan tells the group.

Read the full story at KTOO

Aquaculture does little to conserve wild fisheries, according to study

February 11, 2019 — New research finds that aquaculture, or fish farming, does not help conserve wild fisheries.

“Our fundamental question with this study was: does  conserve wild fish?” says Stefano Longo, an associate professor of sociology at North Carolina State University and first author of a paper on the work. “The answer is: not really.”

To determine the impact of  efforts on traditional, or “capture” fisheries, Longo and his collaborators looked at data from the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, from 1970 to 2014. Specifically, the researchers evaluated data that shed light on changes in aquaculture and traditional fisheries, such as aquaculture production numbers and the number of fish harvested by wild fisheries.

“We found that aquaculture has expanded production, but does not appear to be advancing fishery conservation,” Longo says. “In fact, aquaculture may contribute to greater demand for seafood as a result of the social processes that shape production and consumption.

“In other words, aquaculture is not taking the place of traditional fishing efforts, or even necessarily reducing them,” Longo says.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Aquaculture supporters send letter to Congress

February 7, 2019 — More than 120 seafood industry leaders and other aquaculture proponents have signed on to a letter that was sent to members of Congress on Wednesday, 6 February, urging federal lawmakers to open up opportunities for offshore fish farming.

The letter, sent to legislators by Stronger America Through Seafood, said House and Senate members plan to reintroduce updated versions of the Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture (AQUAA) Act. The bills would streamline the permitting process for aquaculture initiatives based in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

“It is time for the U.S. to get into the aquaculture game and provide new local sources of sustainable seafood for consumers,” the letter said. “We can do it here, we can do it right and we can do it [now].”

The letter also said the country risks missing out on getting a piece of the growing aquaculture industry, which researchers believe will continue to grow. According to Beyhan de Jong, a Rabobank researcher, the industry produced USD 232 billion (EUR 204.8 billion) in goods in 2016. It stands to grow by another USD 100 billion (EUR 88.3 billion) in less than a decade.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Canadian judge says young salmon must be tested before placed in net pens

February 6, 2019 — A Canadian federal judge, in Vancouver, British Columbia, has ruled that fish farms must test their young salmon for contagious viruses before transferring them into open-net pens, StarMetro, a Vancouver newspaper, reports.

In her 199-page decision issued Monday, justice Cecily Strickland gave the Canadian Department of Fisheries an Oceans (DFO) four months to develop a new policy that considers the threat piscine reovirus (PRV) poses to wild salmon and to comply with the country’s preferred precautionary approach.

The ruling addresses two cases brought separately against DFO, the minister of fisheries and oceans and also Marine Harvest. One lawsuit was filed by biologist Alexandra Morton and the other by the ‘Namgis First Nation.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

China’s New Year gift to the world: aquaculture know-how

February 5, 2019 — As Chinese New Year approaches, the dining halls of China’s Agriculture Ministry in the central Beijing district of Tuanjiehu get busy with well-wishers from various embassies dropping in with seasonal gifts or for banquets with officials.

Emissaries in Beijing have been beating a path to the fisheries section at the Agriculture Ministry to greet fisheries officials who maintain relations with counterparts in most countries on the planet.

The gifts aren’t just flowing in one direction. Even as it weeds out low-tech and unlicensed operators in its own aquaculture sector, China is offering aquaculture expertise to developing nations throughout the world.  When Chinese New Year festivities are over, it’s not unreasonable to expect a whole new range of training programs to be born out of those banquets and gift exchanges. These are transactional relationships – developing countries need training and China needs seafood. But they also stand to change the global aquaculture production map.

And it’s not new – China has been at this game for many years now. Just last month, aquaculture officials from around the world were in China’s key freshwater training base for training in bass (perch) production. Delegates from Benin, Ghana, Laos, Liberia, Myanmar, the Seychelles, South Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia were in Wuxi Academy and visited Jiangsu Shui Xian Industry Co. Ltd. to see production on site.

Read the full story at Seafood Source