Saving Seafood

Bill to make North Carolina ‘Napa Valley’ of US oyster industry also good for Cooke

June 25, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story originally published in Undercurrent News: 

Many North Carolina fishermen are petitioning in support of the Support Shellfish Industry Act. One group, Citizens for a Level Playing Field, have created a petition in support of the Act.

A vote by the North Carolina General Assembly — potentially as early as Monday — could make it easier for Cooke Seafood USA and others to harvest more oysters in the US coastal state. But it’s coming down to the wire, as the state’s legislature is expected to end its session either this week or next.

The Support Shellfish Industry Act (HB 361) would raise the cap for oyster permits in the Pamlico Sound – the US’ second largest estuary, covering over 3,000 square miles of open water behind North Carolina’s touristy Outer Banks — from a combined 50 acres to 200 acres, allowing for larger scale operations. It’s a change being sought by the Wanchese Fish Company, a Suffolk, Virginia-based harvester and processor acquired by the Canadian Cooke family in 2015, among others.

The measure, which was originally introduced in late May as Senate Bill 738 by Republican state senators Bill Cook, Harry Brown and Norman Sanderson, passed the North Carolina upper chamber on June 15 by a 28-9 vote, but still requires approval by the state’s Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

“With our acres of pristine waters, and a large and growing interest in cultivated oysters, the potential for the industry in the state is huge,” the three lawmakers said in a press release when introducing the original bill. “Our goal is for North Carolina to become the ‘Napa Valley’ of oysters and to become a $100 million dollar industry in 10 years.”

The North Carolina lawmakers might have picked a different area to represent dominance in the US wine industry. Despite its reputation, Napa Valley produces just 4% of the grapes used in California.

Regardless, Jay Styron, president and owner of the Carolina Mariculture Company, an oyster grower in Cedar Island, North Carolina, would settle right now for his state just getting on a playing field that’s level with the oyster industries in Virginia and Maryland, two states on the Chesapeake Bay (the US’s largest estuary), with lease caps that allow operations of up to 2,000 total acres.

Other states, like Louisiana and Washington, allow similarly high oyster growing caps, he said in a letter to the editor published Friday by Undercurrent News.

Styron told Undercurrent he isn’t interested in expanding beyond the 6.5-acre floating-cage oyster and clam farm he owns in the adjacent Core Sound, but is arguing for the change on behalf of other oyster growers in his role as the president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Finding new ways to bolster New Bedford’s fishermen

June 15, 2018 — We’re encouraged by recent efforts to boost the local fishing industry. And we’re excited about bigger developments on the way this summer.

Last week, restaurateurs from around New England gathered with aquaculture experts at Johnson and Wales University in Providence. The purpose: to exchange ideas on sustainability in America’s seafood industry.

Derek Wagner, chef and owner at Nick’s on Broadway in Providence, told attendees that he once struggled to get his hands on locally caught seafood — until about 10 years ago.

Frustrated by the lack of information about where his restaurant’s salmon originated, he met with two fishermen out of Point Judith, Rhode Island. Instead of telling them what he wanted for his menu, he asked the fishermen what they wanted to sell: ″What is abundant? What are you having a hard time selling? What do you think people should be eating?”

Wagner pledged to take whatever the local fishermen could provide and “make it delicious.” Now he said he consults with local fishermen whenever he creates a new menu.

Another chef, Bun Lai from Connecticut, told of how he began making sushi with the Asian shore crab — an invasive species found in great abundance along the New England coastline. “They’re absolutely delicious,” he said.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New Ray Hilborn study investigates environmental impact of aquaculture

June 13, 2018 — A new study from fisheries expert Ray Hilborn compares the environmental impact of various forms of animal husbandry.

The study, which appeared in “Frontiers in Ecology and The Environment,” is an all-encompassing look on how animal protein production affects the environment.

“From the consumers’ standpoint, choice matters. If you’re an environmentalist, what you eat makes a difference,” Hilborn said. “We found there are obvious good choices and really obvious bad choices.”

Hilborn, a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, has been working on the study for almost a decade. The study investigates the impacts of animal-rearing including energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer and other excess nutrient exposure to the environment, and emissions of substances that can cause acid rain.

The study found industrial beef and catfish farming to be among the most environmentally costly meat and seafood production methods. On the other hand, farmed mollusks and small wild-caught fish pose the least amount of environmental impact.

Because constant water circulation is needed to raise species like shrimp, tilapia, and catfish, livestock production generally uses less energy than aquaculture. But at the same time, beef production results in emissions of large amounts of methane. As a result, both catfish aquaculture and beef production contributes 20 times more greenhouse gases than farmed mollusks or farmed salmon and chicken.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Eating Plants & Seafood

June 13, 2018 — A paper we wrote about yesterday, Hilborn et al. 2018, went out with a press release that argued that a selective diet of seafood could have a lower environmental impact than a vegetarian or vegan diet. This claim comes from comparing the results of Hilborn et al with Poore and Nemecek 2018, a paper published just a few weeks before the Hilborn paper that used the same kind of analysis to also evaluate the environmental cost of food.

Both papers used a newer kind of analysis, called life cycle assessment, that can quantify nearly every environmental impact of a food product throughout all stages, from “cradle to grave.” Life cycle assessments are a comprehensive way to measure and compare the environmental impacts of food.

Poore and Nemecek compiled the most complete dataset of life cycle assessments for agricultural food production and reported general findings for several major food types. Hilborn et al. focused only on animal-protein, but went into greater detail. For example, Poore and Nemecek reported the impact of all capture fisheries grouped together, while Hilborn et al, reported the impact of different kinds of capture fisheries, like small pelagics, large pelagics, and white fish.

The results from Hilborn et al’s analysis show that certain kinds of seafood have a lower environmental impact than plants. For example, farmed oysters and small pelagic fish (like sardines) are probably the best food you can eat for the planet. Below is an unpublished figure provided by Ray Hilborn that adds plants to the comparison from Figure 1 in Hilborn et al. The figure, and discussion of plant-based food vs animal-based food, were cut during the review process.

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

A closer look at the environmental costs of food

June 13, 2018 — The relationship between food and environment is one of the most important conservation issues in the anthropocene. Currently, agriculture uses 38% of the world’s land and accounts for over 90% of freshwater use. Farming and food production has been, and continues to be, the largest driver of habitat and biodiversity loss on the planet.

But, not all foods have the same environmental cost. Comparing and quantifying environmental impacts of different foods is important to guide agricultural policy and empower consumer choice. A paper published today is the most comprehensive comparison of the environmental impacts of meat and fish production—its findings can better inform personal food choices and, hopefully, will help decision-makers devise better food policies that account for environmental cost. Lead author of the study, Ray Hilborn said, “I think this is one of the most important things I’ve ever done…Policymakers need to be able to say, ‘There are certain food production types we need to encourage, and others we should discourage.’”

The paper used 148 different life-cycle assessment papers (also know as “cradle-to-grave” analysis) to look at environmental impacts associated with every aspect of animal protein as food. Researchers quantified 4 different kinds of major environmental impacts caused by food production: (1) electricity/energy use; (2) greenhouse gas emissions; (3) potential for nutrient runoff—this causes most of the world’s water quality issues; (4) potential to cause air pollution.

By standardizing environmental impacts per 40g/protein produced researchers were able to compare different kinds of animal proteins. Basically, the paper answers the question: what are the environmental costs of producing a hamburger patty’s worth of protein from different animal sources?

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

Industrial Beef, Farmed Catfish Worst Foods For Environmental Impact, Study Finds

June 12, 2018 — Not all foods are created equal, especially when it comes to the environmental impact of meat production. Industrial beef and farmed catfish take the biggest toll on the environment, while small fish caught in the wild and farmed shellfish and mollusks cause the least damage, a study had found.

Researchers used the standard of producing 40 grams of protein — the daily recommended protein serving — as the base for looking at four different metrics of how various types of production of different foods impact the environment. The four metrics were the amount of energy used, emissions of greenhouse gases, the potential for contribution of excessive chemicals — in the form of nutrients, such as fertilizers — to the environment, and the potential to contribute to acid rain by emitting specific substances.

They looked at all stages of the food products’ lives, called “cradle-to-grace” analysis. There are about 300 different assessments for such analyses when it comes to animal food production, and the study’s authors selected 148 of those, choosing ones that were comprehensive and not too specialized.

Livestock farming at the industrial scale had the worst impact in the acid rain category, due to the emission of methane from manure. It also scored poorly when it comes to excessive nutrients being released into the environment. Industrial beef production, as well as aquaculture catfish, produce about 20 times more greenhouse gases than producing chicken, or salmon and mollusks that have been farmed. Seafood aquaculture, including catfish, tilapia and shrimp, used the most energy, even more than livestock production.

On the other hand, producing mollusks like oysters, mussels and scallops in aquaculture absorbs excess nutrients that would otherwise harm the ecosystem. It also emits fewer greenhouse gases. Catching fish in the wild requires no fertilizers of any sort, and the biggest environmental factor there is the fuel used by the fishing boats. The exact amount of fuel consumed varies greatly, depending on the type of fishing method used.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

‘Extracting Value from the Right Amount of Fish’: Saving Seafood Looks at Aquaculture Efficiency

June 6, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Through new techniques and technologies, farming fish is becoming increasingly efficient, leading aquaculture experts tell Saving Seafood in a new video.

“With a whole range of factors – improved nutritional knowledge, better management techniques of feeding on the farm, and all of that – [the fish in–fish out] ratio has gone down,” says Andrew Jackson, Chairman of IFFO RS.

“For every 0.7 kilos of fish in, you get a kilo of fish out,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program. “So that’s becoming very favorable towards aquaculture productivity.”

In the case of salmon farming, nutritionists are using alternative ingredients, including plant proteins like soy, and mixing canola and other vegetable oils in with pure fish oil. This has helped lowered the percentage of marine ingredients in fish feed to about 25 percent of farmed salmon diets, and projections are that this will drop below 10 percent by 2025.

“They’ve figured out that the key to being successful and profitable and sustainable is not necessarily to catch more fish, it’s to extract as much value as possible out of the right amount of fish,” says Tim Fitzgerald, Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Impact Division.

These improvements have made farming fish one of the most sustainable forms of protein production, experts tell Saving Seafood.

“When you’re growing chickens or pigs or cattle, the transformation between the feed and the [farmed product] is much more inefficient than with fish,” says Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “So if we have to feed any animal for us to eat, it makes sense to do that with fish. It’s more efficient.”

The video is the second in a series, Aquaculture Today, in which Saving Seafood interviews leading aquaculture experts on the latest advances in farmed fish, and its role in the world. Saving Seafood released a video yesterday on aquaculture’s role in feeding the world’s growing population.

In addition to Mr. Jackson, Mr. Lee, Mr. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Barange, the video also features Julien Stevens, Researcher at Kampachi Farms, and Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director at IFFO.

Interviews for Aquaculture Today were conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

 

More Fish From Aquaculture Is Already Consumed In The World Than Caught

June 6, 2018 — “THE AQUACULTURE SECTOR ALREADY PRODUCES MORE THAN 50% OF THE FISH DESTINED FOR FOOD WORLDWIDE”

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria gathers in an international symposium organized by ISFNF and ECOAQUA the world’s leading experts in fish and crustacean nutrition.

As the world’s population continues to rise, threatening to surpass 7.5 billion people by 2020, the need to create high-quality aquatic products rich in omega-3s has soared to cover not only the food needs of people but also reduce the risk of suffering from many diseases in industrialized and non-industrialized countries.

Capture fishing and the collection of mollusks has served humans, in a traditional way, to obtain aquatic products that serve as the basis for their diet. However, marine resources are limited and, in the future, aquaculture will have a fundamental role to guarantee the production of aquatic species.

So says Marisol Izquierdo, director of the ECOAQUA Institute of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC): “Aquaculture is probably the fastest growing food production sector today. The sector already produces more than 50% of the fish destined for food worldwide, adding up to more than 110 million metric tons, “he explains.

Fish, seafood, seaweed, cephalopods and other aquatic products are very important as a source of protein in human nutrition, and also provide phosphorus, calcium and, above all, omega-3. “There are many studies that show that a diet based on fish, and in particular omega-3, reduces the risk of suffering a multitude of diseases such as diabetes, pathologies of cardiovascular origin, various types of cancer, and also diseases of neurological origin such as Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia,” he stresses.

Read the full story at the Maritime Herald

How Aquaculture is Feeding a Growing World: Saving Seafood Takes a Closer Look

June 5, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Global poverty and malnutrition are falling worldwide, and the availability of affordable, healthy protein is a key reason why. Aquaculture, as one of the world’s fastest growing sources of food production, has been an essential part of this development.

Saving Seafood is taking a closer look at the role that aquaculture plays as a source of food, nutrition, and employment for millions of people around the world in a new series, Aquaculture Today. We interview leading aquaculture experts on the latest breakthroughs and developments in farmed seafood, and the role it plays in the future of human health and the global food supply. 

Worldwide, protein consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years, going from 9 kg per person per year to nearly 20 kg per person per year. Fish, as a cheap and readily accessible food source, has made up a large share of global protein consumption. As the demand for affordable sources of protein grows along with the world’s population, these fish are increasingly being produced through aquaculture.

“Aquaculture has been the fastest [growing] food production industry in the world for the last four decades,” says Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “We need to make sure that is maintained, perhaps not at the same growth, but that it is maintained because it provides not just nutrition, but actually livelihoods and economic opportunities in places where there are not many other opportunities for economic development.”

The importance of aquaculture to global seafood production is only expected to increase, with the production of farmed seafood expected to dwarf that of wild-caught seafood in the next 15 years.

“The projections are that we’ll reach 62 percent of food fish coming from aquaculture by around 2030,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program.

This growth presents an opportunity for fishing communities, which have a chance to diversify to meet the needs of the global seafood market.

“One thing that I would really like to see the industry support [NOAA] stepping up with is dealing with this sort of issue, trying to help these communities start to either diversify their fisheries or thinking more about how they can move into aquaculture,” says Richard Merrick, former Chief Scientist at NOAA Fisheries.

Aquaculture Today comes from interviews conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

View the video here.

 

Marine heatwaves are getting hotter, lasting longer and doing more damage

June 1, 2018 — On land, heatwaves can be deadly for humans and wildlife and can devastate crops and forests.

Unusually warm periods can also occur in the ocean. These can last for weeks or months, killing off kelp forests and corals, and producing other significant impacts on marine ecosystems, fishing and aquaculture industries.

Yet until recently, the formation, distribution and frequency of marine heatwaves had received little research attention.

Long-term change

Climate change is warming ocean waters and causing shifts in the distribution and abundance of seaweeds, corals, fish and other marine species. For example, tropical fish species are now commonly found in Sydney Harbour.

But these changes in ocean temperatures are not steady or even, and scientists have lacked the tools to define, synthesize and understand the global patterns of marine heatwaves and their biological impacts.

At a meeting in early 2015, we convened a group of scientists with expertise in atmospheric climatology, oceanography and ecology to form a marine heatwaves working group to develop a definition for the phenomenon: A prolonged period of unusually  at a particular location for that time of the year. Importantly, marine heatwaves can occur at any time of the year, summer or winter.

Read the full story at PHYS