Saving Seafood

IUU vessel tracker calls on more countries to share Indonesia’s lead, share data

June 22, 2018 — Indonesia is a model that other countries should follow, according to a leading campaigner advocating for the sharing of fishing data to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

By making its vessel monitoring system (VMS) data publicly available, the country has increased transparency, said Tony Long, CEO of Global Fishing Watch, who was speaking at the 2018 SeaWeb Seafood Summit. The Indonesian fisheries ministry, which has been battling illegal fishing in its waters, moved to share its VMS data in 2017.

Not enough countries exchange data, said Long, who wants countries to “bring data out into the open” so that vessels’ movements can be tracked and illegal fishing operators exposed. “Global Fishing Watch will take and share any tracking system,” he said.

More transparency is key to forcing vessel operators into more responsible behavior, argued Long.

“Why not reward the compliant operators when you can track them?” he said. “The worst actors will stand out by their lack of information and therefore appropriate punishments can be put in place.”

Global Fishing Watch leverages tracking systems like Oceana, Skytruth and Google as well as national systems to map global movement of vessels.

Long’s organization has also recently partnered with the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to track vessels using satellites the monitor lights at night. A screen grab from one such monitoring off the coast of Oman showed that AIS data is underreporting the number of vessels in the waters: The data based on the number of lights in the night sky suggested a far larger fleet at work.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Carryover frozen halibut brews competition in Alaska

June 20, 2018 — As the fleet fished on a halibut quota of 16.63 million pounds, dockside offers ranged from $4.25 to $5.50 per pound for fish 20 pounds and under to 40 pounds and up. That’s down significantly from the 2017 spread of $6.40 to $6.90 per pound when the fleet fished on a quota of 18.3 million pounds.

This year’s pricing trend flies in the face of market dynamics of years past, when diminished supplies translated to higher prices all the way through the distribution chain.

Whether the volume of supplies and price point have reached the equilibrium of what consumers will pay for a slice of halibut on their plates remains to be seen. In the meantime, Bob Alverson, manager of the Fishing Vessel Owners’ Association in Seattle, noted that processors have reported carryover inventories of frozen Pacific halibut from 2017 are competing with volumes of fresh Atlantic halibut funneling into markets along the East Coast.

The fall in ex-vessel prices for blackcod tells a slightly different story. The 2018 quota has been set at 25.8 million pounds, up from the 22.58 million pounds of 2017. Alverson noted that strong year classes of fish spawned in 2014 and 2015 have begun recruiting into the fishery — good news in the health of the resource.

However, the extra quantities of the 2- to 3-pound fish coming across the docks has precipitated decreased pricing in export markets to Japan and throughout Asia.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

World Tuna Conference: FAO providing powerful instruments to fight IUU fishing

June 5, 2018 — The 15th Infofish World Tuna Trade Conference and Exhibition opened on 28 May in Bangkok, Thailand. The three-day conference covered resources, fisheries management, markets, new technologies, food safety, sustainability, and environmental issues.

Among the sponsors was the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Jong-Jin Kim, FAO’s deputy regional representative for Asia and the Pacific, said during his opening address that the international community now has at its disposal a number of new and powerful instruments with the potential to drastically reduce and eliminate illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, including the FAO Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on Catch Documentation Schemes and the FAO Global Record of Fishing Vessels.

FAO Fishery Planning Analyst for Asia and the Pacific Cassandra De Young explained the various programs to SeafoodSource.

The 2009 FAO Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) is the first binding international agreement to specifically target IUU fishing. Its objective is to prevent, deter, and eliminate IUU fishing by preventing vessels engaged in IUU fishing from using ports and landing their catches. Entering into force in June 2016, 54 States and the European Union have joined forces by becoming Parties to the PSMA, as of May 2018.

FAO Voluntary Guidelines on Catch Documentation Schemes were officially adopted by the FAO Conference in July 2017 and, with seafood trade at record highs and consumer demand still rising, CDS are increasingly seen as an effective tool. For example, since 2010, the European Union has used a CDS that covers all fish shipments imported into the bloc from overseas; and in 2016, the United States announced its own scheme, the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). In 2017, ASEAN adopted the voluntary ASEAN Catch Documentation Scheme for Marine Capture Fisheries to enhance intra-regional and international trade of fish and fish products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

China to Cut Import Tariffs on More Than 200 Seafood Products on July 1, 2018

June 4, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — China will cut tariffs for more than 200 seafood imports as part of a move to lower tariffs for nearly 1,500 consumer goods, effective July 1, the Chinese Ministry for Finance announced last night.

On average, tariffs for all goods on the list were cut by 56 percent, according to the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council.

Tariff rates on major seafood imports, such as frozen pollock, cod fillets, sockeye salmon, and halibut, will drop from 10% to 7%. Frozen mussels, scallops and oysters will be 10% rather than 14%.  Fresh or chilled crab will be cut from 14% to 7% and fresh scallops, as an example, from 14% to 10%.

“Significantly reducing the import tariffs for daily consumer goods is conducive to expanding China’s opening-up and serves as a major measure and action of the country’s initiative to open its market,” the Ministry’s statement quoted an unnamed official of the commission as saying.

The average tariff rate for cultured and fished aquatic products and processed food such as mineral water will be cut from 15.2 percent to 6.9 percent, according to a statement released after the meeting.

The announcement came less than 48 hours before U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross lands in Beijing for “wide-ranging talks aimed at addressing American frustrations with China’s $375 billion bilateral trade surplus with the United States,” according to a May 31 report in the New York Times.

Ross will be in China from June 2 to June 4, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Last Tuesday, President Trump threatened further tariffs on Chinese goods, noting that China’s average tariff on imports was more than three times as high as US tariffs and nearly double that of the European Union. Ross announced that the US would begin imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union at midnight on Thursday.

New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher noted that by cutting tariffs in more than 1,000 lightly traded categories, China could end up reducing its average tariff considerably without actually running the risk of a big surge in imports.

“The goods seeing cuts are not relevant to trade with the U.S.,” Derek Scissors, a trade specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank told Bradsher. “For China, it fits the goal of moving up the value chain — heavy subsidies for semiconductors and now less protection for textiles and consumer appliances.”

This story was originally published by Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

Chinese fish farm tests deep-sea waters with ‘world’s biggest’ salmon cage

May 8, 2018 — A Chinese fisheries company will soon launch a massive deep-sea salmon farming facility in the eastern province of Shandong to help meet the country’s growing appetite for seafood.

Shandong Wanzefeng Fishery, the operator, said a fully submersible net cage called Deep Blue No 1, the world’s biggest, was delivered to the shipyard of state-owned Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry on Friday, state-run Xinhua reported.

The 35-metre-high cage will be deployed in the Yellow Sea about 130 nautical miles east of Rizhao where the cold water is believed to be a suitable habitat for the fish.

Wang Yu, head of the Hubei Marine Engineering Equipment Research Institute, which designed the system, said the cage had a volume of 50,000 cubic metres and could generate a harvest of about 1,500 tonnes of salmon per season.

Read the full story at the South China Morning Post

 

Hearings Coming About Increase in Baby Eel Fishing Quota

May 3, 2018 — BREWER, Maine — A proposal to allow Maine‘s elver fishermen to catch more of the baby eels will be up for a public hearing in the state next month.

Fishermen harvest elvers in rivers and streams in Maine so they can be sold to Asian aquaculture companies for use in Japanese food after they’re raised to maturity. Maine’s the only state in the country with a significant fishery for elvers, and fishermen are limited to 9,688 pounds per year.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering increasing that total to 11,749 pounds per year. The eels are currently worth more than $2,000 per pound at docks so the increase would mean access to millions of dollars in revenue.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at US News

 

Baby eel fishermen on track to catch quota after short years

April 25, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s baby eel fishermen are on track to catch the entirety of their quota for the valuable fish after falling short in recent years.

The eels are sold to Asian aquaculture companies, and are part of the worldwide supply chain for Japanese food. Maine’s the only U.S. state with a significant fishery for the eels, called elvers, and regulators limit them to 9,688 pounds per year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

Fishing boat sinks, crew saved hundreds of miles off Hawaii

March 27, 2018 — HONOLULU — A commercial fishing crew and a federal observer were rescued after their vessel sank and they spent hours in a life raft hundreds of miles off the coast of Hawaii, the U.S. Coast Guard said Monday.

The agency said it received an emergency distress alert from the Princess Hawaii late Sunday morning about 400 miles (644 kilometers) north of the Big Island. A few hours later, a Coast Guard plane got to the area, where rescuers saw a flare and found eight people in a life raft.

The 61-foot longline fishing boat was mostly submerged with only the bow above water.

Officials said the Coast Guard air crew dropped a radio to the life raft and helped establish communication with the vessel’s sister ship, the Commander, which was fishing nearby and went to rescue the survivors. It arrived nearly 12 hours after the distress call and brought the crew aboard, Coast Guard spokeswoman Tara Molle said.

She said the crew was in good condition and was expected to arrive back in Honolulu later this week.

Most longline fishing vessels in Hawaii use foreign crews with no U.S. work visas. The workers cannot legally enter the United States so they are required to live aboard their vessels for the duration of their contracts, often a year or two at a time.

Most workers come from impoverished Southeast Asia and Pacific island nations and are paid between $300 and $600 dollars a month.

The observer on the boat was part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program that monitors the actions of commercial fishing crews at sea. Observers log data about catch, interactions with endangered species, vessel conditions and crew safety.

NOAA officials said they could not identify the observer who was aboard the Princess Hawaii. The agency is working with the Coast Guard to determine what role the observer played in alerting authorities to the sinking, spokeswoman Jolene Lau said.

A request for the NOAA observer’s log from Sunday’s Princess Hawaii voyage was denied.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act states that “all observer information is confidential and may not be disclosed, subject to certain very narrow exceptions,” said NOAA’s Office of General Counsel Pacific Island Section Chief Frederick Tucher in an email. “Observer information includes all information collected, observed, retrieved, or created by an observer.”

The boat was inspected by the Coast Guard in February, and no safety violations were found. It was in 10-foot (3-meter) seas with winds around 20 mph (32 kph) before it sank, authorities said.

The Coast Guard said in the statement Sunday that it “called the registered owner, who confirmed the vessel had gone out early that morning to fish.” The agency said Monday that it could not confirm the name of the owner or any information about the crew.

According to NOAA permit records, the Princess Hawaii is owned by Holly Fishery LLC. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission lists the captain of both the Princess Hawaii and the Commander as Loc Nguyen of Honolulu.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

 

China is trying to rein in its vessels illegally depleting fish stocks in West Africa

March 15, 2018 — China is increasingly cracking down on vessels from its country that are engaged in illegal fishing activities in West Africa. It’s a move environmental groups say is indicative of increased intolerance towards illicit practices in high seas and an effort to improve its image globally.

Since 2016, the country has canceled subsidies worth €90 million ($111.6 million) for 264 vessels caught undertaking illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, according to non-profit Greenpeace. Three of the 78 companies that owned these vessels had their distant water fishing licenses revoked, while 15 company owners and captains were blacklisted.

In late February, the ministry of agriculture also halted the pelagic fishing license of Lian Run, a major Chinese company accused of systematic pillaging of West African fisheries on a huge scale. All of the company’s distant water fishing operations, involving about 30 vessels, were also stopped. Last year, two of the company’s trawlers—Lian Run 34 and 47—were caught operating off the coast of Guinea with illegal fishing nets and in possession of shark fins without the body, a practice prohibited under Guinean law.

China also halted the operations of Fuzhou Honglong fisheries companies, months after the company was caught in the Galapagos Marine Reserve transporting thousands of dead shark carcasses.

Read the full story at Quartz 

 

ISSF Skipper Workshops Reached Record-High Number of Tuna Fishers in 2017

March 15, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:

The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Skippers’ Workshop programmarked its most successful year on record in 2017, reaching 794 participants, with tuna purse-seine skippers (457) and crew (238) comprising the majority (88 percent) of attendees. Other workshop participants included vessel owners and officials.

Since 2009, ISSF has been conducting workshops worldwide that unite fishers from tropical tuna fleets with scientists and other stakeholders to discuss methods for reducing shark and other bycatch, especially during Fish Aggregating Device (FAD) fishing. ISSF partners with Azti-Tecnalia, a Spanish technological research center for marine and food innovation, to conduct its skippers workshops.

Last year, ISSF added new workshop locations, including Zhoushan, China and Ambon, Makassar, and Manado, Indonesia. Eighteen skippers workshops were conducted across 10 different countries, covering fleets in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Eastern Pacific Ocean. Since their inception, ISSF workshops have attracted more than 3,000 participants — including more than 1,700 skippers, enough to put nearly two ISSF-trained fishers on each large purse seine vessel operating today.

Notable activities in and findings from 2017 workshops include:

  • Rising acceptance of biodegradable FADs to reduce marine debris, with initiatives like the one in the Indian Ocean, Project BIOFAD, with participation from Spanish and French fleets
  • Continued success in advancing the use of lower-entanglement-risk FADs and non-entangling FADs by fleets in three out of the four major tuna fishing regions
  • Wide acceptance of best bycatch release methods, with some fleets applying them daily
  • Fisher support for technology to remotely identify the presence of small bigeye and yellowfin tuna at FADs
  • Discussion of options to reduce FAD impacts, including limiting FAD numbers, FAD closures, or prohibiting supply vessels

Now in its second year, ISSF’s “Train-the-Trainer” program in Indonesia reached small-vessel tuna purse-seine captains in seven workshops. These local trainers will enable the program to reach more skippers in remote locations across the archipelago.

“Our skippers workshops continue to be the best method for ensuring that our research findings on FAD management and bycatch reduction result in positive shifts on the water,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson. “Not only are we able to share best practices as we gain more scientific knowledge, but we are also able to gain valuable insight directly from the fishers who spend their working hours fishing for tuna. It’s education that goes both ways.”

All 2017 successes are outlined in the recently published ISSF Technical Report ISSF Skippers’ Workshops Round 7. The report includes details on each 2017 workshop, photos, and graphs showing fisher participation and acceptance of best practices. It also features a “Novel ideas and improvements for mitigation activities” section.

Skippers’ workshop attendance fulfills the requirement for ISSF conservation measure 3.4.

About the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation

The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is a global coalition of scientists, the tuna industry and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) — the world’s leading conservation organization — promoting science-based initiatives for the long-term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks, reducing bycatch and promoting ecosystem health. To learn more, visit iss-foundation.org, and follow ISSF on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (@issf.official).