June 11, 2021 — Australian maritime operatives intercepted 19 Indonesian vessels in a two-week period in May through “Operation Jawline,” an operation coordinated by the Maritime Border Command (MBC) – a joint agency task force within the Australian Border Force (ABF) – with close involvement from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA).
The vessels were all believed to be illegally fishing in Australia’s Northern waters.
May 14, 2021 — An Australian fishery consultancy, which has taken a financial hit from the fallout of the failed Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification of the orange roughy fishery, claims the MSC’s reputation may be damaged in the country by the certification’s failure.
“Just as MSC was about to take a step forward in Australia it takes several backwards and will become less relevant,” Simon Boag, a fisheries advisor at Australian-based Atlantis Fisheries Consulting Group – which was engaged by a number of orange roughy east quota owners to seek MSC accreditation – said.
April 13, 2021 — A second attempt by Australia’s orange roughy fishery certified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard has been thrown out by an independent adjudicator.
The decision puts to rest a fight between WWF and the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) over the certification of the orange roughy fishery, a species considered endangered, threatened, and protected under Australian law.
April 6, 2021 — We here at FishOn have always fared better when we’ve lived along a coast somewhere. It probably started at birth (San Diego. Go Padres). But to this day, we get more than 50 miles inland and the whole world seems to be closing in like a fallen tent.
Still, every now and then we come across an item that makes us reconsider the attraction. Let’s go to Sorrento, Australia, for the most recent example.
According to a stomach-churning story in the New York Times, a stretch of the southeastern Australian coastline around Sorrento has become ground zero for a species of flesh-eating bacteria called the Buruli ulcer.
“Buruli ulcer has been reported in 33 countries, primarily in Africa, where a lack of access to health care can mean cases go on for months, sometimes resulting in disfigurement and disability,” the piece stated. “In Australia, where cases of the ulcer have been reported since the 1940s, the recent increase in infections has brought new attention to the neglected disease. That, along with a growing global interest in infectious diseases, has raised hopes that scientists might finally have the resources to crack its code.”
Excellent. CSI Buruli is on the case.
January 21, 2021 — Millions of dollars’ worth of salmon were allegedly stolen from a processing plant operated by Huon Aquaculture in Sydney, Australia.
According to reports, police have charged five people in the alleged theft of 250 metric tons of salmon reportedly amounting to AUD 4 million (USD 3.09 million, EUR 2.55 million)
December 21, 2020 — Long a topic discussed in connection with the South China Sea, illegal Chinese fishing vessels are of increasing concern for Pacific Island nations.
As recently as early this week, the archipelago nation of Palau, east of the Philippines and north of New Guinea, announced that it had intercepted and detained a Chinese fishing vessel and six smaller boats in its territorial waters after it was confirmed the vessel had entered unlawfully and was illegally fishing sea cucumber.
The fishing vessel was apprehended in Helen Reef, Palau’s most southernmost region, by a Guardian-class patrol boat that Australia had delivered to Palau in September.
“They did have sea cucumber on there… it’s estimated about 500 pounds (225 kilograms),” Victor Remengesau, director of Palau’s division of marine law and enforcement, told reporters. “It’s unlawful entry. We may care about COVID and the spread of COVID, but we can’t just let people do whatever they want, and disguise [illegal activity].”
November 23, 2020 — Australia has deployed a new underwater technology across the Torres Strait aimed at combating illegal foreign fishing, according to the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.
The Maritime Border Command (MBC), an agency within the Australian Border Force (ABF), was in charge of deploying the technology in partnership with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organizations (CSIRO), which developed the new hydrophones. The hydrophones are capable of detecting and logging vessel sounds, which can differentiate between different kinds of vessel activities.
June 15, 2020 — When a restaurant serves a fish whole, there is a reason it fits the plate perfectly. It’s because Boris Musa grew it that way.
His indoor fish farm in Australia supplies restaurants with plate-size barramundi grown to 1.8 pounds. The coronavirus put the restaurant industry on ice for months, but Mr. Musa’s fish kept growing. That led to a big fish problem—as in, his fish were getting too big.
If Mr. Musa’s barramundi, a white fish popular in Australia, grow too much, the water-filtration system that is keeping them alive won’t be able to keep up. Once they tip the scales at about 3 pounds, he said, they’re too large for a restaurant dinner plate.
To save his fish, and his future profits, Mr. Musa is turning to science. He is betting that by lowering the water temperature in his tanks, he can slow down the metabolism of his fish, reduce their appetites and stall their growth. At the height of the lockdown, he even considered a more extreme option: trucking his fish more than 1,000 miles away to a more spacious outdoor farm owned by his company.
“This is a really peculiar set of circumstances,” said Mr. Musa, chief executive of MainStream Aquaculture, which spent years breeding fish to grow faster. “Normally in our business, we’re trying to maximize the biological potential of our fish.”
March 31, 2020 — Australia’s largest producer of Western rock lobster is the main contributor to the country’s half-billion-dollar live exports of the shellfish, but it faces a stark choice; export its live product to China using expensive cargo planes or export no live rock lobster at all.
It is the harsh reality facing seafood companies around the globe as commercial passenger airlines are grounded by the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ve seen [passenger freight] capacity drop very significantly over the last few weeks, to the point where on Wednesday we had the last direct flight to China,” Matt Rutter, CEO of Geraldton Fishermen’s Co-operative (GFC), told Undercurrent News on Thursday (March 26).
“In fact, the last available for charter is through Japan. That last flight flies on Monday [March 30],” he said.
March 17, 2020 — The full financial effects of the coronavirus outbreak are starting to become apparent in seafood markets across the globe, reports American Shipper.
In Australia, for instance, a fisheries and aquaculture sector very dependent on Chinese seafood demand is likely to see a decline in earnings of $389 million due to the excess product that traders are unable to send to the country.
It’s a similar issue in Canada, where the previously booming trade of live Atlantic lobsters to China has ground to a halt after both China and other nearby Asian countries stopped accepting deliveries from seafood shipping companies.
Likewise, the trade of baby eels, or elvers, from Maine in the US to China is also at a standstill — bad news for a $168m industry nearly entirely dependent on the trade route for its custom.