Saving Seafood

WCPFC committee, IATTC reach agreement to rebuild Pacific bluefin tuna population

September 5, 2017 — Representatives from countries that fish for Pacific bluefin tuna have reached an agreement on a long-term plan to restore the species’ population.

However, while conservationists applauded the pact, they said they now want to see the countries follow up their words with action.

The pact between members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s Northern Committee and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission was announced at the conclusion of the Northern Committee’s 13th Regular Session the morning of Friday, 1 September in Busan, South Korea. Details include:

  • Establishing a target goal of 20 percent of Pacific bluefin tuna’s historic population by 2034. Conservation officials said that would represent a seven-fold increase in the biomass over the next 17 years.
  • Maintaining catch quotas for the next seven years, and approving any increases in the limit only if there was a high probability it would not impact the targeted population goal.
  • Developing a plan by 2020 to reduce the amount of illegally caught Pacific bluefin tuna from entering the market.

The Northern Committee will recommend the WCPFC approve the measure at a meeting in December.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Tuna-fishing nations agree on plan to replenish severely depleted Pacific bluefin stocks

September 1, 2017 — TOKYO — The world’s Pacific bluefin tuna won something of a reprieve Friday, when tuna-fishing countries reached an agreement to gradually rebuild severely depleted stocks while still allowing nations such as Japan to catch and consume the delicacy.

Japan — by far the world’s biggest consumer of bluefin, eating about 80 percent of the global haul in the $42 billion tuna industry — had been resisting new rules, while conservationists have warned about the commercial extinction of bluefin in the Pacific Ocean.

Proponents of limits hailed the deal as a compromise that everyone could live with.

“It’s definitely a good first step towards the recovery of the species,” said James Gibbon, global tuna conservation officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “But it is only the first step. There are a lot of commitments that the countries agreed to, and we need to make sure they stick to them.”

At the week-long meeting in Busan, South Korea, the two bodies charged with shared management of Pacific bluefin — the northern committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission — hammered out a plan to try to put the fish back on a path to sustainability. Countries represented at the meeting included the United States, Canada, China, South Korea and Japan.

The Pacific bluefin population has been depleted by more than 97 percent from its historic high, because of overfishing.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Nonprofits ramp up campaign to increase protections for Pacific bluefin tuna

August 25, 2017 — Ahead of an international conference scheduled next week to discuss rebuilding the Pacific bluefin tuna population, several organizations and influential leaders have urged countries to act quickly to stop what they claim is a steep decline in the species’ numbers.

For years, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch initiative has urged people to avoid the fish because of its low numbers, but the campaign has picked up steam in advance of Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s Northern Committee 13th Regular Session in Busan, South Korea, scheduled to begin on Monday, 28 August. Those involved in the week-long talks centered on conservation measures for the Pacific bluefin tuna include the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Japan, with the latter country being the most dominant market for the species.

Among those speaking out included former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who said the current situation not only threatens the ecology but the economy as well.

“Unsustainable fishing isn’t just the enemy of conservation, it’s the enemy of fishermen everywhere,” said Kerry in a statement on the aquarium’s blog. “We know we can do better. That is why we should all be invested in the difficult task of turning things around and getting Pacific bluefin tuna on a path to recovery.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

It’s Not Okay To Sell Tuna Under The Radar Or Without A Permit

August 24, 2017 — The following is excerpted from an article published Tuesday by Fissues.org, a project of the Marine Fish Conservation Network:

As we get into the thick of tuna season right now, and plenty of “large-medium” and “giant” class bluefin tuna are being caught by anglers around Cape Cod, and “small mediums” as well as good-sized yellowfin in the New York Bight, I thought it more than appropriate to say this…

It’s not okay….

It’s not okay for an angler to take his or her bluefin, or yellowfin, or bigeye or any fish for that matter and sell it to the local restaurant through the back door… for freak’n gas money. Unfortunately, this kinda thing happens pretty regularly up here. Don’t tell me that it doesn’t, because I hear the bragging frequently.

And don’t tell me that it’s a victimless crime. The hard-working full-time commercial fishermen are the first to get screwed. But it’s the consumer as well, who ends up eating a fish that hasn’t been properly cared for without knowing the risks (in the case of tuna, it needs to be flash frozen so as to get rid of parasites). And the fish? Well, none of that backdoor stuff gets reported so we have no idea the scale of such removals… And that affects how these fish are managed and ultimately the long-term sustainability of the stock.

Let’s be crystal clear about one thing. You cannot legally sell tuna to anyone but a federally permitted HMS (Highly Migratory Species) dealer and you aren’t supposed to do so without the proper federal permits and state landing permits.

Under no circumstances are those backdoor sales legal.

But really, that’s not the main reason I felt compelled to write this.

What’s starting to become a big problem is the HMS “Charter/Headboat” permit, which inexplicably allows anyone with such permit running a charter to sell their bluefin, as long as they are of commercial size (73”-plus).

So here’s the deal… If I understand the intent of the permit correctly – and I’ve discussed with NOAA HMS, so I think I do – you can’t run both a commercial and charter fishing trip at the same time. Directly from HMS Permit FAQs site: “This permit allows a vessel to fish both commercially for tunas and recreationally for HMS, although not on the same day.” 

Read the full story at Fissues.org

How Ocean Aquaculture Could Feed the Entire World – and Save Wild Fish

Marine researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, mapped out the potential of the open ocean to support farmed fish and came to some surprising conclusions.

August 21, 2017 — About five out of every six fisheries worldwide has reached or passed the limit of what it can sustainably produce, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Drought, dams, agricultural runoff and other pressures have depleted wild salmon populations in the Eastern Pacific, while on the east coast of North America, wild Atlantic salmon exists mainly in the memories of the Greatest Generation. Bluefin tuna, the preferred delicacy of the world’s finest sushi chefs, is at 2.7 percent of its historical population – about the same as the Bengal tiger.

Meanwhile, seafood farmed in coastal regions has been infected with sea lice, pollutes neighboring ecosystems with waste, sometimes produces fewer nutrients than are fed into the system, often destroys carbon-sequestering mangroves and can require large amounts of antibiotics to stave off disease.

But according to a new study from the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, aquaculture could feed a global population expected to grow to nearly 10 billion by 2050. Lead author Rebecca Gentry, a newly minted PhD in marine ecology, and her colleagues wrote that the open ocean “is largely untapped as a farming resource,” representing “an immense opportunity for food production.” In the study published August 14 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, they found that the entire world’s current output of wild-caught seafood could be farmed in areas that in total would comprise just 0.015 percent of the ocean’s surface area, if grouped together in a way that the authors note would not be realistic or recommended. That’s the equivalent to the size of Lake Michigan.

“People assume the oceans are big but no one had quantified it,” Gentry said. “There’s not that much broad-scale ecological research on marine aquaculture, so we needed a base of information to get an idea of where we can do it.”

Read the full story at Aquaculture Magazine

NOAA: Determination that bluefin aren’t ‘endangered’ unlikely to affect quota setting

August 15, 2017 — US regulators’ recent decision to reject a petition from environmental groups to list Pacific bluefin tuna as an endangered species is unlikely to affect quota levels, which are set by international bodies.

“I don’t envision this domestic Endangered Species Act determination directly implicating the international management of this species,” Chris Yates, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s west coast assistant regional administrator for protected resources said, in response to a question from Undercurrent News.

The US government doesn’t directly determine bluefin fishing rules in the Pacific, having ceded that authority by treaty to Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), of which major bluefin catchers Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan are also members. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) also manages bluefin stocks in those areas of the ocean.

IATTC, which is under strong pressure from environmental groups to conserve declining bluefin stocks, recently failed to agree to new measures at a meeting earlier this month in Mexico City. But members have agreed to revisit the issue at a future meeting in Busan, South Korea.

NOAA assessment

After a recent review of the stock, NOAA scientists struck a mostly positive tone about the stock’s prospects to recover.

Yates, and Matthew Craig, who recently chaired a NOAA review into the health of bluefin stocks, said that there are roughly 1.6 million individual bluefin in the North Pacific Ocean, with 140,000 bluefin being of reproductive age and size.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

UMaine to Receive More Than $220K From NOAA to Study Tuna

August 11, 2017 — ORONO, Maine — The University of Maine is slated to receive more than $220,000 from the federal government to support research of Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and independent Sen. Angus King say the money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will help with UMaine’s research about the tuna’s age, growth and population in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

UMaine researchers will work with dealers, fishermen and other stakeholders from Maine to North Carolina on the work.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the U.S. News & World Report

NOAA rejects bid to list tuna as endangered

August 9, 2017 — The Trump administration on Tuesday chose not to list the Pacific bluefin tuna as an endangered species, rejecting a petition by the largest global conservation group that the U.S. is a member of, with France, South Korea, Australia, and several other countries.

The Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service announced the decision after a 12-month review of the request that started under the Obama administration.

In response, environmentalists are organizing an international boycott of sushi restaurants, decrying what they say is the startling reversal of the agency’s original intent to list the tuna under the Obama administration.

The agency said that it looked at all factors affecting the bluefin tuna’s habitat, and based “on the best scientific and commercial data available … and after taking into account efforts being made to protect the species, we have determined that listing of the Pacific bluefin tuna is not warranted,” the agency said in a notice published in the Federal Register.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature had petitioned the U.S. government to list the tuna after assessing “the status of Pacific bluefin tuna and categorized the species as ‘vulnerable’ in 2014, meaning that the species was considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild,” the notice read.

Read the full story at the Washington Examiner

Tuna won’t be listed as endangered, Trump administration says

August 8, 2017 — Rejecting a petition from environmental groups, the Trump administration announced Monday that it will not list Pacific bluefin tuna — a torpedo-shaped fish that can grow to 1,000 pounds and which sells for $100,000 or more per fish in Japanese sushi markets — as endangered, despite that fact that the animal’s population has fallen 97 percent.

Even with heavy fishing pressure, the steely fish, which swim 6,000 miles between California and Asia, still number about 1.6 million, officials from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Monday.

“The Pacific bluefin tuna does not meet the definition of threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act; that is, it’s not likely to become extinct either now or in the foreseeable future,” said Chris Yates, assistant regional administrator for protected resources at the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region in Long Beach.

“The population has been at low levels before and has rebounded,” he added.

Environmental groups, however, were disappointed. They have compared bluefin tuna to elephant tusks or shark fins — products that come from an important, but vulnerable, species and command high prices for status value.

Read the full story at the Mercury News

NOAA Requests Comment on a Change to Bluefin Regulations

July 24, 2017 — CAPE COD, Mass. — NOAA is seeking public comment regarding a request from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance for an exemption from a regulation that prohibits having unauthorized gear on board while fishing for, retaining, or possessing a bluefin tuna.

In their application, the Alliance suggest that the use of electronic monitoring, already required by federal fishing authorities is a sufficient at-sea monitoring to verify that the catch of bluefin tuna occurred on authorized gear.

The regulation was designed to allow enforcement to not only verify that only the authorized gear type was used to catch the bluefin tuna, but also serves as an effort control for bluefin tuna as it limits the number of vessels that can actively pursue bluefin tuna to those with only authorized gear.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com