Saving Seafood

Dead right whale at Martha’s Vineyard was seen entangled off Canada in 2022

February 5, 2024 –A dead North Atlantic right whale that washed up at Martha’s Vineyard was identified as a 3-year-old female that was first seen entangled in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Canada in 2022, according to scientists at the New England Aquarium.

First observed by researchers as a calf in 2021, the young whale was dubbed #5120 in a catalog maintained by the aquarium and other whale tracking groups. In August 2022 #5120 was sighted again, entangled in fishing gear in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“Multiple attempts were made to disentangle the whale in January and February of 2023 off Cape Cod,” according to a summary issued by the New England Aquarium. “She was resighted still entangled in June 2023 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with her overall body condition declining as the rope constricted around her tail had become more deeply embedded.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Canada lags behind on efforts to address human rights abuses in seafood supply chains

January 26, 2024 — Seafood has become a source of concern for consumers who pay attention to the environmental and social impacts of what they buy. Climate change is adversely affecting ocean ecosystems, and a series of widely publicized scandals have exposed widespread illegal fishing and awful working conditions in both fishing and seafood processing.

Seafarers in fishing often work 18 hours a day in what is widely considered to be the world’s most dangerous profession. Many are at sea for months or even years at a time, and most have no access to Wi-Fi. They are often excluded from labour laws and all are paid very low wages, despite producing food for high-income consumers.

Similarly, those working in seafood processing are also poorly paid, and many are migrant workers who lack basic labor rights.

In response to these concerns, governments in many seafood importing countries have taken action. The European Union and Japanese government have banned imports of seafood produced by illegal fishing, while the United States’ program to ban imports produced by forced labour includes seafood.

Read the full article at SALON

Canadian anti-salmon farming billboards removed for false claims about U.S. operations

December 7, 2023 — Anti-salmon farming billboards in Canada have been removed for falsely claiming that “open-net pen salmon farms are banned in the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska.” The following was released by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance:

Anti-salmon farming billboards around Ottawa have been removed for false advertising. The false statements included claims from eco-activist group Wild First that “Open-net pen salmon farms are banned in Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska.” Based on this inaccurate information, the ads called on Ottawa to “remove all salmon farms from B.C. waters.”

The letter of complaint filed by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA) has provided clear evidence that the farming of finfish (including salmon) is not banned in California, Oregon, or Washington. In Alaska, net pens are commonly used to raise salmon for commercial purposes.

“In an age of misinformation, we are pleased that the right thing happened – false ads that did not stand up to the truth test were removed,” says Tim Kennedy, CAIA President and CEO. “Activists with deep pockets who don’t live or work where our salmon farmers live and work are trying to drive policy decisions in Ottawa that would cancel people’s livelihoods using a storyline based on old data and false information.”

“These anti-salmon billboards included statements by the activist group Wild First that were both false and potentially economically harmful to British Columbia businesses and organizations and their employees that the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance represents. Modern, sustainable, in-ocean salmon aquaculture is the second biggest agri-food export in British Columbia and key to the blue economy future for people living in rural, coastal and Indigenous communities.”

Read the full release from the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance

Ropeless gear shows promise in Canadian snow crab fishery, but full adoption faces challenges

November 6, 2023 — Canadian commercial fishermen are hopeful ropeless gear could be a solution to address concerns of right whale entanglements in snow crab fisheries, and recent trials are showing that innovative technology can work along the East Coast of Canada.

New ropeless gear that eliminates the vertical lines that can entangle right whales is one possibility, and fishermen have had positive experiences with it in trials along the East Coast of Canada.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Native fishermen from US claim Canada’s DFO illegally removed lobster traps

October 24, 2023 — Native fishermen in the U.S. state of Maine claim officials with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently took unwarranted and unauthorized action against them.

According to Henry Bear – past general manager of the Maliseet Nation’s commercial fishing fleet on Grand Manan Island, and past Maliseet Tribal Representative to the Maine House of Representatives – the DFO took unwarranted action against Maine-based Passamaquoddy and Maliseet fishermen by confiscating lobster traps. The fishermen were lobstering in Canadian waters of the Saint Croix River and of Passamaquoddy Bay – which form part of the border between New Brunswick, Canada and Maine in the U.S. – when the DFO reportedly confiscated the traps.

Read the full article at Seafood Source

Joint US-Canada IUU surveillance operation uncovers more than 3,000 illegal shark fins

October 17, 2023 — A joint operation between the U.S. and Canada recently completed a high seas patrol to detect illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the North Pacific, and discovered more than 3,000 illegally possessed or stored shark fins.

The joint operation, dubbed Operation North Pacific Guard, ran earlier this year. It was the first time that Canada took the lead in the mission, which has taken place each year since 2019.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Glenn Cooke: Industry must unify to combat environmentalists’ unscientific claims

October 5, 2023 — The head of one of Canada’s biggest seafood companies believes the fishing and aquaculture sectors need to work together to push back against unscientific claims made by environmental groups.

Speaking at the Responsible Seafood Summit in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, Cooke Inc. CEO Glenn Cooke said

“We’ve got to work together because we now have the same common enemy,” Cooke said. “These environmental groups now have turned very strongly against wild fishing, so now the same groups that are hitting the farming are hitting a lot of fishing. The sooner we can coalesce into a major, stronger force to take them on, the better in my mind.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Despite a pause on new regulations, U.S. and Canadian lobstermen see big challenges ahead

February 7, 2023 — After a two-year hiatus, members of the U.S. and Canadian lobster fisheries met in Portland over the weekend to discuss challenges facing their industry. Top of mind is how the industry will prepare before new federal regulations designed to protect endangered right whales begin in six years.

Fisheries in Maine had late last year expressed relief about the years-long delay in the rules change included in a federal spending bill, as it bought the industry more time to research and test new fishing techniques and other measures aimed at protecting North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full article at wbur

Canada, U.S. fail to reach agreement on quota for shared haddock stock in 2023

January 6, 2023 — Canada and the United States have, for the first time, failed to agree on a shared quota for the transboundary haddock stock on the Georges Bank fishing grounds off southern Nova Scotia.

The two countries have jointly managed the haddock fishery — and two other straddling stocks — since 2000, but were unable to reach a consensus for the 2023 haddock quota.

“While Canada and the U.S. tried to negotiate a shared haddock total allowable catch … our countries will be setting our own total allowable catch independently of the other,” wrote Kathy Cooper-MacDonald, senior advisor, Fisheries Management in Maritimes Region on Dec. 28.

The disagreement centred on the size of the quota cut.

“Everybody agreed that a large reduction was required, but the size of large is not defined,” said Alain d’Entremont, president of Scotia Harvest, operator of a groundfish fleet and processing plant in southwestern Nova Scotia.

He is a Canadian industry representative and co-chair of the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee, which helps negotiate quotas.

“I don’t think we’ve caused irreparable damage to the agreement.”

Read the full article at CBC News

Fisheries minister angling for joint Canada-U.S. management of depleted Atlantic mackerel stock

December 8, 2022 — Canada is lobbying the United States to add Atlantic mackerel to transboundary fish stocks jointly managed by the two countries on the East Coast — but so far has not landed an agreement.

The appeal comes after Canada imposed a total moratorium on all commercial mackerel fishing in 2022  to rebuild the depleted shared stock. The Americans kept fishing, albeit with a reduced quota.

Minister raised concern with U.S. counterpart

“We don’t support the fact that we had closures because the stock was in critical condition and the United States were fishing essentially that same stock,” Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans Minister Joyce Murray told a parliamentary committee Friday.

Murray’s remarks are a more public stance on what has been a quiet effort by Canada to persuade the United States to jointly manage a species both countries say is in trouble.

Murray said she expressed her concerns in a virtual meeting earlier on Dec. 2 with her U.S. counterpart, Richard Spinrad, who leads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.

Murray said Spinrad was sympathetic.

“He wants to invoke the precautionary principle, which in my view, wasn’t happening adequately. We agreed that we share our approach to this and in two months there will be meetings between NOAA and DFO to discuss our assessments and build a better approach to rebuilding mackerel.”

Read the full article at CBC