Saving Seafood

Chile’s weeklong protests taking toll on salmon exports

November 1, 2019 — Social unrest and violence in Chile that has taken place over the past week has begun to affect key parts of the economy, including salmon production and exports.

Protests originally began over increased fares in capital Santiago’s metro system. However, protests quickly ignited nationwide, ballooning over issues as wide as social inequality, Chile’s overall cost of living, low minimum salaries, disappointing retirement system returns, politicians are seen as out of touch with reality, and justice perceived as unfairly favoring the country’s elite.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Scientists emphasize disease control in booming aquaculture sector

October 21, 2019 — At its last global conference, held in April in Santiago, Chile, the World Organization for Animal Health (known as OIE) focused on aquatic animals. The reason? Experts estimate that if the planet’s human population continues to increase as projected, the world will need to double its food production by 2050. The oceans, and aquaculture in particular, are seen as a main source for meeting this need.

“For the past decade, fishing of native animals has stabilized while aquaculture has increased enormously,” Monique Eloit, the OIE’s director-general, told Mongabay Latam. However, information about the health of aquatic animals is poor compared with that of land animals. According to Eloit, this gap must be addressed to secure the food supply for the coming decades.

Around 60 percent of human pathogens and three-quarters of first-emerging infectious diseases are of animal origin. Among these are bird flu strain H5N1, rabies, tuberculosis, the Ebola virus, and foot-and-mouth disease.

Since aquaculture is the fastest-growing food source, “it is likely that we will face greater health risks and challenges,” Eloit said. She recommended taking steps to improve disease management, biosecurity and the responsible use of antimicrobials.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Chile will provide vessel data to Global Fishing Watch

May 16, 2019 — The government of Chile has signed an agreement to make its national vessel tracking data publicly available through the Global Fishing Watch (GFW) map in order to improve transparency for its fishing industry.

In a joint statement made by Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca), international conservation group Oceana and the GFW, officials confirmed that tracking information on more than 1,500 commercial vessels will be available in near real-time.

The announcement follows a modernization of Sernapesca, which included parameters for a national Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) for fishing vessels. Officials see this development as an important element in fighting illegal fishing activities.

“President [Sebastián] Piñera’s government program instructed us to redouble our efforts to fight illegal fishing and work for the adequate management and sustainability of fishery resources,” Sernapesca National Director Alicia Gallardo said. She added that part of her goru’s strategy is to encourage citizens and other players to get involved in the protection of its oceanic resources.

The statement said the announcement was the fruit of an extended campaign by Oceana, which “has been working for many years to increase transparency in the fisheries sector and to establish large marine parks,” Liesbeth van der Meer, vice president of Oceana Chile, said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chilean salmon industry pledges 50 percent reduction in antibiotics usage

March 20, 2018 — At Seafood Expo North America on Monday, 18 March, companies representing about 80 percent of the total production of salmon in Chile vowed to reduce their use of antibiotics and seek a “Good Alternative” rating from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program by 2025.

Members of the Chilean Salmon Marketing Council, which include Cermaq Chile, MultiExport Foods, Australis, Salmones Camachaca, Blumar, Ventisqueros, Salmones Austral, Marine Farm, Salmones Magallanes, and AgroSuper (which owns Aquachile, Los Fiordos, and Verlasso), have all pledged to pursue a 50 percent reduction in their use of antibiotics by 2025.

The partnership between SalmonChile, the Chilean Salmon Marketing Council, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium will formally be known as the Chilean Salmon Antibiotic Reduction Program (CSARP). Norway-based Mowi’s Chilean operations will also participate in the initiative, SalmonChile CEO Arturo Clement told SeafoodSource at the event.

Griffin said the issue of antibiotic use has been a major one for the Chilean salmon industry for years, and that when he took over as head of the marketing council in December 2017, curbing antibiotic use was a top priority for him, as a means to achieve higher recognition in Seafood Watch’s seafood ranking system, which rates seafood as either a “Best Choice,” a “Good Alternative,” or as food to “Avoid.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Maine can have both environmental stewardship and aquaculture innovation

March 11, 2019 — There is a 90 percent deficit in fresh seafood trade in the U.S. A large amount of the fresh salmon consumed in the U.S. is flown in from Europe, Chile, and New Zealand, leaving a considerable carbon footprint. Along with an expected 7 to 8 percent annual growth in seafood consumption, there is a strong incentive for creating new, sustainable food systems in the U.S.

While the demand-supply gap keeps growing, there is no growth in sight from wild catch fisheries or net pen operations. Thus, solutions must take a new approach to fish farming and be sustainable. This is where local, land-based aquaculture comes into the picture.

Nordic Aquafarms was started in Norway with a mission to create a more environmentally sustainable way of producing fish — a solution for the future. Nordic Aquafarms is an international front-runner in the land-based fish farming industry. Land-based facilities are indoor production facilities where fish are raised to harvest size in a series of independent tank systems. It is not possible for the fish to escape from our facility, while other potentially harmful effects on wild salmon populations are eliminated.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Chile fishers brace for fallout after massive mining port is approved

November 27, 2018 — On Jan. 30, 2015, the Chilean environmental agency granted permission for the construction and operation of the Cruz Grande port in La Higuera, a community in northern Chile’s Coquimbo region. The port, built to handle 13.5 million tons of iron per year in 75 shipments, lies just 29 kilometers (18 miles) from the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve and the Choros and Damas Islands Marine Reserve.

The Cruz Grande project is owned by an affiliate of the Compañía de Acero del Pacífico (CAP), the main iron mining and steel production group in Chile and the biggest on the western coast of the Americas. The project’s approval went practically unnoticed at a time when attention was focused on the construction of the nearby Dominga mining project and port, owned by the Chilean company Andes Iron SpA and with ties to President Sebastián Piñera’s private businesses.

Massive protests against the Dominga project were organized in a bid to stop what many people feared would lead to irreversible impacts on one of the Pacific coast’s most important marine reserves. Yet the Cruz Grande project, located just 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Dominga, obtained its environmental license without drawing much attention. It’s also even closer to the natural protected areas than Dominga, with higher projected port traffic and shipment volumes.

Read the full story at Mongabay News

Loved to Death: How Pirate Fishing Decimates Chile’s Favorite Fish

October 26, 2018 — When Hugo Arancibia Farías was a child, his mother, like most mothers in central Chile, visited the weekly market to buy common hake, a white-fleshed relative of cod. She usually served it fried, Arancibia recalled with relish. “It was very cheap,” he said, “and very popular.”

Nowadays, hake is more expensive than beef. “It is too much for a family,” said Arancibia, a fisheries biologist at the University of Concepción in central Chile. The reason is simple economics: The scarcer a resource, the more expensive. After a devastating population crash in the mid-2000s, Chile’s once-common hake have yet to recover.

After years of blaming the collapse on an influx of predatory squid, Arancibia said, fisheries officials recently wised up to the real culprit: a vast tide of illegal fishing, much of it from artisanal fishers. If the illegal hake catch can’t be reined in, experts say, Chile stands to lose its most important artisanal fishery, a cultural touchstone—and a pretty tasty fried fish.

Common hake, called merluza in Spanish, is to Chile what cod was to New England. But unlike hulking cod, hake’s not much to look at, at least not anymore.

In the seafood market in Caleta Portales, a fish landing site in the central Chilean city of Valparaiso, hake are the little guys heaped among monstrous cusk eels and seabream as big and flat as dinner plates. The little hake have skinny, tapering bodies, big heads and bugged eyes—the result of gas expansion as the fish were yanked up quickly from ocean depths.

Hake weren’t always so runty. They used to be bigger at maturity, by several centimeters. But nowadays, because of overfishing, there aren’t many big fish left. Most hake in Chilean waters are juveniles, and the adults are getting smaller as they race to reproduce before they’re caught.

The first ripples of overfishing stirred in the 1990s, as Chile poured its national energies into economic growth after the end of a two-decade military dictatorship. Fisheries policies encouraged the rapid expansion of an industrial, export-oriented fleet, with little thought to sustainability. “The attitude was to produce, to exploit, to overexploit,” Arancibia said.

Read the full story at EcoWatch

Alaska salmon exports should fetch high prices this year

May 30, 2018 — Forces are aligned for a nice pay day for Alaska’s salmon fishermen.

There is no backlog from last season in cold storages, a lower harvest forecast is boosting demand, prices for competing farmed salmon have remained high all year and a devalued U.S. dollar makes Alaska salmon more appealing to foreign customers.

“Over the past year the dollar has weakened 11 percent against the euro, 9 percent against the British pound, 5 percent against the Japanese yen, and 7 percent against the Chinese yuan. That makes Alaska salmon and other seafood more affordable to those top overseas customers,” said Garrett Evridge, a fisheries analyst at the McDowell Group.

Last year, Alaska seafood exports set records in terms of volume and value — 1.1 billion metric tons valued at $3.45 billion. Alaska salmon accounted for 22 percent of the volume and 36 percent of the value.

On the home front, the weaker dollar will make imports from Chile, the largest farmed salmon importer to the U.S. followed by Norway, more expensive. That also will apply to imports of competing wild salmon from Canada where — if it materializes — a big sockeye run is predicted at nearby British Columbia.

Read the full story at National Fisherman 

 

Financial outlook sunny for salmon fishermen, plus commercial salmon openers around Alaska

May 29, 2018 — Forces are aligned for a nice payday for Alaska’s salmon fishermen.

There is no backlog from last season in cold storages, a lower harvest forecast is boosting demand, prices for competing farmed salmon have remained high all year, and a devalued U.S. dollar makes Alaska salmon more appealing to foreign customers.

“Over the past year the dollar has weakened 11 percent against the euro, 9 percent against the British pound, 5 percent against the Japanese yen, and 7 percent against the Chinese yuan. That makes Alaska salmon and other seafood more affordable to those top overseas customers,” said Garrett Evridge, a fisheries analyst at the McDowell Group.

Last year Alaska seafood exports set records in terms of volume and value — 1.1 billion metric tons valued at $3.45 billion. Alaska salmon accounted for 22 percent of the volume and 36 percent of the value.

On the home front, the weaker dollar will make imports from Chile, the largest farmed salmon importer to the U.S. followed by Norway, more expensive. That also will apply to imports of competing wild salmon from Canada where — if it materializes — a big sockeye run is predicted in nearby British Columbia.

“About every four years we expect a relatively large harvest from the Fraser River run in B.C. In 2014 they produced about 83 million pounds of salmon and sockeye was the largest component,” Evridge said. “Likewise, a weaker dollar will make wild salmon imports from Russia and Japan more expensive for U.S. buyers.”

Russia, which had grown from a $10 million customer of primarily pink salmon roe to $60 million in 2013, has banned all imports of U.S. seafood since 2014. Meanwhile, that country continues to send millions of tons of salmon and other seafood into the U.S.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Chile Announces Protections for Massive Swath of Ocean With Three New Marine Parks

The almost 450,000 square miles encompass a stunning diversity of marine life, including hundreds of species found nowhere else

March 1, 2018 — Today, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet signed into law protections for nearly 450,000 square miles of water—an area roughly the size of Texas, California and West Virginia combined. Split into three regions, the newly protected areas encompass a stunning range of marine environments, from the spawning grounds of fish to the migratory paths of humpback whales to the nesting grounds of seabirds.

“The Chilean government has really positioned itself as a global leader in ocean protection and conservation,” says Emily Owen, an officer with Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project, which has worked for over six years to help make these protected waters a reality. With the new parks, more than 40 percent of Chilean waters have some level of legal protection.

The largest of the three regions is the Rapa Nui Marine Protected Area (MPA), where industrial fishing and mining will be prohibited but traditional fishing remains permissible. At 278,000 square miles, this area encompasses the entirety of the economic zone of Easter Island, safeguarding more than 140 native species and 27 that are threatened or endangered. Notably, it is one of the few marine protected areas in the world in which indigenous people had a hand—and a vote—in establishing the boundaries and level of protection.

“I like to think of Easter Island as an oasis in the middle of an oceanic desert,” says Owen. The islands themselves are the peaks of an underwater ridge teeming with life. They also provide important spawning grounds for economically significant species like tuna, marlin and swordfish.

Read the full story at Smithsonian.com