Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska pollock sector welcomes MSC eco-label push from McDonald’s China

July 27, 2023 — McDonald’s China recently announced that it will now include the blue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) eco-label on its Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, Double Fish burgers, and Kids Fish Fillet burgers, served in more than 5,000 restaurants nationwide.

The initiative, according to Gu Lei, chief impact officer of McDonald’s China, “will continue to help protect the vitality of the ocean.” Gu described McDonald’s China as “actively building a sustainable supply chain to reduce damage to the environment through its seafood procurement.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

China reprocessing, selling Russian-origin seafood to US despite import ban

July 5, 2023 — China has experienced a surge in Russian seafood entering the country recently, and is reprocessing and selling much of it to markets that have banned Russian seafood imports, including the U.S.

Bilateral seafood trade between the China and Russia rose 80 percent in the first quarter of 2023, according to Robin Wang, head of seafood marketing agency SMH International in Shanghai. Overall, Sino-Russian trade rose 38.7 percent year-over-year in Q1.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US CBP to redistribute USD 2.6 million in seafood-related antidumping duties

June 13, 2023 — U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to redistribute USD 2,598,890 (EUR 2,417,871) collected from antidumping and countervailing duties on imported seafood products to domestic producers in the 2023 fiscal year.

The vast majority of the collected funds came from crawfish tail meat imported from China, which accounted for USD 2.3 million (EUR 2.1 million). Vietnamese frozen fish fillets were the other major contributor, accounting for USD 302,754 (EUR 281,676). CBP also collected a total of USD 3,270 (EUR 3,042) for frozen warmwater shrimp and prawns imported from Ecuador, Brazil, India, and Thailand.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource 

39 feared dead after Chinese fishing vessel overturns in Indian Ocean

May 24, 2023 — A Chinese fishing vessel sunk in the Indian Ocean on 16 May with 39 crew onboard.

The Lu Peng Yuan Yu No 28, owned by Shandong-based Chinese state-owned fishing company  Penglai Jinglu Fishery Co, activated its emergency beacon at 5:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday, 16 May amid severe weather. A combined Indian and Australian rescue effort reported up to 120-kilometer-per-hour winds and seven-meter-high waves in the area. The ship was reported overturned by a passing merchant vessel around 900 nautical miles southwest of India, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

IFFO reports higher fishmeal supply, but lower demand in China

May 15, 2023 — Global fishmeal production in 2023 through March was up 36 percent year-over-year, according to IFFO – The Marine Ingredients Organization.

IFFO, which tracks fishmeal production in Peru, Chile, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the United States, Africa, and Spain, reported improved availability of raw material, bolstered by a late start to the second fishing season in the north-central area of Peru.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

China avoids second Covid wave, but market recovery slower than expected

April 4, 2023 — Nearly six months on from China dropping its zero-Covid policy, consumer spending on seafood has risen, but not by as much as some experts had expected.

China’s consumer price index rose just 1 percent in February 2023, while producer prices fell 1.4 percent, suggesting demand for goods in the domestic economy remains tepid even as China’s exports have faced weaker demand from Western markets beset by inflation.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The United States must act to stop illegal fishing in 2023

February 6, 2023 — In 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration strengthened U.S. policy to counter the dangers of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This year, the United States must urgently begin to translate this framework into robust action around the world. To this end, Washington should prioritize establishing anti-IUU partnerships with countries in Latin America and Africa. The existing U.S.-led anti-IUU and Quad partnerships in the Indo-Pacific can serve as important models.

Beyond food and economic security and environmental impacts, new geopolitical and conflict threats associated with IUU fishing have emerged. In the fall, reports came out about an interaction during which a U.S. Coast Guard cutter encountered a Chinese fishing fleet off the coast of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands while patrolling for IUU fishing. When the Coast Guard attempted to board several of the ships to ensure they were following internationally accepted fishing practices, the Chinese vessels sped away with one turning aggressively toward the Coast Guard cutter, requiring the U.S. boat to take evasive action to avoid being rammed. This dangerous interaction was a hazardous deviation from international maritime protocol. Ultimately, the Coast Guard found possible violations on two of the vessels it was able to board and referred the matter to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, which includes China.

While China is not the sole perpetrator of global IUU fishing, it is increasingly becoming a major one. With dwindling fish stocks near its own shores, Chinese distant water fleets are fishing thousands of miles away from the Chinese mainland and using large processor/transport vessels to get their catch back to China. Estimates put the Chinese distant water fishing fleet at around 3,000 vessels, with nearly 500 fishing in the South Pacific, sometimes for months at a time. Of course, not all of what distant water Chinese fishing vessels are doing is illegal. Outwardly, China says it does not support IUU fishing and it has shown the ability to address specific issues when presented with overwhelming evidence of violations. However, it remains to be seen how much China will clamp down and proactively work on IUU fishing issues to ensure long-term viability of global fish stocks.

Read the full article at Brookings

Pingtan Marine, Chinese government, NGOs respond to US sanctions

December 22, 2022 — A Chinese government spokesperson has assailed U.S. sanctions against two Chinese distant-water fishing firms as evidence of “double standards.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning, responding on 9 December to a question from TASS, the Russian news service, rejected allegations of human rights abuses onboard Chinese fishing vessels and China said punitive actions taken by the U.S. against Pingtan Marine and Dalian Ocean Fishing represented interference in the country’s internal affairs.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Exclusive: Shark finning rampant across Chinese tuna firm’s fleet

November 2, 2022 — When Adhi Tayuh Braka joined one of China’s largest fishing fleets in 2018, he planned to catch tuna, knuckle down and save money to get married.

To pass the time, he photographed his co-workers, their equipment and the fish they pulled out of the western Pacific Ocean. Maybe he’d have some pictures to show his girlfriend back home in Indonesia, he thought.

After two years on the Long Xing 801, though, Adhi wasn’t surprised when the foreman confiscated the deckhands’ phones, then scrolled through and erased many of their photos.

“They were hunting shark,” Adhi, 33, told Mongabay. “They deleted the photos because they were afraid they would leak.”

The vessel Adhi worked on belongs to Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), a partially state-owned company that has long claimed to be China’s biggest supplier of sashimi-grade tuna to Japan, a top seafood consumer.

But DOF’s boats have also been the nexus of a massive illegal shark finning operation, an investigation by Mongabay has found, based on interviews with dozens of men who worked as deckhands throughout its fleet of some 35 longline vessels.

Longliners practice a commercial fishing technique in which thousands of baited hooks are dragged through the sea to capture tuna and other fish. But DOF’s boats used banned gear to deliberately catch tens if not hundreds of thousands of sharks each year, including protected species such as the critically endangered oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus).

Read the full article at Mongabay