Saving Seafood

China subsidies testing value of new WTO deal

October 4, 2022 — Members of the World Trade Organization will shortly elect a new chair to handle the next phase of talks to end harmful fishery subsidies with an informal meeting of delegates taking place 10 October, where participants will map out a course for negotiations.

Santiago Wills, Colombia’s ambassador to the WTO, chaired the negotiations on the landmark agreement struck in June 2022, which prohibited subsidy support for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and limited fishing of overfished stocks. In a statement in late September, Wills urged WTO members to deposit their instruments of acceptance of the agreement as soon as possible so to allow it to enter into force. Hesaid work would continue on “advancing the negotiations” in preparation for the upcoming conference of trade ministers in December 2023.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

China’s Huge Appetite for Fish

September 27, 2022 — A single country has accounted for about 80 percent of the fishing in the international waters just off Argentina, Ecuador and Peru this year. And it is not a South American country. It is China.

In recent years, hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels have begun to operate almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week, off the coast of South America. The ships move with the seasons, from Ecuador to Peru to Argentina. China has focused on these faraway waters after depleting fish stocks closer to its own shores.

You can see the scale of this fishing effort in the maps that are part of a Times project by Steven Lee Myers, Agnes Chang, Derek Watkins and Claire Fu.

China’s fishing expansion is part of a much larger story, of course. As the world’s most populous country, and one with an economy that has grown rapidly in recent decades, China has a growing global footprint — economically, diplomatically and militarily. It needs so much fish to feed a middle class that has become vastly larger over the past generation.

Read the full article at New York Times

China Eyes 4 Unsecured U.S. Marine National Monuments In The Pacific

August 10, 2022 — In the deep Pacific Ocean, America’s four enormous Marine National Monuments are under siege by China. More than just ecological gems, the sprawling refuges are also underappreciated national security resources, offering quiet hiding places for America’s missile submarines, out-of-the-way testing-grounds, and training areas for various U.S. Defense Department assets.

In total, America’s deep-ocean National Monuments lay claim to almost 1.2 million square miles of pristine ocean, and China, as it pours billions of dollars into seizing much of the 1.4 million square mile South China Sea, is already looking to grab other unsecured Pacific territories, positioning to compromise the sanctity of American’s big Marine preserves. To prevent international encroachment, poaching and other sovereignty-degrading insults, America’s fragile Pacific frontiers need far more dedicated wildlife management and enforcement resources.

The current marine monument managers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with NOAA, are insufficiently resourced to manage over a million square miles of strategic ocean. Aside from bulking up their small law enforcement ranks, both agencies can use more funding for timely intelligence support, and procuring drones, helicopters, and some larger enforcement craft to better detect, track, document and then intercept and prosecute illegal activity in the deep Pacific.

Read the full article at Forbes

Feds target U.S. companies caught in lucrative shark fin trade

August 3, 2022 — It’s one of the seafood industry’s most gruesome hunts.

Every year, the fins of as many as 73 million sharks are sliced from the backs of the majestic sea predators, their bleeding bodies sometimes dumped back into the ocean where they are left to suffocate or die of blood loss.

But while the barbaric practice is driven by China, where shark fin soup is a symbol of status for the rich and powerful, America’s seafood industry isn’t immune from the trade.

A spate of recent criminal indictments highlights how U.S. companies, taking advantage of a patchwork of federal and state laws, are supplying a market for fins that activists say is as reprehensible as the now-illegal trade in elephant ivory once was.

A complaint quietly filed last month in Miami federal court accused an exporter based in the Florida Keys, Elite Sky International, of falsely labeling some 5,666 pounds of China-bound shark fins as live Florida spiny lobsters. Another company, south Florida-based Aifa Seafood, is also under criminal investigation for similar violations, according to two people on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe. The company is managed by a Chinese-American woman who in 2016 pleaded guilty to shipping more than a half-ton of live Florida lobsters to her native China without a license.

The heightened scrutiny from law enforcement comes as Congress debates a federal ban on shark fins – making it illegal to import or export even foreign-caught fins. Every year, American wildlife inspectors seize thousands of shark fins while in transit to Asia for failing to declare the shipments.

An attorney for Elite wouldn’t comment nor did two representatives of Aifa when reached by phone.

Overfishing has led to a 71 percent decline in shark species since the 1970s. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based group that tracks wildlife populations, estimates that over a third of the world’s 500-plus shark species are threatened with extinction.

Contrary to industry complaints about excessive regulations, the U.S. is hardly a model of sustainable shark management, said Webber. She pointed to a recent finding by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that less than 23% of the 66 shark stocks in U.S. waters are safe from overfishing. The status of more than half of shark stocks isn’t even known.

The situation in Europe is even worse: a new report from Greenpeace, called “Hooked on Sharks,” revealed what it said is evidence of the deliberate targeting of juvenile blue sharks by fishing fleets from Spain and Portugal. The report found that the U.S. is the world’s fourth-largest shark exporter behind Spain, China and Portugal, with exports of 3.2 million kilograms of meat – but not fins – worth over $11 million in 2020.

Webber said rather than safeguard a small shark fishing industry, the U.S. should blaze the trail to protect the slow-growing, long-living fish.

“We can’t ask other countries to clean up their act if we’re not doing it well ourselves,” said Webber.

Read the full article at Press Herald

Cutting fisheries subsidies

July 8, 2022 — In studies that look at their global impact, fisheries subsidies that nations pay out to build up their capacity to catch fish are defined as “subsidies that encourage fishing capacity to develop to a point where resource exploitation exceeds the maximum sustainable yield, effectively resulting in the overexploitation of natural capital assets.”

China has spent billions on this type of subsidy – over $5 billion of the $35.5 billion in U.S. dollars spent on subsidies worldwide. The U.S. is also a major contributor to fisheries subsidies, but they are primarily beneficial – not capacity enhancing – subsidies, defined as “investments in the promotion of fishery resource conservation and management.” The US and Canada are unique in spending more on beneficial subsidies than capacity-enhancing subsidies.

But on June 17 the World Trade Organization (WTO) took a step toward leveling the playing field, introducing new rules intended to put a check on fisheries subsidies.

Conservation groups are divided on their appraisals of the new rules, with the Pew Charitable Trusts calling them a move in the right direction, and Oceana’s Andrew Sharpless lamenting the WTO’s work.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Southern Shrimp Alliance wants US to maintain tariffs on Chinese imports

July 5, 2022 — The Southern Shrimp Alliance has called on the U.S. government to continue a 25 percent tariff on Chinese seafood imports, saying the additional levy has helped domestic producers “compete on a more-level playing field.”

The trade organization made its stance known in a Thursday, 30 June letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Four years ago, former U.S. President Donald Trump implemented Section 301 tariffs on an array of Chinese goods in response to that country’s policies regarding intellectual property and technology transfer. The U.S. government is currently conducting a two-phase review of the action, with Tuesday, 5 July the cutoff date for comments.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Biden aims at China in new illegal fishing policy framework

June 27, 2022 — The Biden administration is stepping up efforts to combat illegal fishing by China, ordering federal agencies to better coordinate among themselves as well as with foreign partners in a bid to promote sustainable exploitation of the world’s oceans.

On Monday, the White House released its first ever National Security memo on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or IUU, to coincide with the start of a United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Nearly 11% of total U.S. seafood imports in 2019 worth $2.4 billion came from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, a federal agency.

While China isn’t named in the lengthy policy framework, language in it left little doubt where it was aimed. The memo is bound to irritate Beijing at a time of growing geopolitical competition between the two countries. China is a dominant seafood processor and through state loans and fuel subsidies has built the world’s largest distant water fishing fleet, with thousands of floating fish factories spread across Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Specifically, the memo directs 21 federal departments and agencies to better share information, coordinate enforcement actions such as sanctions and visa restrictions and promote best practices among international allies.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

China’s salmon consumption growth imperiled by higher import prices

June 22, 2022 — Chinese consumers are facing soaring prices for imported salmon, and that may not be good for long-term market growth, according to Fan Xubing, head of the Beijing-based seafood marketing consultancy Seabridge.

Exports of fresh Norwegian Atlantic salmon to China increased 67 percent in value year-on-year between January and May 2022, even while dropping 11 percent in volume. That jump is part of a global surge in salmon prices as many global markets bounce back following years of COVID-19-related dining and public gathering restrictions, according to Andreas Thorud, the Norwegian Seafood Council’s representative in China.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

The US Is a Dumping Ground for Illegal Seafood. Some Lawmakers Want to Clean Up the Market

June 13, 2022 — In the end, the eels were worth an estimated $160 million. Over four years, they trickled through U.S. seaports in 138 shipping containers that eight people were later accused of importing illegally.

In March, a grand jury indicted the CEO of American Eel Depot, a New Jersey company, along with three members of the staff and four business affiliates in association with the alleged crimes. U.S. attorneys charged that the eels—packaged and labeled as unagi—were illegally harvested as juveniles in Europe and Asia, then shipped around the world to disguise their origins. They were raised to adulthood in a Chinese fish farm and sent to the United States as purportedly legal fare.

Those 138 shipping containers represent just a tiny portion of the illegal seafood that is sold in America annually. According to a report by the U.S. International Trade Commission, illegal seafood accounted for $2.4 billion in sales in 2019, or nearly 11 percent of $22 billion in seafood imports that year. Should the allegations against American Eel Depot prove true, nabbing them is a coup for federal investigators, a rare win in an oft-elusive struggle to slow the speed of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) seafood coming through U.S. ports in huge volumes. It has been a problem for years, but legislation currently in Congress aims to advance efforts to curtail it.

Read the full story at Civil Eats