March 24, 2022 — The WTO has rescheduled its 12th Ministerial Conference for the week of 13 June, 2022, with a deal to limit fishery subsidies a key item on the agenda.
It comes as China has upped its subsidies to the country’s biggest state-owned tuna fishing firms while Greenpeace has sounded the alarm at the increased threat to marine biodiversity from growing distant-water fleets.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
March 22, 2022 — Warm weather this spring may boost catches of lucrative baby eels in Maine, but the ongoing effects of the covid pandemic still could hamper the global availability of the popular seafood item.
An abundance of eels during Maine’s 11-week elver season, which starts Tuesday, may not be able to overcome pandemic-related difficulties in shipping the eels to eastern Asia, where most elvers caught in Maine are raised to adulthood in aquaculture ponds in China and then sold into the enormous Japanese seafood market.
“As of now, the biggest challenge facing the industry this season will be the logistics of getting eels to their ultimate destinations,” said Mitchell Feigenbaum, a major distributor of Maine eels. “A severe COVID outbreak in Hong Kong combined with strict import controls have created great uncertainty in the market as the season prepares to open.”
China has maintained a “COVID zero” policy that in recent weeks has resulted in the country locking down areas where outbreak of the disease are detected, which potentially could inhibit the ability to ship Maine elvers to Chinese aquaculture sites. Because elvers have to be shipped live, the possibility of shipments being delayed and elvers dying en route can make things “very risky” for dealers, Feigenbaum said.
March 16, 2022 — Sanctions on Russian trade imposed by the U.S., European Union, and the U.K. on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine are likely to have a major impact on global seafood trade, including trade with China, according to Lotus Seafood CEO Nick Ovchinnikov.
Lotus Seafood is an Oceanside, California, U.S.A.-based seafood trader that is undergoing a transformation from providing commodity seafood to specializing in frozen value-added meals. Ovchinnikov relocated his business from Russia to California 10 years ago.
March 16, 2022 — Mounting supply-chain difficulties are creating opportunities for U.S. processors to re-shore work that previously was performed abroad.
In China, where the bulk of processing of seafood products eventually exported to the United States was once completed, a shift is underway. Companies that previously focused on exports are discovering they can make better returns in the domestic market, according to Cui He, the secretary general of the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Association (CAPPMA). Cui also cited China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related logistical and transportation issues that have slowed production and delivery times for the country’s seafood processing sector.
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March 10, 2022 — Fewer Chinese fishing vessels are entering North Korean territorial waters, a reversal from years of increases.
In July 2020, a study using data provided by Global Fishing Watch found at least 700 vessels of Chinese origin had fished illegally in North Korean waters in 2018, and that more than 900 had done so in 2017.
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February 22, 2022 — All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation want the Biden administration to hold China accountable for its apparent failure to live up to a 2020 trade deal.
In a letter sent Thursday to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Sen. Angus King and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden said China has broken its promise to buy more Maine lobster. They also requested details on exactly how much lobster China agreed to buy under the trade deal, which was negotiated and signed during the Trump administration. Sen. Susan Collins sent Tai a similar letter Wednesday.
Recent analyses indicate that China has failed to buy all of the additional $200 million in U.S. goods that trade officials said the country committed to in the “Phase One Deal” unveiled in early 2020. An analysis by Bloomberg released last month said China had only purchased 63 percent of the U.S. goods it had agreed to buy as part of an effort to reduce the trade deficit between the two countries.
In their letter, King, Pingree and Golden said China has bought “almost no lobster above 2017 levels” and said U.S. officials need to take action to make sure the additional purchases spelled out in the agreement take place.
February 2, 2022 — Government officials and executives from China’s distant-water fishing sector are teaming up to promote increased consumption of the distant-water catch in interior regions of the country as a way of taming price inflation and conserving local fisheries.
Officials from China’s Ministry of Agriculture joined members of China’s Distant-Water Fishing Association in Chongqing recently for the “Promoting Ocean Seafood Inland” roadshow, which since September 2021 has also included stops in Changsha, Wuhan, Hefei, and Xi’an. The events have taken place in luxury hotels in the inland cities and have featured seafood exhibits and cooking demonstrations.
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January 31, 2022 — Eighteen years after a shrimp farm in Belize became the first Best Aquaculture Practices-certified facility, the program continues to grow at a healthy rate and is eyeing expansion into China.
The Global Seafood Alliance’s BAP third-party certification program grew 8.6 percent in 2021, ending the year with 3,169 BAP-certified facilities in six continents and 39 countries, up from 2,918 BAP-certified facilities at the end of 2020, according to the organization.
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January 25, 2022 — Despite the People’s Republic of China maintaining that mainland China and Taiwan are parts of “One China” whose sovereignty cannot be divided, the world’s second-largest economy appears reluctant to entertain such perceptions when it comes to the management of fisheries for both entities.
The country’s delegation to the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) has disagreed with the commission’s 10,557 metric ton (MT) yellowfin tuna catch-limit for 2022, saying the figure is below the 15,339 MT it expected. The higher quota is based on catch limits being calculated separately for mainland China and Taiwan.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
January 21, 2022 — As China’s economy continues to evolve and its trade relationship with the U.S. remains strained, it is likely other countries in Southeast Asia will take a larger role in processing seafood, according to a panel of experts at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference.
Trade relations between the U.S. and China became suddenly more volatile when the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump implemented tariffs on Chinese goods. Trump’s stated goal was to put an end to the significant trade imbalance between the two countries – an imbalance that U.S.-China Business Council President Craig Allen said was nothing new.