July 7, 2021 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is seeking to increase its imprint on the Chinese retail scene with the introduction of a strategy document at a recent meeting of retailers in the country’s south.
The MSC Sustainable Seafood Procurement Strategy 2021 was launched at the recent annual purchasers summit organized by the China Chain Store and Franchise Association (CCFA) in Guizhou with a range of seafood import companies present to court retailers with MSC-certified products.
June 29, 2021 — China has announced a temporary ban on its fishing fleet — the world’s biggest — from catching squid in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans after overfishing pushed populations to the brink of collapse.
China reels in as much as 70 percent of the global squid catch, and its vessels sail as far as West Africa and Latin America to sate the growing appetite for seafood in the country.
But Chinese vessels will suspend operations in major global squid spawning grounds in the southwest Atlantic near Argentina from Thursday until September 30, and parts of the Pacific from September to November, the agriculture ministry said Monday.
The ban follows an international backlash against China’s giant overseas fleet, with claims that they are overfishing and damaging fragile marine ecosystems.
Areas covered by the moratorium are breeding grounds for two of the most popular squid varieties — the Argentine shortfin squid and the Humboldt squid.
Populations of the Argentine shortfin have been low in recent years, with the average catch by Chinese vessels in the southwest Atlantic only 50 tonnes in 2019 compared with up to 2,000 tonnes previously, according to the China squid fishing association.
June 29, 2021 — China’s seafood market has been a jumble of mixed signals, with import volumes recovering but prices remaining soft.
In a recent financial update, Singapore-based high-end seafood restaurant chain Jumbo Seafood announced its intention to open more restaurants in China, after posting a strong performance in mainland China in the first five months of 2021. The company currently operates restaurants in five Chinese cities, but had pulled back from expansion in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
June 25, 2021 — The first time Gerard Barron tried to mine the sea floor, the company he backed lost a half-billion dollars of investor money, got crosswise with a South Pacific government, destroyed sensitive seabed habitat and ultimately went broke. Now he’s trying again, but with a twist: Mr. Barron is positioning his new seabed mining venture, The Metals Company, as green, to capitalize on a surge of environmentally minded investment.
TMC is set to receive nearly $600 million in investor cash in a deal slated to take the company public in July. If successful, that would value TMC at $2.9 billion—more than any mining company ever to go public in the U.S. with no revenue.
“We were positioning this incorrectly as a big mining, deep-sea mining project, which it was,” says Mr. Barron, who says the metallic nodules he hopes to bring up are crucial to building electric-vehicle batteries. “But it wasn’t the way that we were going to garner support from investors to make this industry a reality.”
Green investing has grown so fast that there is a flood of money chasing a limited number of viable companies that produce renewable energy, electric cars and the like.
June 23, 2021 — Seafood is being caught up in a broader tightening of access to southern Chinese ports as China worries about the spread of the Indian variant of COVID-19.
While reported case numbers are low, local and regional Chinese government officials are going to drastic lengths to reduce any possibility of a major outbreak of the virus blemishing the upcoming centenary celebrations of the Communist Party of China on 1 July, despite port restrictions pushing up input prices for the large manufacturing and processing industries, according to various sourcing agents and traders impacted by the restrictions.
June 17, 2021 — A comment by a star of state-run media has triggered a national debate on the impact of growing Chinese consumption of seafood.
Chinese-American blogger and filmmaker Gu Yue, who also goes by Kyle Johnson, has been taken to task by Chinese users on Sina Weibo for comments he made calling for more responsible consumption of seafood in China.
June 17, 2021 — The imposition by U.S. authorities of a ban on imports from a top Chinese fishing firm important raises due diligence issues for American seafood importers, according to a lawyer working on such cases.
On 28 May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection imposed a withhold release order on distant-water fishing firm Dalian Ocean Fishing, barring the company’s products from entering American ports. CBP cited the findings of a yearlong investigation that revealed forced labor in the company’s operations as the basis for its action.
June 17, 2021 — Imported squid volumes, prior to 2019, typically trended at 160 million pounds of product entering the United States per year on average. This figure took a massive hit in 2019 when tariffs were implemented on product from China, the main supplying country of squid into the U.S. This resulted in a drop of about 33.3 million pounds from the country. Enter a global pandemic and imports continue to downtrend as 2020 brought in 99 million pounds of squid products, or 65 million pounds less than the previous historical average.
In looking at how 2021 is shaping up, with import information available through April 2021, the year-to-date totals are at least tracking steady or above the previous two years. However, they are falling about 10 million pounds below the typical year-to-date average of this time frame.
June 14, 2021 — China has rolled out a national policy with a new approach toward aquaculture, according to a leading Chinese researcher in the field.
Dong Shuanglin, a professor at the Key Laboratory of Mariculture at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao, has spent much of his career researching mariculture along the coast of Shandong Province, currently an area of focus for numerous companies seeking to develop mariculture initiatives in China. He said such efforts are now being guided by China’s National Marine Ranch Demonstration Area Construction Plan, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, which has prioritized the construction of large-scale, integrated multitrophic systems, many of which include leisure facilities.
June 10, 2021 — The U.S. government blocked imports of seafood Friday from the entire fleet of a Chinese company that authorities say forced crew members to work in slave-like conditions that led to the deaths of several Indonesian fishermen last year.
Customs and Border Protection said it will place an immediate hold on any imports linked to the more than 30 vessels operated by Dalian Ocean Fishing, under a U.S. law that bars goods suspected to have been produced with forced labor.
Imports from Dalian, which primarily fishes for high-grade tuna, have exceeded $20 million as recently as 2018. Amid financial troubles, and a greater focus on the Asian market, the shipments have dropped. CBP said the company shipped $1.8 million worth of cargo to the U.S. in 2019; nearly $321,000 in 2020; and $763,000 through April 30 of this year.
“We will not tolerate any amount derived from forced labor,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters as he announced the measure.
CBP issued what is known as a withhold release order that halts shipments that have suspected links to forced labor, under a law that has been on the books for decades, ostensibly to protect U.S. producers from unfair competition.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Herald