Saving Seafood

COVID-19 has scrambled China’s aquafeed sector markets, with domestic market now a primary focus

July 14, 2021 — China’s domestic aquaculture sector is shifting its production focus to a later harvest in order to supply rising demand from within the country, according to a leading Chinese supplier of fishmeal and fish oil.

A fishmeal trader with an IFFO-certified fish oil refining plant, Fujian High Fortune Bio-Tech Group also has a GMP plant for omega-3 related products and healthcare industry production. Its clients are in the human consumption and health care industries, in addition to animal and aquafeed production and the pet food industry.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Overwhelmed by Chinese Fleets, Filipino Fishermen ‘Protest and Adapt’

July 12, 2021 — The fishermen along the western coast of Luzon Island, in the Philippines, have known for generations that the seas, the tides and the weather can determine their fortunes. More recently, they have added China to that list.

Scarborough Shoal, a nearby triangular chain of reefs and rocks in the South China Sea, was once the source of bountiful catches of large reef fish. But the fishermen are no longer allowed to go near it.

“The Chinese have already swallowed Karburo whole, but that area is really ours,” said Johnny Sonny Geruela, using the Filipino name for Scarborough. Mr. Geruela lives in Masinloc, a small fishing community just 124 nautical miles from the shoal.

China’s Coast Guard has had ships anchored near Scarborough for almost a decade. Five years ago this week, an international court ruled that the territory was well within Manila’s exclusive economic zone, and invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. Beijing has effectively ignored the ruling and expanded its presence in the region.

Filipino fishermen like Mr. Geruela now avoid the shoal, where they once sheltered during storms, exchanged greetings and cigarettes, and harvested the abundant reef fish. And the lessons of Scarborough are playing out elsewhere in the South China Sea, as China continues to flex its muscle on the water and pursue power through a campaign of steady provocation.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Marine Stewardship Council launches strategy for Chinese retailers

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

China to pause squid fishing in Pacific, Atlantic breeding grounds

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.

Read the full story at MSN

Mixed signals jumble outlook for China’s seafood market

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Environmental Investing Frenzy Stretches Meaning of ‘Green’

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.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

China faces import dilemma in advance of 1 July holiday

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US crackdown on forced labor opens seafood importers to heightened scrutiny

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ANALYSIS: Squid Imports Rapidly Diminishing Year-Over-Year

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.

Read the full story at Seafood News