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
June 4, 2021 — A South Atlantic shortfin squid fishery is dominated by distant-water fleets off Argentina, primarily Chinese vessels that account for an estimated 69 percent of fishing activity, according to a new report by the environmental group Oceana.
From Jan. 1, 2018 to April 25, 2021, the group documented more than 800 foreign-flag vessels logging more than 900,000 hours of apparent fishing activity, based on analysis of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data.
That analysis also showed vessels regularly “went dark” – apparently turning off their AIS transponders – effectively dropping out of sight for 600,000 hours in all. Some 66 percent of those outages involved Chinese vessels, raising the possibility of masked illegal fishing, such as intruding into Argentina’s exclusive economic zone, according to Oceana researchers.
June 4, 2021 — U.S. sanctions filed last week against a Chinese distant-water fishing firm for alleged forced labor abuses amount to “American slander,” according to a Chinese state media outlet.
The China Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party Youth League, has sought to link the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s sanctioning of the Dalian Ocean Fishing Co. to other Western claims of human rights abuses as part of a coordinated effort to “tarnish” China.
June 2, 2021 — Giant distant-water fishing fleets, primarily from China, are switching off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in a possibly illegal hunt for squid and other lucrative species on the very edge of Argentina’s extensive fishing grounds, according to a new study by Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.
Every year, vessels crowd together along the limits of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to take advantage of the lucrative fishing grounds.
By monitoring the ships’ tracking beacons between January 2018 and April 2021, Oceana found that more than 800 vessels apparently conducted nearly 900,000 hours of fishing within 20 nautical miles of the invisible border between Argentina’s national waters and the high seas.
“During this three-and-a-half-year period, there were over 6,000 instances in which these fishing vessels appeared to go ‘dark’ by potentially disabling their electronic tracking devices, known as Automatic Identification Systems (AIS),” says the report, published on Wednesday, titled, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Vanishing Vessels Along Argentina’s Waters.
In all, these vessels were “hidden” for over 600,000 hours during which Oceana suspects they crossed over into Argentina’s territorial waters for illegal fishing.
“It’s very suspicious that they have their AIS turned off for such a large proportion of the time they are out fishing,” said Marla Valentine, an ecologist at Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.
June 1, 2021 — A Chinese spokesperson on Monday, 31 May, rejected American claims that a Chinese fishing company has committed forced labor violations, calling the claims “totally unfounded.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday, 28 May, that Customs and Border Protection officials had issued an order against the Dalian Ocean Fishing Company, Ltd. That order came after agency officials said they identified all 11 signs of forced labor during an investigation. Those signs included isolating workers, withholding wages, using intimidation, and retaining workers’ identification documents.
May 28, 2021 — China’s top distant-water fishing firms are making big plans for 2021 after many suffered losses in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chinese tuna fishery firm Shanghai Kaichuang Marine International Co. is predicting a bounce-back year on predicted stronger sales of its marquee product. The pandemic seriously dented demand and pricing for the firm’s tuna, according to the company, which reported a 10.9 percent year-on-year decline in revenues last year to CNY 1.9 billion (USD 285 million, EUR 247 million), alongside a 17.5 percent drop in profits, which sunk to CNY 135 million (USD 20.2 million, EUR 17.5 million).