Saving Seafood

Oceana reports Chinese, Spanish squid vessels ‘going dark’ off Argentina

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.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

China brushes off US sanctions against Dalian Ocean Fishing

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hundreds of fishing fleets that go ‘dark’ suspected of illegal hunting, study finds

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.

Read the full story at The Guardian

US issues order against Chinese fishing company accused of forced labor

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chinese distant-water firms plan big push after COVID-19 sales lull

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).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Lawsuit involving US seafood companies seeks to end, refund tariffs on Chinese goods

May 26, 2021 — A lawsuit filed by a company specializing in vinyl flooring against the U.S. Section 301 tariffs on goods from China has led to a slew of other American companies following suit.

Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S.A.-based HMTX Industries and its affiliated companies filed a complaint at the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) in September 2020 that challenges the authority of former U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer. The lawsuit focuses specifically on the “unlawful escalation” of the trade war “through the imposition of a third and fourth round of tariffs on products covered by so-called ‘List 3’ and ‘List 4A,’” the lawsuit states.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

U.S. Coast Guard Needs Money And White House Attention To Tackle Depredatory Chinese Fishing

May 25, 2021 — President Joe Biden sketched out the business case for a larger U.S. Coast Guard last week, addressing new graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. But that busy future may not get the cash it needs to become reality.

The mismatch between rhetoric and resources—always a challenge with the “can-do” Coast Guard—is particularly stark in the battle to constrain depredatory deep-sea fishing. Motivational speeches are nice to hear, but as Joe Biden’s Pentagon embraces a high-tech vision for America’s national security, the unprecedented emergence of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing as a major national security issue risks being overlooked, sunk under a hail of hypersonics, artificial intelligence and robots that big defense contractors with big pockets really, really want the U.S. to pursue.

For some of President Biden’s newly appointed Pentagon leaders, disinterest in illegal fishing may well be a case of “not invented here.” And that’s a shame. One of the bigger surprises of the Trump administration is that illegal fishing managed to go “viral” during one of the most environmentally unfriendly administrations in American history. The policy focus was developed behind the scenes, ignored as high-level Trump administration officials focused on almost everything else but the sea. The issue was quietly advanced via a low-key confederation of oft-ignored professionals in the State Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, elements of the Department of Defense as well as certain intelligence agencies.

Read the full story at Forbes

Cannery workers document the Chinese history of Alaska’s fishing industry

May 19, 2021 — Like other parts of the country, Asian immigrants have a long history in Alaska. Besides building railroads and working in mines, they also played a major role in the cannery industry.

As Alaska Public Media’s Jeff Chen reports, the Chinese immigrants who arrived before statehood helped grow Alaska’s wild salmon industry into the international, multi-billion-dollar economy that it is today.

Watch the video here

For more information on the historical documentation projects discussed in this video, check out the links below.
https://nncanneryproject.com/
https://chinesecannerylaborers.home.blog

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Hawaii’s Fishermen Are Worried About China’s Fleet. So Is The Military

May 17, 2021 — Hawaii’s commercial fishermen and the U.S. military have a potential threat in common — China’s fleet of government-subsidized ships that has been straying into more distant waters in search of seafood and more influence.

Local longliners have reported seeing increasing numbers of Chinese vessels near the islands, accusing them of overfishing and intimidating tactics.

Sometimes the ships are fishing, sometimes they’re making their way into the eastern Pacific and sometimes they’re seemingly just sitting at sea, says Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association.

He noted that a group of Chinese vessels seemed to be loitering north of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge last week. “What are they fishing for? I don’t know,” said Kingma. “But it’s an example of them being close to Hawaii and, we believe, getting closer.”

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Analyst says China not meeting US seafood purchase commitments under trade agreement

May 17, 2021 — China is not living up to its commitments to purchase U.S. seafood under the 2020 trade agreement between the two sides, according to a trade analyst at a U.S. fishery trade body.

The U.S. China Economic and Trade Agreement, also known as the “phase one deal,” was signed in early 2020 and bound China to USD 200 billion (EUR 164.5 billion) in purchases from the U.S. through increasing orders of certain commodities, including seafood. The increase was based on figures for 2017 – the last full year before the trade war began.

Read the full story at Seafood Source