Saving Seafood

Chinese boat that dumped Indonesian crews at sea was also shark-finning: Reports

May 14, 2020 — Conservationists are calling for an investigation into alleged illegal fishing by a Chinese tuna company that kept Indonesian seamen as virtual slaves, leading to the deaths of four of them.

China’s Dalian Ocean Fishing Co. Ltd. has been under scrutiny after reports in early May linked four of its high-seas boats — Long Xing 629, Long Xing 802, Long Xing 605 and Tian Yu 08 — to the human rights abuses of its Indonesian crew members. Four Indonesians died between December 2019 and April 2020 due to the hazardous working conditions on board the boats. The bodies of three of them were dumped overboard for fear of infection, sparking a diplomatic outcry from Jakarta.

Migrant boat crews from Southeast Asia are seen as a source of cheap labor, making up a large proportion of Asia’s distant-water fleets. But deadly conditions await the workers aboard the vessels, such as overwork, having their wages withheld, being forced into debt bondage, and experiencing physical and sexual violence.

The Indonesian government has condemned the abuses of the Indonesian crew on the Chinese boats and called on Beijing to investigate the matter. But conservationists are also calling for both countries to look into allegations that the boats were engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU).

Read the full story at Mongabay

Global Commercial Fishing Falls 6.5% to End-April Due to Coronavirus

May 12, 2020 — Global commercial fishing activity for 2020 fell by around 1 million hours as of end-April, a 6.5% decline over the two previous years, the result of plummeting demand caused by coronavirus lockdowns, according to Global Fishing Watch.

Fishing fleets spent 14.4 million hours on the water for the year so far to April 28, a decline from an average of 15.4 million hours for the same year-to-date periods of 2018 and 2019, according to the nonprofit organization that tracks fishing operation worldwide.

Global Fishing Watch collects and analyses data from onboard identification systems known as AIS, which is used by large ships to broadcast their position and avoid collisions.

The closures of many hotels and restaurants – a large market sector for fisheries – and the logistical challenge of accessing necessary port services contributed to declining prices and plummeting demand, said Tyler Clavelle, a data scientist at Global Fishing Watch.

Much of the drop can be traced to China. While China’s industrial fleet started January more active than years past, there was a large drop after the Lunar New Year holiday in late January. For the two months to March 25, China’s fishing activities fell by 1.2 million hours, a 40% percent drop from the average for the same period the previous two years.

Read the full story from Reuters at The New York Times

American seafood industry may see jobs boost thanks to White House regulation

May 8, 2020 — America’s seafood industry just got a vote of confidence from the White House after President Trump issued an Executive Order aimed at creating jobs for the nation’s fishermen.

“It will create tens of thousands of jobs in our seafood industry and also keep millions of Americans more healthy and safe,” said White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro during an appearance on FOX Business’ ‘The Evening Edit’ while noting, “It will unleash our commercial fisheries in a way that is good for America” he added.

U.S. fish farms produce $1.5 billion a year, compared with $140 billion in China, according to the White House.

Navarro, along with Joe Grogan, outgoing domestic policy advisor to Trump who drove the E.O., penned an Opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, highlighting America’s chance to capitalize on our vast oceans surrounding the nation.

Read the full story at FOX Business

JOE GROGAN & PETER NAVARRO: Trump Lifts the Net off American Fishing

May 8, 2020 — With the global food supply chain under stress, President Trump’s executive order Thursday will help reduce pain in the grocery checkout line—and also strengthen U.S. food production against foreign competition.

The order creates an administrative trade task force to find new markets for American seafood products and identify unfair trade barriers. It also supports industry research, removes unnecessary regulations on commercial fishermen, and streamlines the aquaculture permitting process.

These reforms will allow producers to make better use of the country’s ample resources. The U.S. has one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones, a vast area of ocean in which we have sovereign rights over natural resources. But more than 85% of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. U.S. fish farms produce only $1.5 billion a year, compared with $140 billion in China. Much foreign seafood comes from fish farms in countries that often fail to meet international standards on health, labor and the environment. Many of China’s catfish and tilapia swim in shallow pens with low oxygen levels, polluted by their own waste along with improperly used antibiotics and fungicides. Farmed fish in South America routinely suffer from infectious anemia, algae blooms and sea lice due to poor biosecurity protocols.

The Trump administration wants to protect American consumers from those unhealthy practices, and American aquaculture is the gold standard. Consider the sleek, silvery and delicious Kanpachi—raised in the deep blue waters off Hawaii’s Big Island, inside high-tech submerged pens developed through American innovation. Hawaii’s cutting-edge ocean farms are subject to the highest environmental standards: The fish are raised in pens with healthy oxygen levels and fed sustainable feed. If American aquaculture is allowed to grow to its full potential, it can help revive domestic fish processing, halting the long-running trend of plants moving to China.

President Trump’s executive order creates a task force to enact policies that encourage fair and reciprocal trade for America’s seafood industry, and strengthens enforcement of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The order affirms that the U.S. will continue to hold imported seafood to the same food-safety requirements as domestic products. And it removes many burdensome regulations on commercial fishermen.

Read the full opinion at The Wall Street Journal

The Fate of the WTO and Global Trade Hangs on Fish

May 6, 2020 — The World Trade Organization (WTO) is struggling to maintain its relevance. Protectionism has been rising for more than a decade as a growing number of countries have openly flouted WTO rules. Many are having second thoughts about the wisdom of allowing China into the organization, where it retains special developing-economy rights that help shield its domestic economy from foreign competition. Recent trade agreements have been bilateral or regional, undermining the WTO’s purpose of maintaining a global trading order. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, impediments to trade are only expected to grow.

This sorry state of affairs in the global trading order is mirrored in the lack of progress in the only major global trade negotiations still actively underway—WTO talks intended to impose discipline on fisheries subsidies, which have led to depleted fish stocks in the world’s oceans. These talks have been going on for nearly two decades, have missed yet another deadline, and seem to be in limbo.

The obstacle standing in the way of a meaningful agreement is not just the reluctance of countries to give up subsidies. It also does not help that a deal requires unanimous approval of every clause and stipulation by all 164 WTO member countries—including landlocked ones without a marine fishing fleet, such as Hungary, Mongolia, and Mali. At the root of the fisheries problem, however, lies the WTO’s own preferred negotiating approach: As long as the WTO continues to approach trade using two different sets of rules—one for developed countries, the other for developing ones—the fisheries talks are all but certain to continue to produce only irreconcilable conflict.

Fish do not respect territorial boundaries. Overfishing, which continues to deplete fish stocks worldwide despite decades of attempts to make fishing sustainable, is by definition a global problem requiring a global solution. An estimated 37 percent of all the seafood produced in the world is traded internationally—which makes the WTO the logical forum to take the lead in finding a solution.

Read the full story at Foreign Policy

California spiny lobster takes double hit from China market

May 1, 2020 — Coronavirus and Chinese trade tariffs put California’s spiny lobster industry in a stranglehold this past season. If the trade tariffs going into the season weren’t enough, ex-vessel prices plummeted to a third of what they’d been in previous years with announcements that the coronavirus outbreak warranted stopping shipments of live lobsters to primary markets.

Lunar New Year celebrations in China traditionally mark the highest demand for lobsters shipped across the water from the West Coast. But that market deflated as coronavirus kept Chinese consumers home, slashing demand.

As of mid-March, spiny lobster fishermen had put in 76.5 metric tons of product, according to data posted in PacFIN. Ex-vessel prices averaged $12.26 per pound. Much of that value was predicated by deliveries and shipments previous to the outbreak of the virus in China. Both production and values were down significantly from the same period in the 2018-19 season, when the harvest stood at 194.4 metric tons and average ex-vessel prices of $17.04 per pound.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

US State Department bars import of wild-caught shrimp from China, Venezuela

April 30, 2020 — In a public notice posted to the Federal Register on 30 April, the U.S. Department of State announced that it is suspending the certification of wild-caught shrimp from China and Venezuela, making it ineligible to enter the U.S. for sale.

The suspension was in accordance with Section 609 of Public Law 101-162, which requires countries harvesting wild-caught shrimp in areas that contain sea turtles prove they have adequate laws regarding turtle excluding devices (TEDs). China’s certification was suspended due to “the use of methods of harvesting shrimp that may adversely affect sea turtles,” while Venezuela was suspended “due to the inability to confirm whether methods of harvesting shrimp may adversely affect sea turtles.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Deadly shrimp virus has farmers in China fearing the worst

April 28, 2020 — A virus that has plagued shrimp farmers in China since 2014 may be rebounding with a vengeance, this time in Guangdong Province, a crucial hub for aquaculture production in the country.

The South China Morning Post reported on 12 April that Decapod iridescent virus 1 (DIV1) had been detected once more in a number of shrimp farms in the southern province of Guangdong, along the Pearl River Delta, as of February 2020. According to the newspaper, about a quarter of shrimp farming operations in the province have been infected by the current outbreak, which previously struck stocks in China at the start of 2019 before summer temperatures prevailed.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

China cites historical precedent in resisting WTO talks on ending fishing subsidies

April 28, 2020 — Historical subsidization of the fleets of developed countries have become a stumbling block for Chinese negotiators during World Trade Organization talks on ending harmful fishery subsidies.

The talks have dragged into 2020 despite an effort by negotiators to culminate a deal by the end of 2019, and have been further delayed due to complications arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Shrimp problems in Vietnam portend possible global shortage

April 22, 2020 — Glimpsing beyond a current lack of demand from Vietnam’s major export markets, executives at the country’s top shrimp trading firms are expressing deepening concern about a possible global shortage of shrimp in the latter half of the year.

Once COVID-19 began to spread beyond its origins in China, one by one, Vietnam’s shrimp-trading partners have significantly throttled down their imports. Starting in late February and early March, many importers in Europe stopped receiving cargoes, and by mid-March, customers in North America, the rest of Asia, the Middle East, and South America also increasingly decided to cancel or postpone orders. Stockpiles rose as companies could not export as planned, according to numerous executives interviewed by SeafoodSource. As a result, Vietnam’s export value of shrimp declined nearly 15 percent year-on-year to USD 207.7 million (EUR 190 million) in March, according to Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

Read the full story at Seafood Source