Saving Seafood

Maine lobster industry feels impact of China’s tariffs

August 16, 2018 — The ongoing trade war kicked off by U.S. President Donald Trump is beginning to hurt the lobster industry in Maine, U.S.A.

In response to a wide swath of tariffs on Chinese goods instituted by the U.S., China created a set of tariffs of its own that target U.S. seafood and have already hurt some members of the lobster industry who relied on shipping their product to China. Once a niche export market of just USD 4 million (EUR 3.5 million) in 2010, Maine exported USD 132 million (EUR 116.3 million) worth of the crustacean in 2017, according to the Maine International Trade Center.

Of that number, exports to China have been steadily increasing. Maine exported USD 42 million (EUR 37 million) worth of raw and frozen lobster to the country through June in 2017. This year, that number had more than doubled to USD 87 million (EUR 76.6 million) over the same period.

Those numbers have made China the second-largest export market, equal to the entire European Union. As the market grew, some exporters began to increasingly plan on shipping lobsters to China. The new tariffs, however, have made thrown those plans into disarray.

Stephanie Nadeau of The Lobster Co. in Arundel, Maine, has become the “poster child of Chinese tariffs,” she said.

Nadeau has been featured in a wide number of news reports, from the local Portland Press Herald to stories on CBS. Her company relied on Chinese exports, but now is struggling to find a way to make up the lost sales.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US fishmeal producers left exposed by China’s 25% tariff blow

August 16, 2018 — US fishmeal producers — including the US’ largest fishmeal producer Omega Protein — are “certainly in some trouble” after China announced last week it would impose 25% tariffs on imports from the country, said a fishmeal industry analyst.

Jean-Francois Mittaine, an analyst with 30 years’ experience in the sector, told Undercurrent News Omega Protein and others in the sector will struggle to find new markets as Chinese importers turn to alternative sources. This will hit both the menhaden fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico and the pollock fishmeal industry of Alaska.

“For the Americans it is a problem,” said Mittaine. “I don’t see what they’re going to do with their fishmeal.”

Last Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it would impose an additional tariff on imports of US fishmeal of 25% (HS code 23012010). The ingredient used in animal and fish feed was among 333 US goods worth $16 billion in annual trade targeted.

The Chinese counter-move will take effect immediately after the US imposes tariffs on the same amount of Chinese goods on Aug 23.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Alaska seafood industry braces for China tariff pain

August 15, 2018 — Alaska fishermen are used to coping with fickle weather and wild ocean waves. Now they face a new challenge: the United States’ trade war with China, which buys $1 billion in Alaskan fish annually, making it the state’s top seafood export market.

Beijing, in response to the Trump administration’s move to implement extra levies on Chinese goods, last month imposed a 25 percent tariff on Pacific Northwest seafood, including Alaskan fish, in a tit-for-tat that has engulfed the world’s two largest countries in a trade war.

The results could be “devastating” to Alaska’s seafood industry, the state’s biggest private-sector employer, said Frances Leach, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest commercial fishing trade group.

“This isn’t an easily replaced market,” she said. If the tariff war continues, she said, “What’s going to happen is China is just going to stop buying Alaska fish.”

For Alaska’s seafood industry, the timing could not be worse. The state has worked for years to attract the Chinese market, and just two months ago, Governor Bill Walker led a week-long trade mission to China in which the seafood industry was heavily represented.

Read the full story at Reuters

Rainbow trout can now officially be labeled as salmon in China

August 14, 2018 — Rainbow trout can be labeled and sold as salmon, according to new rules issued by a government-run fishery organization and 13 Chinese fishery companies.

The ruling is intended to resolve complaints that China-produced rainbow trout is being mislabled as salmon, amid concerns that eating rainbow trout raw would lead to parasite infection.

The ruling says salmon is the umbrella name of salmonidae fish, and rainbow trout also belongs to this category, the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA) said on their website.

The CAPPMA, a social organization under the Ministry of Agriculture, along with 13 fishery companies, issued the controversial standard.

The sale of salmon has been increasing in China in recent years, but a lack of standards has raised the concern of many Chinese consumers.

In May, some media reports claimed that a lot of what is sold as salmon in China is in fact rainbow trout, produced in Northwest China’s Qinghai Province.

Later many netizens began to claim rainbow trout from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is being mislabeled as salmon, and is infested with worms and painted to resemble salmon.

Read the full story at the Global Times

MSC teams up with Walmart in China

August 14, 2018 — An effort to court major retailers in China appears to be paying off for the Marine Stewardship Council, which teamed with Walmart and the China Chain Store and Franchising Association (CCFA) for the launch of a “Sustainable Seafood Week” in a Sam’s Club store in Shenzhen the week of 13 August.

Chinese retailers want to make the upstream portion of the supply chain more sustainable, according to Pei Liang, secretary general of the CCFN. He pointed to the MSC label as a “standard” by which Chinese retailers can measure their sustainability efforts.

“We want environmental protection from suppliers to consumers,” Shi Jia Qi, Walmart China’s vice president of government relations, told SeafoodSource. Shi said Walmart will seek to increase the number of MSC-labeled goods stocked in Sam’s Club stores in China.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute prepares to protest Trump’s seafood tariffs

August 10, 2018 — The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute will push back against a steep seafood tariff suggested by the Trump Administration.

In a board meeting Thursday morning, ASMI executive director Alexa Tonkovich said the organization is preparing a draft letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative about the importance of Alaska seafood.

ASMI’s action comes as the USTR considers a proposal to levy a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. Since that proposal was announced in early July, the USTR has announced that the tariff could be increased to 25 percent.

Among the items on the tariff list is Alaska seafood sent to China for processing.

“We believe there is value in ASMI as an apolitical industry representative (speaking up),” Tonkovich said, and the board agreed to consider the draft.

“I know that other industry groups are kind of looking for ASMI to take the lead because of their connection with (the National Fisheries Institute) and their representation of the Alaska industry,” said board member Tom Enlow, who works for the seafood company Unisea.

“We better do it, definitely,” said board chairman Jack Schultheis of Kwik’ Pak Fisheries.

ASMI is the joint marketing arm for fisheries across Alaska and is funded by a small tax on catches as well as federal grants and state assistance. This year, the Alaska Legislature approved a budget of less than $21 million for the agency.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

Fishing industry gears up for a fight over China tariffs

August 10, 2018 — A national fishing industry group is using local workers to put human faces on the plight that the commercial fishing sector faces amid the trade fight with China.

The National Fisheries Institute just released a series of videos featuring New Englanders — a processing plant manager in Boston, a Quincy seafood shop owner, a supplier to Maine lobstermen — extolling the virtues of free trade. Institute spokesman Gavin Gibbons says the group started featuring people in the Northeast because of the balance of import and export work that happens here. You can’t treat fish like steel, he says. Commercial fishermen, for the most part, face strict federal quotas. There’s simply no way to ramp up domestic production if it becomes tough to import seafood.

Gibbons’ group fears imports will become much more challenging if the Trump administration follows through on plans to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on seafood imports from China. An NFI lobbyist will testify before the International Trade Commission on Aug. 20 to argue against them. (NFI represents all corners of the industry: fishermen, retailers, wholesalers.)

The US has plunged headlong into a tit-for-tat fight. China has already imposed a 25 percent tariff on US seafood exports, much to the chagrin of the lobstermen who had found a burgeoning new foreign market in that country.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

National Fisheries Institute Launches First Sustainable Crab Project in China

August 9, 2018 — The following was released by the National Fisheries Institute:

Leading United States and Chinese seafood industry groups, fishermen, and sustainable seafood groups came together today to celebrate the much anticipated launch of the Fujian Zhangzhou Red Swimming Crab Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP).

The FIP–led by the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) Red Crab Council, China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA), Zhangzhou Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Association (ZAPPMA), and Ocean Outcomes (O2)– is the first project of its kind in China and will work to address the sustainability challenges of the region’s red swimming crab (RSC) fisheries, whose 1,000 plus trawl and pot vessels catch approximately 40,000 metric tons of red swimming crab annually.

“Crab from these fisheries are imported by our member companies and sold across the globe,” said NFI President, John Connelly, “so precompetitive sustainability projects, such as this FIP, are a way to ensure our Chinese partners, NFI members, and consumers have continued access to healthy red swimming crab resources.”

As China produces 35% of the world’s seafood (wild and farmed combined) and is home to 25% of the world’s commercial fishing capacity, China’s first crab improvement project, and the largest improvement project by volume in China, is a positive step towards more sustainable fishing practices globally.

“That the leading industry associations, from the world’s top two seafood countries, have adopted a formal roadmap for transitioning the fishery to sustainable management, with Chinese government support for the work, is big news,” said Ocean Outcomes’ Songlin Wang.

The FIP will be guided by a five year improvement work plan designed, in part, to establish bycatch monitoring protocols, and to move the fishery towards a science-based catch management strategy, such as utilizing a minimum harvestable crab size and protecting egg-bearing females.

A portion of the FIP’s pot fleet will also be the special focus of the Fujian government’s national fisheries management reform pilot, where government funding will be invested in important management measures within the development of a comprehensive harvest strategy.

With universal, transpacific support, the FIP has a unique funding model through which NFI Red Crab Council members invest two cents of every imported pound of RSC meat towards the improvement project.

“It’s a perfect opportunity to leverage government support, international and local expertise, fishery and community engagement efforts, and conservation investments to test innovative improvement models to scale up the sustainability of Chinese fisheries and seafood industry, starting with our RSC fishery,” said CAPPMA President Dr. He Cui.

“The crabs and sea have generously provided us with food and jobs, but we haven’t done enough to protect them,” added ZAPPMA President Mr. Zhenkui Chen, who witnessed the decline of the RSC fishing and seafood processing sectors, first as a fisherman and then as an entrepreneur. He is now calling on his fellow fishermen and seafood processors to “spare no effort to support the FIP for ourselves and our future generations.”

To learn more about the Fujian Zhangzhou Red Swimming Crab FIP visit oceanoutcomes.org.

CALIFORNIA: Threat of El Niño has Pacific squid fleet on edge

August 7, 2018 –All eyes and ears were on water temperatures and foreign trade tariffs as seiners hit their strides in the West Coast squid season. Cooler ocean temperatures last fall fostered hopes that the environmental pendulum had begun swinging in favor of squid production. But as the summer of 2018 ensued, the threat that El Niño conditions may be returning set fishermen and processors on edge.

“We’re watching the inklings of an El Niño,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, in Buellton. “It’s an interesting season. It started well, and it’s still going… better than when we were in the throes of El Nino.”

In late June, Oregon had posted healthy landings, and Pleschner-Steele said harvest numbers had begun picking up in California. The commercial squid season runs from April 1 to March 31 of the following year, and seiners fish on a quota of 118,000 short tons. Pleschner-Steele says the fleet hasn’t caught the quota in recent years, given oceanic conditions and other factors, and that the set quota is an optimal harvest number.

As of June 28, the seiners had landed 9,931 tons of squid.

On July 3, Pleschner-Steele said it was unlikely the fleet would catch the quota this year. The pending shortage in the harvest might be a good thing, in terms of curbing volumes headed to troubled markets in China.

The recent trade fracas between China and the United States predicated a stiff tariff on U.S. squid products shipped to China, one of the West Coast industry’s primary markets.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Florida Lobster Fishermen Fear Trade War Amid Irma Recovery

August 7, 2018 –Just as they prepare for a crucial harvest in the wake of Hurricane Irma, lobster fishermen in the Florida Keys fear a trade war with China could undermine storm recovery in the island chain.

Lobsters are among the seafood and other U.S. goods hit by Chinese tariffs in early July, after the Trump administration put tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods.

Florida’s nearly eight-month commercial spiny lobster fishing season opens Monday. Keys fishermen had hoped the harvest would help them recoup losses from last September’s hurricane, which made landfall in the Keys with 130-mph (210-kph) winds.

But the industry has come to depend on Chinese exports over the last decade, and fishermen worry tariffs that could raise prices by 25 percent will send the Chinese market looking for lobster in another country’s waters.

“Coming into this year, we were hoping for better prices because of the loss of traps, gear and revenue,” said Ernie Piton, president of the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association and a lobster fisherman.

“Hopefully the tariffs will get figured out because you can’t run your boat and not make money, especially after a hurricane year when you’ve lost so much,” Piton said in a recent interview outside his Key Largo home, where he docks his boat, “Risky Business II.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times