Saving Seafood

US suppliers in love with ‘seafood speed dating’

March 8, 2018 — The meeting Steve Costas had with a South Korean buyer at Food Export-Northeast’s 2017 “seafood speed dating” event, in Boston, Massachusetts, lasted just 20 minutes, scarcely more than a brief flirtation.

But less than a year later Marder Trawling, the New Bedford, Massachusetts-based supplier for which Costas is an account executive, wound up selling the Korean company a container filled with a mix of its wild-caught fish products.

Of course at seafood speed dating, there’s also the chance that the object of your affection will be swept away by another suitor.

“It’s always a friendly event and I believe there is a camaraderie amongst the suppliers even though you know in 30 minutes your customer or a potential customer will be meeting with a competitor who in most cases will be offering them the same species,” Costas told Undercurrent News.

Costas is back again in Boston, Massachusetts, this week along with representatives for no less than 17 seafood suppliers from the northeastern US, all hoping to move containers of fish and, fingers crossed, establish long-term relationships with one or more of the 15 buyers from no less than 13 countries also there.

South Korea will be represented again, as will China, Japan, Colombia, Spain and the United Arab Emirate to name a few. Almost all of the buyers are looking to acquire scallops and lobsters, though some also come from countries where dogfish, monkfish and skate are in demand, all products sold by Marder Trawling using its recently acquired dock in Chatham, Massachusetts.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Large-scale commercial fishing covers more than half of the oceans, study finds

February 23, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Scientists tag sharks to see where they roam in the high seas, but until now they couldn’t track the seas’ biggest eater: Humans. By using ships’ own emergency beacons, researchers got the first comprehensive snapshot of industrial fishing’s impacts around the globe. And it’s huge — bigger than scientists thought, according to a new study.

Large-scale commercial fishing covers more than 55 percent of the oceans with the world’s fishing fleet traveling more than 285 million miles a year — three times the distance between Earth and the sun, according to research in Thursday’s journal Science.

Five countries — China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea — were responsible for 85 percent of high seas fishing.

“The most mind-blowing thing is just how global an enterprise this is,” said study co-author Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada. “It’s more like factories that are mass producing product for a global market and less like hunters that are stalking individual prey.”

China dominates global fishing. Of the 40 million hours that large ships fished in 2016, 17 million hours were by boats under a Chinese flag, according to another study co-author, Stanford marine biologist Barbara Block.

The fishing patterns were gleaned from 22 billion automated ship safety signals beamed to satellites. Before this, scientists had to rely on a sampling of ships’ logs and observations, which were spotty.

Ships are obeying no-fishing zones and times, although they hover at the edges of marine-protected areas. Fishing tends to drop on holidays including Christmas, New Year’s and the Lunar New Year, researchers found.

“The maps of global fishing in this report are sobering,” Douglas McCauley, a University of California, Santa Barbara marine biologist who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CBS News

 

A Nearly Invisible Oil Spill Threatens Some of Asia’s Richest Fisheries

February 13, 2018 — ZHOUSHAN, China — A fiery collision that sank an Iranian tanker in the East China Sea a month ago has resulted in an environmental threat that experts say is unlike any before: An almost invisible type of petroleum has begun to contaminate some of the most important fishing grounds in Asia, from China to Japan and beyond.

It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded outside the glare of international attention that big spills have previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic, liquid byproduct of natural gas production.

Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out. Experts said the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil.

Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to 111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.

The area produced five million tons of seafood of up to four dozen species for China alone last year, according to Greenpeace, including crab, squid, yellow croaker, mackerel and a local favorite, hairtail. If projections are correct, the toxins could soon make their way into equally abundant Japanese fisheries.

Exposure to condensate is extremely unhealthy to humans and potentially fatal. The effects of eating fish contaminated with it remain essentially untested, but experts strongly advise against doing so.

“This is an oil spill of a type we haven’t seen before,” said Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in England. “Working out the impact is actually a huge task — probably next to impossible.”

For China, the disaster has become a test of its ambitions as a global and regional steward of the seas, especially at a time when it is reinforcing its territorial claims, including disputed territories with Japan in these waters. Given its proximity, China has taken the lead in investigating the disaster and monitoring the spill, but it has faced some criticism for what some see as a slow and inadequate response thus far.

Officials in Beijing announced on Feb. 1 that samples of fish taken within four to five nautical miles of the sunken ship contained traces of petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting possible condensate contamination; they pledged to expand the range of testing to 90 miles, and closely monitor fish coming into markets.

Read the full story at the New York Times

“Whitefish wars” driving Vietnam’s pangasius away from EU, US

February 7, 2018 — The rapid growth of Vietnam’s pangasius shipments has met with several markets barriers in the European Union and United States, where the fish is being gradually pushed away.

With similarity in texture and taste to other whitefish such as cod, sole, haddock, and pollock, but with much lower prices, pangasius from the Southeast Asia nation has quickly become a competitive alternative in the U.S. and E.U., Nguyen Tien Thong, an assistant professor of applied economics and marketing research at the University of Southern Denmark, told SeafoodSource.

But Thong, also a research associate with analytics firm Syntesa, with a specialty in price formation and consumer preference for seafood, said pangasius’ growth in the U.S. and E.U. markets has been actively thwarted by market barriers erected by both the industry’s competitors and erroneous reporting by mass media.

Vietnam’s pangasius exports were worth USD 1.78 billion (EUR 1.43 billion) last year, up 4.3 percent from 2016. But the export value to the U.S. and E.U. fell 11 percent and 22.3 percent, respectively, recently released data from Vietnam Association of Seafood Producers and Exporters (VASEP) revealed.

Three “wars” against pangasius

European and Vietnamese seafood experts have collectively created a new term for the campaigns surrounding pangasius, calling them the ”whitefish wars.”

The most recent round of this war broke out in early 2017, when a television segment on Spain’s Cuatro channel claimed pangasius farming was polluting the Mekong Delta. Two weeks later, French retail giant Carrefour decided to suspend sales of Vietnamese pangasius in all its stores in Belgium, France, and Spain. Carrefour attributed its decision to “the doubts that persist about the adverse impacts that pangasius farms have on the environment.”

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council responded to Carrefour’s move with a statement insisting the facts did not support Carrefour’s pangasius decision, and VASEP said repeatedly that the Cuatro report provided distorted information. Seeking to help combat the growing ”PR crisis,” 20 of Vietnam’s leading pangasius exporters joined together to create a market development fund in June 2017. But the rebuttals appeared largely ineffective at halting the negative impact on pangasius sales.

However, Thong argues that the “whitefish war” began as early as 2000, and started in the United States. In that year, about 90 percent of the catfish imported by the U.S. was from Vietnam. Feeling threatened, U.S. catfish growers and wholesalers started a campaign to curtail imports of Vietnamese pangasius into the country.

For years, pangasius faced high anti-dumping duties imposed by the U.S government, and a push for increased inspections. After a protracted political debate, in August 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) began inspecting all imported pangasius. Only a few months after the decision, only two of 14 Vietnamese pangasius exporters are still shipping pangasius to the U.S., according to VASEP.

In the E.U., backlash against pangasius started in late 2010, when the World Wildlife Fund placed the fish on the “red list,” effectively branding it a no-buy for environmentally conscientious consumers, Thong said. The attempt, which Thong termed as the second “war,” was made after the fish became a significant substitute fish to other whitefish raised in many European countries.

A few years later, WWF reversed course on pangasius, giving its backing to all Vietnamese-produced pangasius awarded Aquaculture Stewardship Council certification.

Further controversy was ignited in 2011 when Member of the European Parliament Struan Stevenson, senior vice president of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee, attacked the pangasius’ environmental, social, and safety credentials during an address to the European Parliament.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

New study sheds light on the the dark side of Hong Kong’s most lucrative seafood trade

February 6, 2018 — Hong Kong is the global hub for the more than USD $1 billion Live Reef Food Fish Trade (LRFFT), much of it unreported and unregulated with serious consequences for vulnerable species, food security and livelihoods in Southeast Asia, according to a report released on February 1.

Published jointly by the Swire Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), ADM Capital Foundation and the WWF Coral Triangle Program, the report, Going, Going Gone: The Trade in Live Reef Food Fish, says popular wild-caught reef fish species could be gone from diners’ tables within our lifetime if we do not act now to stem this burgeoning and often illegal trade.

“The rate at which we are taking reef fish from our oceans, including juveniles, is simply not sustainable,” said Dr Yvonne Sadovy, a professor of biological sciences at HKU and lead author of the report. “The LRFFT is symptomatic of the pressure being put on these fish resources and the potentially devastating effects on livelihoods. As the epicentre of the LRFFT, it is critical Hong Kong takes steps to regulate before it is too late.”

Live seafood is part of the culinary tradition of southern China, with most species coming largely from the seas of Southeast Asia. Demand for these attractive and increasingly rare fish species, eaten mostly at banquets and as displays of wealth, has grown with expanding affluence in Mainland China.

Although the trade is not large by global fisheries standards, it is disproportionately valuable, estimated between 20,000 and 30,000 metric tonnes (mt) annually in the trade hub of Hong Kong, and valued in excess of USD 1 billion, according to the report. This does not count illegal trade. The trade supplies a luxury seafood market with high retail value fishes, with some species, such as Napoleon fish, fetching in excess of USD 600 per kg.

Read the full story at Phys.org

 

NFI seeks to reach administration on seafood trade in 2018

January 2, 2018 — Pressing the importance of all trade on the Donald Trump administration, including imported seafood, will be one of the top priorities of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) in 2018.

The US seafood industry’s biggest trade association, representing close to 300 companies, is still smarting from several of the moves made by the White House and its Cabinet in their first year, including its formal withdrawal from a trade deal with Pacific countries, a lack of progress on a trade deal with Europe and implementation of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (Simp).

But NFI president John Connelly said trade will remain a top focal point for the group in the New Year.

“We just need to spend more time on the Hill and in the administration to help them appreciate that not all trade is negative for the US,” Connelly told Undercurrent News in an December interview at his office in McLean, Virginia. “Seafood is not like steel or autos or something else. We cannot now produce enough seafood in the US, whether it be from wild capture or aquaculture, to feed all Americans.”

The US exports 40% to 60% of the seafood it produces, depending on the value of the dollar and some other factors, and imports about 85% of the seafood it consumes. Seafood is responsible for 1,270,141 jobs in the U.S. and imports account for 525,291 of those, according to Department of Commerce data noted by the association.

“Gladys, down in Brownsville, Texas, is cutting imported tilapia right now, and that job is extraordinarily important to her family. Why is that job any less important than a job involving domestic codfish?” Connelly said.

High points and low points in 2017

But in looking back at 2017, Connelly can point to at least one major trade-related victory: The removal of the prospective border adjustment tax from the legislative tax overhaul passed by Congress and signed by the president before leaving on its winter break. The provision, which was supported by several Republican leaders, would have forced some seafood dealers to raise their prices 30% to 40%, said Connelly, quoting a Wall Street Journal article.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

China is Fishing Ever Farther From Home, Adding to Stress on Fish Stocks

January 1, 2018 — China’s fishing fleet, which reaches as far as Latin America, West Africa, and even Antarctica, is adding to a worldwide strain on fish stocks.

So it’s no surprise that Chinese fishermen have been involved in clashes with foreign fishermen and coast guards at great distances from their homeland.

In perhaps the most dramatic clash, which occurred in March 2016, Argentina’s coast guard sank a Chinese trawler that was fishing within its territorial waters more than 11,000 miles from its home base on the China coast. The trawler had tried to ram the Argentine vessel.

Argentine Navy submarines have been assigned to “chase down illegal fishing vessels in the frigid waters off southern Argentina,” according to a Wall Street Journal report from that country published early this month.

Reuters news agency, meanwhile, reported at the end of August that Ecuador had jailed 20 Chinese fishermen for up to four years for illegally fishing off the Galapagos Islands, where they were caught with some 6,600 sharks.

Their vessel contained some 300 tons of near-extinct or endangered species, including hammerhead sharks.

Incidents have also occurred near South Korea and in disputed areas in the South China Sea, where Chinese Coast Guard ships have clashed with Vietnamese fishermen.

Pressures in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea leading to incidents like this are driving China to fish elsewhere in the world.

Chinese fishermen target West Africa

In April 2017, The New York Times reported from Senegal that Chinese fishermen were increasingly heading to West Africa.

The fishermen are enabled by corrupt local governments and their weak enforcement of fishing limits.

Citing experts, The Times states that West Africa now provides “the vast majority” of fish caught by China’s distant-water fishing fleet.

Fishing off the coast of Senegal, “most of the Chinese ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as Senegalese boats catch in a year,” The Times report said.

Most of the fish are sent abroad, with some of it ending up as fishmeal fodder for chickens and pigs in Europe and the United States.

For Senegalese citizens, many of whom depend on fish as a source of protein, diminishing fish catches mean higher food prices.

In nearby Sierra Leone, meanwhile, a similar scenario is playing out.

The Economist Magazine reported on Dec. 7 from Sierra Leone that “nearly half of the population” of 7.4 million people in the small west African nation “does not have enough to eat.”

“But the country’s once plentiful shoals, combined with its weak government, have lured a flotilla of unscrupulous foreign trawlers to its waters.”

Most of the trawlers fly Chinese flags, but dozens also come from South Korea, Italy, Guinea, and Russia.

According to Tabitha Mallory, an expert on these issues, by 2015 more than 160 Chinese fishing enterprises had agreements to operate off the shores of some 40 countries, the high seas, and Antarctica. But other Chinese vessels may be operating in more countries illegally.

But in contrast with West Africa, where Chinese fishermen have done great harm to local economies, Antarctica stands out as a new frontier where the fishermen appear to have begun playing by internationally agreed upon rules.

China has joined a commission for the conservation of marine life in Antarctica and has pledged its support for a marine protected area on the cold continent.

However, poor regulation of China’s distant-water fishing (DWF) fleet elsewhere has added to a strain on global fish stocks, according to experts and nongovernmental organizations monitoring the issue.

Greenpeace, a nongovernmental organization which campaigns to change attitudes toward the environment, has found that from 2014-2016, China’s distant water fishing (DWF) fleet — vessels operating outside Chinese territorial waters — increased by 400 to nearly 2,900.

This followed a similar period of expansion between 2012 and 2014, when the fleet grew by 15 percent each year on average.

By comparison, the United States had just 225 large-size DWF vessels, according to 2015 data.

Read the full commentary at Radio Free Asia

 

Kids who eat fish are smarter, sleep better

December 27, 2017 — Eating fish is good for kids’ zzz’s and IQ’s.

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania found that children who eat fish at least once a week boosted their intelligence test scores and the quality of their sleep. The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, adds to earlier investigations into the relationship between omega-3s — fatty acids found in many types of fish — and improved smarts, and omega-3s and better shuteye.

But they’ve never all been connected before, according to Penn researchers who focused on omega-3s coming from food, not supplements.

“This area of research is not well-developed. It’s emerging,” said Jianghong Liu, lead author on the paper and an associate professor of nursing and public health, in a university release.

Findings are based on a group of 541 9- to 11-year-old boys and girls in China. Subjects reported how often they had consumed fish in the past month. Options ranged often (at least once per week), to occasionally (2-3 times per month), to seldom or never (less than 2 times per month).

Read the full story at the New York Daily News

 

Pacific Bluefin Tuna Catch Quotas to be Based on Stock Recovery

December 12, 2017 — TOKYO, SEAFOOD NEWS — An international panel has decided to introduce a new framework to change catch quotas for Pacific bluefin tuna according to the extent of stock recovery.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission made the decision at its annual meeting in Manila, which ended early Friday.

The WCPFC, which discusses resources management for tuna and bonito in the Western and Central Pacific, has 26 member economies, including Japan, the United States and China.

The panel has set a goal of increasing adult Pacific bluefin tuna stocks from some 17,000 tons in 2014 to around 41,000 tons by 2024.

In September, the WCPFC’s Northern Committee agreed to increase catch quotas once the probability of achieving the goal reaches 75 pct or more and to reduce the quotas if the figure falls below 60 pct.

With the WCPFC approving the introduction of the new rules, the framework to change catch quotas according to the speed of stock recovery is expected to be put in place in 2019 at the earliest.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

WCPFC members agree to increase bigeye limits

December 11, 2017 — Members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission concluded a five-day conference in Manilla, The Philippines, earlier this week by increasing catch limits on tropical tunas. It’s a move at least one conservation group fears could threaten the bigeye stock.

Beginning next year, Japan will be able to catch up to 18,265 metric tons of bigeye tuna. South Korea was allotted a nearly 14,000-metric-ton limit, while Taiwan will be able to harvest nearly 10,500 metric tons. China received a limit of more than 8,200 metric tons, in addition to a one-time transfer of 500 metric tons from Japan in 2018. Indonesia received a provisional allotment of nearly 5,900 metric tons, and the United States, which won the right to use its Pacific territories to increase its limit, can catch more than 3,500 metric tons.

Those limits were set after the commission’s scientific committee concluded that the bigeye stock “appears” not to suffer from overfishing.

Amanda Nickson, who is the director of international fisheries for The Pew Charitable Trusts, called the decision to increase the limits by 10 percent disappointing. The commission’s decisions mean the bigeye stock have a greater than 20 percent chance of falling below its accepted biomass standards over the next 30 years.

Read the full story at Seafood Source