Saving Seafood

Proposal For Observers Could Further Hurt U.S. Purse Seiner Fleet

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa — May 3, 2016 — A new fishery rule that the federal government is moving to implement is expected to deal another financial blow to the US purse seiner fleet, which is already faced with stiff competition from foreign vessels such as the Chinese fleet, who are subsidized by their government, China.

US National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) has proposed a rule which would require Observers to be on board US purse seiners fishing in the western and central Pacific ocean (WCPO).

The proposal was issued last week under authority of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention Implementation Act. It is a three-pronged proposed rule, which includes a move to establish restrictions in 2016 and 2017 on the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) by U.S. purse seine vessels in the WCPO; and to establish limits in 2016 and 2017 on the amount of bigeye tuna that may be captured by U.S. longline vessels in the WCPO.

According to NMFS, this longline vessel big eye tuna proposal would not apply to American Samoa and the other two US Pacific territories, as they have their own federal programs.

NMFS says the proposed action is necessary to satisfy the obligations of the United States under the Convention on the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (Convention), to which it is a Contracting Party.

NMFS is now seeking public comments on the three-pronged proposed rule-making, and deadline for comment submission is May 12. Details are available online on federal portal: www.regulations.gov.

Read the full story at the Pacific Islands Report

MASSACHUSETTS: Chinese delegation tours Gloucester’s seafood businesses

April 26, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Zhang Minjing, a consul in China’s consulate general’s office in New York City, did a little homework before making the journey to Gloucester on Monday as part of a visiting delegation of Chinese government and seafood executives.

And what did he learn from his research on America’s Oldest Seaport?

“I know that Gloucester is very famous for its lobster and fishing industry,” Zhang said. “I know that people are very industrious. They’re hard working. I found the mayor very enthusiastic and very good at her job at promoting her businesses here.”

It appears China has taken notice of Gloucester and its bounty of fresh seafood, especially the lobsters for which the Chinese population seems to have an insatiable — and growing — appetite.

Consider: In 2009, U.S. lobster exports to China totaled a minuscule $2 million. Five years later, it hit about $90 million, with estimates for future annual growth pegged at roughly 15 percent a year.

Read the full story in the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Chinese delegation to talk lobster, fish

April 22, 2016 — Gloucester will add more international visitors to its guest register when it welcomes a delegation of Chinese government officials and seafood executives, as well as Chinese-American business leaders, on Monday to talk about economic development opportunities.

The visit has been in the works since February, when Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken extended an invitation during a meeting with Chinese-American business leaders, many of them restaurateurs, and officials from Boston’s Chinatown Main Street association at an occasion celebrating the Chinese New Year.

The Chinese government delegation will feature some heavy hitters, including four officials from the the New York-based consulate general’s office of the People’s Republic of China. The visitors also will include three executives from The American Chinese Culinary Federation, a restaurant trade group that represents thousands of restaurants and seafood sellers nationwide, as well as officials of Chinatown Main Street and other businesses leaders from Boston’s Chinese-American community.

The mayor will host a meeting at City Hall with the visitors, who then will embark on a tour of the city’s waterfront and seafood infrastructure.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea

April 13, 2016 — TANMEN, China — In the disputed waters of the South China Sea, fishermen are the wild card.

China is using its vast fishing fleet as the advance guard to press its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, experts say. That is not only putting Beijing on a collision course with its Asian neighbors, but also introducing a degree of unpredictability that raises the risks of periodic crises.

In the past few weeks, tensions have flared with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam as Chinese fishermen, often backed up by coast guard vessels, have ventured far from their homeland and close to other nations’ coasts. They are just the latest conflicts in China’s long-running battle to expand its fishing grounds and simultaneously exert its maritime dominance.

See the full story at The Washington Post

China’s Island Building Hurts Environment, U.S. Report Says

April 13, 2016 — China’s reclamation work in the South China Sea may have destroyed coral reefs, damaged fisheries in a region heavily dependent on seafood and breached international law on protecting the environment, according to a report to U.S. Congress.

“The scale and speed of China’s activities in the South China Sea, the biodiversity of the area, and the significance of the Spratly Islands to the ecology of the region make China’s actions of particular concern,” an April 12 report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said.

China reclaimed about 3,000 acres of land on seven features it occupies in the Spratly islands of the South China Sea between December 2013 and October 2015, the report said. Vietnam has reclaimed about 80 acres, Malaysia 70 acres, the Philippines 14 acres and Taiwan eight acres, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

See the full story at Bloomberg

Fishing Amid Territorial Disputes in the South China Sea

April 8, 2016 — CATO, Philippines — As Asian countries jostle for territory in the South China Sea, one Filipino fisherman is taking a stand.

He has faced down Chinese coast guard rifles, and even engaged in a stone-throwing duel with the Chinese last month that shattered two windows on his outrigger.

“They’ll say, ‘Out, out of Scarborough,'” Renato Etac says, referring to Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcropping claimed by both the Philippines and China. He yells back, “Where is the document that shows Scarborough is Chinese property?”

At one level, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a battle of wills between American and Chinese battleships and planes. At another level, they are cat-and-mouse chases between the coast guards of several countries and foreign fishermen, and among the fishing boats themselves.

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

International Seafood Sustainability Foundation to Hold its First China Skipper Workshop

April 5, 2016 — WASHINGTON — On April 6, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) will expand its global series of skipper workshops to China for the first time since the Foundation began the unique platform for knowledge exchange in 2009. The Shanghai workshop is the result of a collaboration between ISSF and the China Overseas Fisheries Association (COFA) and will engage tuna purse seine fishers, crew members and fleet managers in an event that seeks to share best practices for sustainable tuna fishing and mitigate fishing’s impact on the marine ecosystem.

“ISSF skipper workshops have reached more than 900 skippers to date, covering nine fleets in 2015 alone,” said Dr. Victor Restrepo, Vice President of Science at ISSF and chair of its Scientific Advisory Committee. “With roughly 790 large scale purse seine vessels operating today, we know we are engaging a substantial portion of the purse seine capacity on a global basis. Expanding these workshops to the Chinese fleet is an imperative next step as we work toward the global development and adoption of best practices for bycatch reduction and more in the world’s tuna fisheries.”

“We are pleased to welcome ISSF to Shanghai to help us continue to make improvements to ensure that bycatch is mitigated, that there is better compliance by Chinese tuna fishing fleet on bycatch measures adopted by t-RFMOs, and that tuna stocks remain healthy,” said Zhao Gang of COFA.

Dr. Jefferson Murua, with the Marine Research Division of Azti-Tecnalia, will lead the workshop in Shanghai. For seven years, ISSF has commissioned scientist presenters to traverse the world in an effort to share best practices with tuna fishers in every port. The outreach focuses on purse seine fisheries, where the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) is often employed, and emphasizes the importance of maximizing the survival of species. Particular attention is paid to species like sharks and rays, and reducing waste from small tuna and other fish species. The workshops are also an important opportunity for scientists to dialogue with fishers about what techniques and tools may be most successfully implemented given the variable dynamics of the world’s tuna fisheries. These interactions, in turn, help inform ISSF’s bycatch research priorities as ISSF continues to identify and advance sustainable fishing practices. Previous skipper workshops have been held in Panama, Ecuador, Mexico, Spain, Ghana, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, USA, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, American Samoa and more. Additional workshops in 2016 will target the fleets of Indonesia, China, Spain, Ecuador, Ghana, USA and Venezuela.

In addition, all ISSF participating companies – tuna processors and marketers that represent around 75% of the world’s tuna processing capacity – are required to purchase tuna from vessels whose skippers have reviewed these best practices, either by attending a workshop in person or taking advantage of ISSF’s additional skipper outreach materials, specifically ISSF skipper workshop videos or skippers guidebooks, both of which are available in multiple languages. Participating companies are audited against this commitment annually, the results of which are shared in the aggregate in an annual compliance report as part of ISSF’s annual report.

This multi-faceted effort – from on-the-ground workshops to company commitment and compliance auditing and reporting – are part of ISSF’s holistic work to help tuna fisheries make continuous improvements as they edge closer to becoming more robustly sustainable and capable of meeting the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification standard without conditions.

MAINE: Elver season opens with new laws in place

March 24, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Maine’s elver fishing season opened at just after midnight on Tuesday morning chilled by the first spring snowfall and the prospect of a weak market.

Many of Maine’s ponds and rivers are ice-free after an exceptionally mild winter and some harvesters had reported seeing elvers — more properly glass eels — moving into fresh water after their long ocean journey from the Sargasso Sea, where the juvenile eels hatched. Until Monday, harvesters had been anticipating an early start to the fishing season.

“There’s been a few eels in the brooks,” Franklin elver harvester Darrell Young said Monday afternoon as he scouted the shore of Hog Bay for a spot to set his fyke net once the season opened at midnight. “Some brooks are as warm or warmer than the ocean. The snow will cool things off. Things will slow down until it warms up.”

Young is one of the founders of the Maine Elver Fishermen Association and one of the leaders in the state’s battles with federal regulators to control the fishery.

While the water will almost certainly grow warmer, longtime elver buyer Bill Sheldon said that the situation in the principal markets for Maine elvers is likely to cast a chill over the price fishermen are paid for their catch.

“The Chinese and Asian economies in general are terrible,” Sheldon said Tuesday morning as he prepared to welcome the harvesters he expected to bring him their first elver landings late that night. “It’s going to reflect on the market for sure, and on the price we’re going to get for our eels.”

Maine elvers, just a tiny segment of the world market, are shipped primarily to farms in China and Taiwan, where they grow for about a year before they are processed into kabayki. Popular throughout much of Asia, the eels are gutted, boned and butterflied, then cut into square fillets that are skewered, dipped in seasoned soy sauce and broiled.

According to Sheldon, the poor economy has cut demand for kabayaki and, consequently, for elvers. Farmers who bought elvers last year are having trouble selling the mature eels they’ve raised.

“Everyone’s cutting back and it’s showing up right now,” he said.

That could be bad news for Maine elver harvesters.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Chinese Taste For Fish Bladder Threatens Tiny Porpoise In Mexico

February 9, 2016 — The international trade in exotic animal parts includes rhino horn, seahorses, and bear gall bladders. But perhaps none is as strange as the swim bladder from a giant Mexican fish called the totoaba.

The totoaba can grow to the size of a football player. It lives only in the Gulf of California in Mexico, along with the world’s smallest and rarest mammal — a type of porpoise called the vaquita.
Now the new and lucrative bladder trade threatens to wipe out both animals.

“People in Asian cultures use the swim bladder in a soup called fish maw,” explains Erin Dean at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. It’s also reputed to have some medicinal value — it’s thought to boost fertility.

Dean says no one knows why the demand for it has skyrocketed recently. It could be that when a Chinese fish called a yellow croaker, which once supplied bladders, started dying out, people started turning to the Mexican totoaba to meet the demand for bladders.

Read the full story at New York Now

Maine DMR Hosts Visitors from People’s Republic of China for Fisheries Talk

February 1, 2016 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

As part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Leadership Program, the Maine Department of Marine Resources hosted visitors from the People’s Republic of China’s State Oceanic Administration on Thursday, January 28, 2016. The visitors included Ms. Danhong Chen with the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (3rd from right), Mr. Jilu Wu with the China Institute for Marine Affairs (2nd from right), and Mr. Antao Wang with the Department of International Cooperation (far right). Discussing Maine and U.S. fisheries enforcement were (left to right) U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant J.G. Pierre Spence, Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher, NOAA Supervisory Enforcement Officer Eric Provencher, U.S. Coast Guard Commander Jamie Frederick, and Maine Marine Patrol Colonel Jon Cornish.

 

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