Saving Seafood

The modern lobster trap was almost a model for Trump’s border wall. Its inventor is dead at 88.

August 22, 2018 — The ocean floor off the coast of New England is dotted with rectangular boxes split into two compartments — a “kitchen,” where lobsters are lured into the trap, and a “parlor,” where the crustaceans remain before they’re hauled up, rubber bands slipped over their menacing claws. Along with the multicolored buoys that mark their location, these underwater boxes are the chief emblems of the hard-knock marine endeavor that supplies the Atlantic delicacy.

Once rendered in wood, lobster traps are now mostly fashioned out of welded wire mesh, thanks to a Massachusetts man, James Knott Sr., who died last week of natural causes, according to the company he founded, Riverdale Mills Corp. He was 88.

He was acclaimed by the company as a “profoundly influential innovator, whose products help millions of people.”

Most who enjoy a buttered lobster tail are benefiting from Knott’s creation. Aquamesh, the wire mesh fabric he invented, is used for 85 percent of lobster traps in North America, the company said. In a testament to its broad applications, a variant of the welded wire almost became an option for President Trump’s border wall, funding for which remains in limbo.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

‘Our killer whales aren’t doing well:’ Lawsuit aims to protect struggling orcas

August 20, 2018 — Southern Resident Killer Whales are endangered and in decline.

Thursday a national environmental group filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. According to the suit, the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to protect the winter habit of the Orcas.

“Our killer whales aren’t doing well,” said Sarah Yhlemann, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity who filed the lawsuit.

For 17 days a grieving mother Orca carried her dead calf more than 1,000 miles through the waters of the Salish Sea. An act of grief that environmentalist claim highlights the need to help the troubled Orcas.

“We know that protecting the whales themselves is absolutely important, but protecting their habit is really important too,” said Yhlemann.

The suit says NOAA has failed to act on a 2014 petition that includes expanding habitat protections to the Orcas’ winter foraging and migration areas off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California.

“Right now their full habitat is not protected for the winter and travel down the coast, they don’t have habit protections,” said Yhlemann.

The lawsuit is asking for what the law requires for endangered species: to protect the entire habit of the Southern Resident killers whales.

The animals were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2005, after the center sued to get the status. The following year, the fisheries service designated the inland waters of Washington state as critical habitat. The designation means federal agencies must ensure that activities they pay for, permit or carry out do not harm the habitat.

Read the full story at KOMO News

U.S., China Plot Road Map to Resolve Trade Dispute by November

August 20, 2018 — Chinese and U.S. negotiators are mapping out talks to try to end their trade standoff ahead of planned meetings between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at multilateral summits in November, said officials in both nations.

The planning represents an effort on both sides to keep a deepening trade dispute—which already has involved tariffs on billions of dollars of goods and could target hundreds of billions of dollars more—from torpedoing the U.S.-China relationship and shaking global markets.

Scheduled midlevel talks in Washington next week, which both sides announced on Thursday, will pave the way for November. A nine-member delegation from Beijing, led by Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen, will meet with U.S. officials led by the Treasury undersecretary, David Malpass, on Aug. 22-23.

The negotiations are aimed at finding a way for both sides to address the trade disputes, the officials said, and could lead to more rounds of talks.

The talks represent a clear move by Beijing to get relations with Washington back on track that were cordial early in the Trump presidency and involved coordination to rein in North Korea. Those relations have soured, especially after Mr. Trump’s initial tariffs on Chinese imports, which he said were designed to punish Beijing for alleged intellectual-property violations and technology theft. The resulting tit-for-tat of trade threats and retaliation has hit China’s currency and stock markets.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

Trade wars forcing Canadian seafood businesses to make tough decisions

August 17, 2018 — American-initiated tariffs are impacting Canadian seafood businesses in unexpected ways.

The growing trade war between the United States and its neighbor to the north began with a 25 percent surcharge on steel and aluminum initiated in May by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

In reaction, Ottawa used the symbolism of Canada Day to launch CAD 16.6 billion (USD 12.6 billion, EUR 10.8 billion) in retaliatory tariffs strategically targeted to products like orange juice, yogurt, coffee, soya sauce, mayonnaise, and bourbon, which are produced in the home districts of key Republican allies of President Trump.

As a result of this, Galen G. Weston, CEO of Loblaw Companies, Canada’s largest food retailer, believes the trade war may result in higher prices for retail goods sold in Canada.

“We see a very strong possibility of an accelerating retail price inflation in the market,” Weston said at a recent press conference. On the upside, he added, “We don’t think it’s going to be meaningful [or] super significant, but it certainly will be higher than what it is today.”

Krishen Rangasamy, an economist with the National Bank of Canada, agreed the Canadian tariffs won’t have an overly significant impact on consumer prices. He thinks importers are unlikely to pass on higher prices and those that do will have minimal impact on the consumer price index, around 0.01 percent. However, Karl Littler, a representative of the Retail Council of Canada, suggested in the Financial Post that already-thin retail margins will mean prices have to rise, but not by the full 10 percent Canadian tariff of targeted goods.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ASMI to comment on impact of proposed tariffs

August 17, 2018 — Board members of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute are keeping watch on the trade war between the U.S. and China and plan to submit formal comments in advance of the Sept. 6 deadline, says Jeremy Woodrow, ASMI’s communications director.

“We are going into this with the assumption that this is an opportunity to educate the U.S. trade representative on the importance of Alaska fisheries to the U.S. economy and Alaska workers,”

Woodrow said. “While we understand the reasons behind the proposal, the intended impact doesn’t achieve the goal. Instead of having consequences to Chinese consumers, this negatively impacts us consumers and products and U.S. fishermen and companies,” he said.

Woodrow said ASMI’s understanding at this time is that seafood products going from Alaska to China would be subject to these proposed tariffs only if consumed in the Chinese domestic market. If that seafood is being reprocessed to ship elsewhere, it would not be subject to tariff, but if it is being shipped back to the U.S., there is potential that it will be subject to the tariffs because of the proposal by Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative.

The proposed U.S. tariffs came under consideration in the wake of China’s decision to implement an additional 25 percent tariff for exported products destined for China’s domestic market. The proposed tariffs could impact the bottom line for Alaska companies that sell black cod, rockfish, flatfish and salmon roe into Chinese domestic markets.

Read the full story at The Cordoba Times

Group sues to expand protected orca habitat along West Coast

August 17, 2018 — An environmental group sued President Donald Trump’s administration Thursday to make officials move more quickly to protect the Pacific Northwest’s endangered orcas.

The recent grieving of one whale for her dead calf and scientists’ extraordinary attempts to save another from starvation highlight the urgency of their plight, the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity said as it filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

There are just 75 orcas remaining in the Pacific Northwest population, the lowest number in 34 years. They’re struggling with a dearth of chinook salmon, their preferred prey, as well as toxic contamination and vessel noise.

The lawsuit says the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to act on the center’s 2014 petition to expand habitat protections to the orcas’ foraging and migration areas off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California — even though the agency agreed in 2015 that such a move was necessary.

The center says the protections would help reduce water pollution and restrict vessel traffic that can interfere with the animals.

“Time is running out fast for these magnificent, intelligent orcas,” Catherine Kilduff, an attorney with the organization, said in an emailed statement. “It’s heartbreaking to watch them starving to death and mourning their dead calves. Every day that Trump’s people delay action is a step toward extinction for these whales.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press

NCFC Members Urge BOEM to Include Commercial Fishermen in Windmill Siting Decisions in the New York Bight

August 17, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities:

Late last month, members of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) submitted two letters asking Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to consider the economic importance of the commercial fishing industry before deciding where to site windmills in the New York Bight.

367 individuals signed a national letter calling on Secretary Zinke not to rush offshore energy development and to ensure projects are “sited, constructed, and operated using the best scientific information available.”

“The Interior Department should provide for intelligent and deliberate offshore renewable energy development, rather than fall prey to the gold rush mentality promoted by BOEM and financially-interested wind developers, most of which are foreign-owned,” the NCFC members wrote.

The signers also invoked President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to support working class Americans.

“When President Trump campaigned and was elected, he promised to look after America’s working middle class, of which we are all a part,” the letter stated. “You will not be honoring the President’s commitment if you allow BOEM to lease ocean areas first, and ask and answer the necessary questions later.”

Another 103 individuals and 32 vessels and businesses from Massachusetts signed a separate letter asking BOEM to reconsider its plan to develop four offshore wind farms in the New York Bight. They specifically cited the damage such development would cause to important Northeast fisheries such as the scallop fishery.

“This is an ill-conceived idea that will cause irreparable economic harm within the fishing communities along the entire East Coast,” the signers wrote. “The harm to Massachusetts will be especially significant, given that it is the center of the Atlantic sea scallop fishery and contains major surf clam and ocean quahog operations.”

The letter pointed out that, on average, nearly $54 million is generated by scallop landings annually from the areas under consideration in the New York Bight, according to data from the National Marine Fisheries Service. An additional $8 million is generated by surf clam and ocean quahog.

 

Will Trade Tariffs Cause The American Fish Industry To Flop?

August 16, 2018 — An estimated $900 million worth of American-caught or -farmed seafood — from fish sticks to cod fillets — may get a lot more expensive thanks to the U.S.’s current trade war with China.

How? Well, last month the Trump administration proposed a 10% duty on a wide range of imports from China, including many varieties of fish. Trade representatives will finalize the tariffs, which could increase to 25%, in September. While these tariffs are designed to punish China for unfair trade practices, when it comes to seafood, it’s the U.S. that may be on the hook.

Here’s a surprising fact: In many cases seafood labeled as “from China” is actually American. That $900 million of seafood I mentioned earlier? It’s seafood that is first caught or raised in the U.S., sent to China for processing, and then subsequently imported back into the U.S. by companies that sell it to American consumers.

Why would pink salmon or squid that’s caught in U.S. waters be labeled a product of China? Well, thanks to our confusing Country of Origin Labeling law (COOL for short), American products that undergo a “substantial transformation” abroad — such as calamari being breaded or pink salmon being filleted and canned — must then be labeled as coming from the country where they were processed. For example, in some cases a package of frozen “Alaskan Cod” fillets may say “product of China” on the back. The fish was caught in Alaska, but it was cleaned, filleted, and frozen in China. (If you’re interested in more, the USDA has a good blog post on the subject.)

Read the full story at Forbes

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

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