Saving Seafood

The offshore wind turbines destroying Britain’s fishing trade

August 11, 2025 — When Ken Bagley led a convoy of fishing boats into battle against the UK’s first wind developers two decades ago, his hope was to save something of the fishing industry that had supported his family since the 1890s.

Bagley’s convoy sailed in front of the barges attempting to install the first turbines in the rich fishing grounds off Skegness, halting work and infuriating the contractors trying to kick-start Britain’s entry into the world of green energy.

“They were installing that turbine into one of the richest mussel beds in the region, so I led 22 boats into the construction area and halted the work. We thought it was a great victory back then,” recalls Bagley, who is chairman of the Boston Fishermen’s Association.

Read the full article at YahooNews!

Growing consumption of the American eel may lead to it being critically endangered, study finds

March 11, 2025 — High demand for eel combined with a decline in stock have resulted in soaring prices for this food item, which, in many cultures, is considered a delicacy. This has fueled concern globally as the prized food item is now being illegally traded from Europe to Asia.

Current research has focused on the critically endangered Anguilla anguilla, commonly known as the European eel. While its export outside the European Union is tightly regulated, large quantities of A. anguilla juveniles continue to be smuggled out of the EU to Asia where they are grown in eel farms until reaching a marketable size.

To investigate the prevalence and consumption of endangered eels—particularly the European eel—a Yale-NUS College research team examined 327 individual eel products purchased across 86 retailers throughout Singapore. However, instead of the prevalence of the European eel, the team identified 70% of another species in the sample—Anguilla rostrata, commonly known as the American eel.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

“Shippers’ revenge” begins with tables turning on cargo costs”

March 1, 2o23 — Shipping prices have cratered in recent months, giving seafood companies the ability to seek “payback” from cargo companies that inflated prices to quadruple or more what they had been prior to 2021.

A long line of transportation and logistical snags caused gridlock at ports around the world in 2021, taking more than a year to resolve. With containers and ship space at a premium, shippers like Maersk and MSC began to charge more for their services – some seafood companies reported paying more than USD 20,000 (EUR 18,900) to move a container from Asia to the United States. But now rates are around USD 1,150 (EUR 1,090) per container, and more companies are aggressively shopping around for the best rate and often finding deals on the spot market. Lawrence Burns, a consultant who formerly handled negotiations for Hyundai Merchant Marine, told Reuters importer and exporter shipping managers now have the upper hand in negotiations.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Ocean 14 Capital lands EUR 30 million from Ikea franchisee’s investment arm

February 13, 2023 — The investment arm of the world’s largest Ikea franchisee has placed EUR 30 million (USD 32 million) under the management of Ocean 14 Capital, a private equity group operating a EUR 150 million (USD 160 million) “blue economy” impact fund.

The investment, announced Monday, 13 February, was made to support the Ingka Group’s to “mission of funding sustainable solutions to improve ocean health,” it said. The group operates 392 Ikea stores in 32 countries.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MAC: EU’s Ukraine war response requires more top-level fisheries, aquaculture action

February 7, 2023 — When Russia first invaded Ukraine almost 12 months ago, the European Commission quickly provided appropriate measures and gave E.U. member-states new tools to mitigate the impacts of the conflict and the sanctions that were adopted across the bloc, according to the Market Advisory Council (MAC). However, E.U. member-states haven’t been as prompt in their implementations, it found in a newly-issued report.

Composed of organizations representing the entire value chain and other interested groups, and co-funded by the E.U., MAC provides advice to the E.C. and E.U. member-states on the global seafood market.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Wind turbines will affect base of ocean food chain, study predicts

December 7, 2022 — Atmospheric wakes trailing behind offshore wind turbines will change oceanographic and marine ecosystem conditions in the North Sea as more and larger turbines are built there to meet Europe’s energy needs, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.

The paper by researchers Ute Daewel, Naveed Akhtar, Nils Christiansen and Corinna Schrum of the Institute for Coastal Systems in Germany used numerical modeling to show how wind wakes may change local conditions.

Those systems could be moved by plus or minus 10 percent, not just within turbine arrays but over a wider region, the team wrote. That includes “primary production:” the generation of nutrients at the base of the marine food chain.

The Nov. 24 publication of their paper, “Offshore wind farms are projected to impact primary production and bottom water deoxygenation in the North Sea,” is the latest from scientists investigating how larger-scale offshore wind projects may alter ocean conditions and ecosystems.

As in Europe, U.S. researchers too are looking at how wind wake and ocean currents flowing for miles behind turbines will change the seasonal stratification of cooler water close to the bottom, peaking in summer and turning over in fall and spring.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Russian seafood firms finding workarounds to Western sanctions

October 27, 2022 — Despite facing a slew of international sanctions, Russian seafood exports increased year-over-year first seven months of 2022 in both value and volume.

However, a slowing of its seafood trade in recent months could be a warning sign trouble lies ahead.

During the first half of 2022, Russia sold 1.1 million metric tons (MT) of seafood in overseas markets, up 18 percent compared to the corresponding period of 2021. In sum, Russia’s exports were worth USD 2.9 billion (EUR 3.16 billion), an increase of 21 percent, the Russian Federal Agency for Fisheries said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Norway restricting Russian fishing fleet access to ports

October 12, 2022 — New measures restricting Russian fishing boats’ access to Norway to just three ports are being introduced by the Norwegian government.

Norway said it plans to swiftly implement the move to prevent Russian vessels from circumventing sanctions implemented in response to the invasion of Ukraine, according to Norway Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Can Portuguese sardines make a comeback?

September 13, 2022 — Once upon a time, on the outskirts of Lisbon, villagers threw their doors open to the street whenever they heard the clopping of donkeys laden with baskets of sardines. Every household claimed its share of Portugal’s ocean bounty. But one day in early 1773, the Marquis of Pombal, a statesman who ruled the country much as the prime minister does today, learned that yet another load of sardines had been smuggled across the border into Spain. No more, he declared.

The Marquis promptly founded the General Company of the Royal Fisheries of the Kingdom of Algarve, and a new relationship among the Portuguese coastal communities was forged: The central government in Lisbon would thereafter manage the sardine industry.

If abundance means royalty, the sardine was the queen of the Portuguese coast three centuries ago. An upwelling of cold, highly saline water above the continental shelf here provides abundant nutrients for the phytoplankton and zooplankton that feed a variety of pelagic fish. Schools of sardines in these waters could reach the size of a soccer field and exceed 10 tons.

Today, however, the Portuguese sardine industry has declined significantly, under pressure from waters warmed by climate change, as well as overfishing. Scientific data gathered since the 1900s show that Portugal is a long way away from reaching sustainable populations of the Ibero-Atlantic sardine stock it now shares with Spain. In recent decades, concern for the health of its fish resources led Portugal to join the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), an intergovernmental marine science organization that promotes the sustainable use of the oceans.

The Pacific sardine population, which extends from Mexico to the Canadian border with the United States, faces similar challenges. Those fish provide not only fresh and canned food for humans, but also feed marine species such as whales, sea lions, sea birds, and even Chinook salmon.

In 2020, a monitoring campaign by the Portuguese Institute of Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) and the Spanish Oceanography Institute announced some good news: a sardine biomass inrcrease of around 110,000 tons—the most exciting rise in the past 15 years.

A cause for hope, yes, but not a reason to relax, says Gonçalo Carvalho, director of Sciaena, a nongovernmental organization that encourages sustainable fisheries. To Carvalho, a marine biologist who specializes in policy, the past has shown the dramatic consequences of poorly administered conservation measures. According to ICES data, provided mainly by IPMA but also by Spanish research institutions, the loss of sardines in just 31 years has been colossal. In 1984, sardine biomass measured around 1.3 million tons; in 2015, it was just one-tenth of that.

Read the full article at National Geographic