Saving Seafood

Aquaculture advocates want to bring more Oregon-grown fish from farm to table

June 22, 2021 — While the word “farm” might conjure visions of corn planted in neat rows, Luke Fitzpatrick’s acreage looks, feels and functions more like wetlands. Chirps and squawks emanate from the ponds covering his patch of land just a short drive from Salem.

Fitzpatrick called out avian creatures by name as he maneuvered an off-road vehicle around the farm on a sunny Thursday this spring. Stilt sandpiper. Cinnamon teal. Western meadowlark, Oregon’s state bird.

He pulled to a stop, got out and dipped into a duck blind filled with decoy mallards and rolling desk chairs to gaze out over his crop growing beneath the glassy surface of the water.

“I’m tied to the land,” he said. “I love it out here.”

Fitzpatrick is a fish farmer. He raises and sells warm-water species like bass, bluegill, crappie and catfish through a practice called aquaculture. It’s basically just farming in water, and it’s used to grow a variety of finfish, shellfish and aquatic plants.

Aquaculture has become a much bigger part of the global food system in recent years. The world now produces more seafood on farms than it catches wild, by volume, and the fish farming industry is still growing rapidly.

Read the full story at OPB

Hook to plate: how blockchain tech could turn the tide for sustainable fishing

June 9, 2021 — In recent weeks, a new $50m (£35m) hybrid vessel set sail from Mauritius and headed out into the Southern Ocean where the crew will spend three months longline fishing for the Patagonian toothfish. By the time the fish are brought back, processed and sent to customers, consumers will know where and when that specific fish was caught, which boat landed it, who processed it and which certifications have been met. The technology enabling this is blockchain.

“From the day it’s landed to when it ends up on someone’s plate, blockchain gives toothfish traceability right from the start,” says Steve Paku, captain of the Cape Arkona. “People can just scan the barcode and the whole story is right there in front of them.”

Blockchain is just one way that fisheries are trying to ensure better traceability from hook to plate but it is garnering a lot of interest. Blockchain cannot be tampered with and the data can be accessed by everyone along the supply chain, from certification schemes to the final consumer. Because it is digital, decentralised and updated in real time, a blockchain tag contains valuable information that a physical label never could. In combination with DNA testing to prove the specific species of fish, blockchain could play a role in reducing fraud in the seafood industry.

This also matters from a conservation perspective. More than a third of fish populations are overfished, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO). Guaranteeing where and how a fish has been caught can help ensure that the catch has been made in an area with sustainable fish populations. It can also help tackle the problem of bycatch. In degrading marine ecosystems, bycatch is detrimental to biodiversity and puts additional, unnecessary strain on marine wildlife. Young fish get caught up in nets with too small a mesh, turtles and dolphins can get entangled in gillnets, and seabirds, including endangered albatross, get injured by hooks unless deterrents are put in place.

Read the full story at The Guardian

Sharing Information on Fisheries Activities Across International Boundaries Has Benefits

May 13, 2021 — According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of fish stocks are overfished while another 60% cannot sustain increases in fishing, a problem exacerbated by illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It doesn’t have to be this way, and a recent study suggests that States can better detect and curtail IUU fishing through improved sharing of fisheries information.

One reason overfishing is such a persistent problem is that fishing vessels frequently operate across international boundaries, and many governments lack the technological, operational, and institutional capacity they need to collect, analyze, and share information about what’s happening in their waters.

The benefits of information sharing

The study, by the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), found that sharing fisheries data—including which vessels are operating where and how—can make the involved States both more aware of and more able to combat IUU fishing. This finding holds even when only one government shares such information, unreciprocated.

Such cooperation could be enormously helpful, for example, when a vessel flagged to one country fishes in another’s waters and then offloads the catch in the port of a third State. The benefits grow as countries increase the amount of information shared.

Read the full story at Pew Charitable Trusts

Researchers rush to understand kelp forests as harvesting increases

April 22, 2021 — The kelp forests of the oceans are a habitat for a wide range of marine species, rivaling even the great tropical forests for sheer richness of biodiversity, according to scientists from the KELPER project, which studies these marine algae ecosystems.

The kelp species, or marine algae, that make up these seaweed strands anchored to rocks on the seafloor are typically Macrocystis pyrifera, or giant kelp, and Lessonia trabeculata, known locally as huiro palo. The largest natural reserves of these algae are found off the coast of Chile and southern Argentina, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Chile is the main beneficiary of this abundance, with an important industry dedicated to kelp harvesting, primarily L. trabeculata, making the country the world’s largest producer of macroalgae.

Algae contain a carbohydrate called alginate that’s used as a thickener in a large number of products in the food industry, such as desserts, ice creams, dairy products, sauces and condiments. It’s also used in the textiles and pharmaceuticals industries, including in the production of creams and toothpaste.

Until 2005, these long strands of kelp were collected on the beach by fisher-gatherers when, after a swell, the waves pulled them up from the seafloor and deposited them on the shore. Since then, increasing demand for alginate — a market estimated at $1 billion a year, according to a KELPER Project report — has driven the industry to start harvesting the kelp directly from the source in the sea, in a practice known locally as barreteo. According to the most recent figures published by the Chilean National Fisheries Service (Sernapesca), 40,261 tons of L. trabeculata were cut from the seafloor this way in 2018.

Read the full story at Mongabay

How COVID-19 Affects the Fishing Industry

April 19, 2021 — The global seafood market is a huge industry that employs millions of people. Valued at $159 billion in 2019, it will grow to almost $200 billion by 2027. The system is a network of formal and informal producers and distributors, retailers and consumers. In low-income countries, the fishing industry is especially important as a way to reduce poverty. Developing countries employ 97% of the people, directly and indirectly, working in the fishing industry. About 90% of the fishing workforce are small-scale fishermen. By exporting seafood, low-income countries can boost their economies through the oceanic sector. The fishing industry also helps to increase nutrition and food security for the impoverished. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has devastated the fishing industry, just as it has most other industries.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Fisheries

The pandemic has disrupted supply chains and lowered demand, reducing profits in the industry. Lockdowns and curfews have also reduced catch sizes, which in turn means that fisherfolk make less per day of work. What they do not sell often goes to waste as cold storage is expensive and not widely available to small-scale fishermen. The most affected groups are small and medium-scale fisheries, especially in rural areas, as they lack the resources that large-scale fisheries have to be able to transition and adapt during COVID-19. Furthermore, they do not have the safety net of social protection programs that large-scale fisheries may have.

Many developing countries with large fishing sectors have been struggling to offset the effects of COVID-19. In Thailand and India, migrant fish workers were met with lockdowns and nowhere to sell their products. Traders in India and Myanmar reported a 15% drop in fish prices post-lockdowns. In China, a shift to frozen and processed seafood left fresh-catch fishers floundering.

Read the full story at Borgen Magazine

Report finds gaps in RFMOs’ measures targeting eradication of tuna IUU

March 26, 2021 — The global fight against illegal, unreported, and unregulated tuna-fishing activities has been slowed by significant gaps in the implementation of proposed counter-measures by five tuna regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs), according to a new report by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation.

The report found the implementation of key elements, such as the requirement for advance notice of port entry, denial of port entry or use, minimum inspections levels, and minimum standards for training of inspectors, has been inadequate.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

JERRY FRASER: Don’t look up: 30×30 dusts off an old scapegoat

March 24, 2021 — It’s nice to know that among some in the science community, the threat of covid-19 is viewed as being on the wane.

Last week, the journal Nature postulated that “after a year of pandemic-induced delays, 2021 is set to be a big year for biodiversity, climate and the ocean.”

While I look forward to bidding good riddance to the pandemic, it’s hard to image that a “big year” for Nature’s editorial writers will be anything but a pain in the butt for commercial fisherman.

One reason for the excitement at Nature and elsewhere is the expectation that the advance of the 30×30 agenda, which calls for protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, will resume.

In the words of the Pew Charitable Trusts, “The call for 30 percent marine protection is part of securing a healthy ocean where marine parks enhance fisheries and sound fisheries management enhances biodiversity conservation.”

If you’re wondering what a marine park is going to look like, it’s a stretch of ocean that will host recreational and indigenous fishermen, wind farms, ecotourism, and in some cases, oil wells. In rare instances, there could be a token commercial fishing vessel, its permits held by an NGO.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

JULIE KUCHEPATOV: Northern Lights: The women behind our seafood

March 8, 2021 — Fifty percent of people involved in global seafood production are women. But you may not know it because few women occupy leadership positions in the sector and seldom participate in critical discussions and decision-making about precious fisheries resources.

Seafood and Gender Equality was founded in 2020 to address a critical need for gender equality in the seafood sector, build women’s empowerment, and encourage the industry to evolve into a more diverse, inclusive and equitable career choice for people of all genders. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, gender equality means that the different behavior, aspirations, and needs of women and men are considered, valued and favored equally.

Women play a significant role in U.S. fisheries and can be found fishing from Alaska’s Bristol Bay to the Gulf of Maine, and they are particularly concentrated in pre- and post-harvest activities. Women in U.S. fisheries have been celebrated by organizations, such as the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute in its Strong at Sea campaign and in online publications like MarthaStewart.com.

While there is much to celebrate, the information on how many women make a career in this industry and how they participate is spotty, difficult to find, and not updated regularly. But we know that men continue to dominate.

“Knowing how women participate directly in fishing and within fishing families and communities is critical to predicting and understanding responses to fishery changes — from individuals, to families, all the way up to communities,” said Marysia Szymkowiak, lead author of a recent NOAA study on women’s participation in global fisheries.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

From science to fake news: How ocean misinformation evolves

February 25, 2021 — The following was released by Sustainable Fisheries UW:

We have seen this cycle play out in fisheries with the headline that there won’t be any fish in the ocean by the year 2048. It started in 2006 when a group of scientists published a paper with the fun fact that at the rate of fisheries decline from decades ago, there would be no fish by 2048. It was a small part of the paper, meant to highlight a broader point that past fisheries management had been poor. However, the press release that accompanied the paper touted it as a significant finding leading to context-lacking news stories, hyperbolic headlines, and a pervasive notion that there won’t be any fish in the ocean by 2048. The paper’s original authors have stated that their findings are misconstrued and have worked to publish papers correcting them.

Brandolini’s law states that, “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” Fifteen years later, the 2048 myth continues to appear in articles across the internet.

The evolution of a bycatch myth

Now a new myth is rising to prominence: that global bycatch rates are as high as 40%.

Some background: The global authority on world fisheries, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), defines bycatch as, “the total catch of non-target animals.” This is the widely accepted definition.

Bycatch can be a useful indicator of fishery impacts on the broader ecosystem and provides important data that fishermen and fishery managers use to improve sustainability. Different fisheries have different rates of bycatch with varying degrees of impact. However, an important nuance is that bycatch is used or discarded. Used bycatch is generally accepted as sustainable so long as the non-target species isn’t a threatened species. Discards are wasteful and an unfortunate reality of food production. The most recent research showed that about 10% of fish have been discarded at sea over the past decade.

So how did 10% get inflated to 40%?

In 2009, three people working for NGOs (World Wildlife Fund & Dorset Wildlife Trust) and one unaffiliated person decided to write a paper arguing that the definition of “bycatch” needed to be redefined to include ALL catch from unmanaged fisheries. From their paper:

“The new bycatch definition is therefore defined in its simplest form as: Bycatch is catch that is either unused or unmanaged.”

The authors define “unmanaged” as catch that “does not have specific management to ensure the take is sustainable;” in contrast, a managed fishery will have “clearly defined measures specifically intended to ensure the sustainable capture of any species or groups of species within any fishing operation.” An example they gave in the paper is that, because a 1993 study showed that members of the Indian bottom trawling fleet used nets with illegal mesh, “such a fishery cannot be considered managed, as defined in this paper, [thus] the entire catch of the Indian bottom trawl fleet is considered bycatch.” By their definition, they calculated 56.3% of India’s total catch as bycatch.

Adding up all this calculation for each country brought them to declare 40.4% of the world’s catch as bycatch.

Researchers making arguments in the scientific literature is nothing new. Still, it is surprising to see peer-reviewers and editors accept a paper arguing for redefining a widely accepted and common term that would necessitate a paradigm shift in fishery management. Especially with assumptions that a 1993 finding applied to a 2009 definition.

Regardless, their new definition has not been adopted. FAO still uses the widely accepted definition of bycatch, and I could not find a single authoritative body that uses the WWF & Dorset definition.

However, if you thought the redefined, inflated numbers would lose the nuance of “unused or unmanaged” and would be used as a call to action by advocacy groups, you are correct.

Read the full article here

Aquaculture becomes a net-positive

February 22, 2021 — The practice of farming finfish, shellfish and aquatic plants — by land and by sea — dates back 3,000 years as first the Chinese and then the Romans sought ways to supplement their food supplies with species such as carp and oysters.

In more modern times, support for aquaculture has ebbed and flowed along with concerns about animal health and welfare, worries over the effluent pollution caused by wastewater discharges, and the unintended impacts of production infrastructure such as pipes and pumps on natural ecosystems.

Now, a wave of technology innovation and funding from an eclectic group of companies ranging from Google’s parent Alphabet, to the Seed2Growth fund linked to Lukas Walton (grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton), to Cargill and Chevron Ventures (both focused on fish-feed ventures) is changing the tide again.

In 2018, the last year for which figures were available, worldwide aquaculture production reached an all-time high of 114.5 million metric tons in “live weight,” representing a market value of almost $264 billion, according to a 2020 report by U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). That amount accounted for 52 percent of global fish consumption. The annual growth rate will slow over the next decade, but FAO projects aquaculture will supply close to 60 percent of fish consumed globally by 2030.

Read the full story at GreenBiz