Saving Seafood

FAO releases a detailed global assessment of marine fish stocks

June 18, 2025 —  Some of the world’s marine fisheries are recovering under strong, science-based management, but many others remain under pressure, according to a report launched today at the UN Ocean Conference by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It shows just how far effective governance can go and how urgently those gains need to be replicated.

The review of the state of world marine fishery resources – 2025 reports on the biological sustainability of 2,570 individual fish stocks, a major increase from previous editions. Informed by over 650 experts from more than 200 institutions and over 90 countries, this participatory and inclusive report analyzes trends across all FAO marine fishing areas and offers the clearest picture to date of how global marine fisheries are faring.

The report confirms that 64.5% of all fishery stocks are exploited within biologically sustainable levels, with 35.5% of stocks classified as over-fished. When weighted by their production levels, 77.2% of global fisheries landings come from biologically sustainable stocks.

In marine fishing areas under effective fisheries management, sustainability rates far exceed the global average. In the Northeast Pacific, for example, 92.7% of stocks are sustainably fished.

“Effective management remains the most powerful tool for conserving fisheries resources. This review provides an unprecedentedly comprehensive understanding, enabling more informed decision-making based on data,” said QU Dongyu, Director-General of FAO. “This report gives governments the evidence they need to shape policy and coordinate coherently.”

Read the full article at Aqua Feed

FAO, GFCM celebrate work done to combat IUU fishing over the last decade

June 6, 2025 — The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) have come together to celebrate the International Day for the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing on 5 June.

The date was chosen in 2015 to mark the entry into force of the Port State Measures Agreement, the first binding international agreement which sought to address IUU fishing and which has been ratified by more than 50 nations and the European Union. Most recently, China signed the agreement.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Seafood waste less than half of previous estimates, according to US researchers

August 14, 2024 –A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) has revealed 22.7 percent of total seafood supply in the U.S. is lost or wasted – significantly lower than previous Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that stated 50 percent of the supply went to waste.

Published in the journal Nature the study, titled “Aquatic food loss and waste rate in the United States is half of earlier estimates,” aimed to provide updates to 2011 FAO estimates on aquatic food loss and waste (FLW) by addressing several key assumptions that led to potentially inflated numbers.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

FAO endorses new aquaculture guidelines at UN Committee on Fisheries meeting

July 16, 2024 — The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’ Committee on Fisheries (COFI) has endorsed a new set of guidelines for aquaculture designed to develop a set of best practices for the industry worldwide.

The Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture (GSA) was designed with the aid of NOAA and other stakeholders and officially endorsed by COFI at the committee’s 36th session in Rome, Italy. The new guidelines come after the FAO’s State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report showed that fisheries and aquaculture production hit a new high of 223.2 million metric tons (MT) in 2022 – with aquaculture contributing over 57 percent of aquatic animal products for direct human consumption.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Aquaculture drives aquatic food yields to new high

June 30, 2022 — The production of wild and farm-raised fish, shellfish and algae reached record levels in 2020, and future increases could be vital to fighting world hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday.

Driven by sustained growth in aquaculture,  and aquatic farming together hauled in 214 million tonnes, the UN agency said in a report.

The total first-sale value of 2020 production topped $400 million, with $265 million coming from aquaculture, a sector poised for further expansion.

These trend lines are good news for a world facing price hikes and  due to the war in Ukraine, disrupted supply chains, and inflation.

Read the full story from Phys.org

 

Seafood biz braces for losses of jobs, fish due to sanctions

March 31, 2022 — The worldwide seafood industry is steeling itself for price hikes, supply disruptions and potential job losses as new rounds of economic sanctions on Russia make key species such as cod and crab harder to come by.

The latest round of U.S. attempts to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine includes bans on imports of seafood, alcohol and diamonds. The U.S. is also stripping “most favored nation status” from Russia. Nations around the world are taking similar steps.

Russia is one of the largest producers of seafood in the world, and was the fifth-largest producer of wild-caught fish, according to a 2020 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Russia is not one of the biggest exporters of seafood to the U.S., but it’s a world leader in exports of cod (the preference for fish and chips in the U.S.). It’s also a major supplier of crabs and Alaska pollock, widely used in fast-food sandwiches and processed products like fish sticks.

The impact is likely to be felt globally, as well as in places with working waterfronts. One of those is Maine, where more than $50 million in seafood products from Russia passed through Portland in 2021, according to federal statistics.

Read the full story at AP News

Somalia plans to streamline fishing permits to fight IUU

July 28, 2021 — Somalia, plagued with persistent incidents of piracy and rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, is aiming to tighten its fishing licensing regime in order to end loopholes that result in illegal activity.

Amid claims of deep-rooted corruption within Somalia’s fishing industry, the country’s Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR), under the leadership of Minister Abdillahi Bidhan Warsame, plans to eliminate uncertainty brought about by each federal state in the country issuing separate fishing permits that other federal states do not recognize – creating loopholes for IUU fishing operators to thrive along the Somalia’s 3,330-kilometer coastline.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

From Maine’s warming waters, kelp emerges as a potentially lucrative cash crop

June 28, 2021 — One bright, brisk morning last month, Colleen Francke steered her skiff a mile off the coast of Falmouth and cut the gas. A few white buoys bobbed in straight lines on the water. Francke reached down and hoisted a rope.

She has been lobstering for a decade and a half, she says, but as climate change warms local waters and forces lobsters northward, she’s been finding it harder to envision a future in that industry.

So, for the last two years, she’s been developing a new source of income. Heaving the rope aloft, she showed off her bounty: ribbons of brown, curly sugar kelp, raised on her 10-acre undersea farm.

Kelp, a seaweed more often thought of as a nuisance by fishermen, is emerging as a potentially lucrative crop, hailed for its many uses as a miracle food to an ingredient in bioplastics to a revolutionary way to feed beef cattle. And Maine officials, confronting a likely decline of the state’s iconic lobster fishing industry in coming decades, are now looking to kelp farming as a possible economic and environmental savior.

The state is working with local institutions to support training and grants for entrepreneurs such as Francke willing to move into kelp farming or other aquaculture ventures. It also labeled kelp a “natural climate solution” in its recently-released Climate Action plan. The goal, officials say, is to dramatically expand kelp farming as part of a reinvention of Maine’s seafood industry — and imagining a future in which kelp from Maine is held in something akin to the esteem that Maine lobster is now.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

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