Saving Seafood

How Aquaculture is Feeding a Growing World: Saving Seafood Takes a Closer Look

June 5, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Global poverty and malnutrition are falling worldwide, and the availability of affordable, healthy protein is a key reason why. Aquaculture, as one of the world’s fastest growing sources of food production, has been an essential part of this development.

Saving Seafood is taking a closer look at the role that aquaculture plays as a source of food, nutrition, and employment for millions of people around the world in a new series, Aquaculture Today. We interview leading aquaculture experts on the latest breakthroughs and developments in farmed seafood, and the role it plays in the future of human health and the global food supply. 

Worldwide, protein consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years, going from 9 kg per person per year to nearly 20 kg per person per year. Fish, as a cheap and readily accessible food source, has made up a large share of global protein consumption. As the demand for affordable sources of protein grows along with the world’s population, these fish are increasingly being produced through aquaculture.

“Aquaculture has been the fastest [growing] food production industry in the world for the last four decades,” says Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “We need to make sure that is maintained, perhaps not at the same growth, but that it is maintained because it provides not just nutrition, but actually livelihoods and economic opportunities in places where there are not many other opportunities for economic development.”

The importance of aquaculture to global seafood production is only expected to increase, with the production of farmed seafood expected to dwarf that of wild-caught seafood in the next 15 years.

“The projections are that we’ll reach 62 percent of food fish coming from aquaculture by around 2030,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program.

This growth presents an opportunity for fishing communities, which have a chance to diversify to meet the needs of the global seafood market.

“One thing that I would really like to see the industry support [NOAA] stepping up with is dealing with this sort of issue, trying to help these communities start to either diversify their fisheries or thinking more about how they can move into aquaculture,” says Richard Merrick, former Chief Scientist at NOAA Fisheries.

Aquaculture Today comes from interviews conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

View the video here.

 

U.S. Shark Fin Ban “Will Not Work,” Would Likely Hurt Shark Conservation Efforts, Expert Tells Rep. Doug Lamborn

May 2, 2018 — WASHINGTON — In response to a question from Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), shark expert Dr. Robert Hueter wrote that a U.S. ban on the trade of shark fins would not work and would potentially lead to more unsustainable or finned shark fins in the global market.

Dr. Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, previously testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans on April 17 in favor of a sustainable shark trade bill and against a fin ban. His most recent comments came in response to a follow-up question from Rep. Lamborn about the message a fin ban would send to other nations.

“U.S. fishers do not fin their sharks,” Dr. Hueter wrote. “So the consequences of this action will be to punish the fishers doing it right—U.S. shark fisheries—and reward the foreign fisheries doing it wrong. That is a terrible message to send the world.”

John Polston, a fisherman and representative of the Sustainable Shark Alliance, also testified in April in support of the Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act and in opposition to the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act. The Sustainable Shark Alliance is a member of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities.

The full text of Rep. Lamborn’s question and Dr. Hueter’s response is reproduced below:

Question from Rep. Doug Lamborn for Dr. Robert Hueter, Director of the Center for Shark Research, Mote Marine Laboratory

  • Supporters of H.R. 1456 have argued that such a ban on shark fin sales would send a message to other countries. What message do you think this ban would send?

RESPONSE FROM DR. HUETER [emphasis added by Saving Seafood]:

The supporters of H.R. 1456 are hoping the message the U.S. will send to other nations with a domestic fin ban is that shark fins should no longer be tolerated as a consumable product.  This U.S. leadership, they hope, would end the global fin market, eliminate all shark finning, and recover shark populations worldwide.  Analogies are made to past U.S. leadership in the elephant ivory trade and in commercial whaling.  But as explained in Dr. David Shiffman’s and my 2017 peer-reviewed paper in the journal Marine Policy, this approach is flawed and will not work, for several reasons.  Unlike in the case of elephant ivory where the U.S. was the world’s major consumer, we are only a 1% player in the world shark fin market, and thus our withdrawal from that market will not have the same type of direct effect on world trade of fins as happened with the ivory trade.  In fact, it’s reasonable to conclude that the small market share of shark fins that U.S. fishers currently supply will be taken up by nations fishing sharks unsustainably, probably even finning the sharks.  Recall that U.S. fishers do not fin their sharks—that is, they do not remove the fins and discard the rest of the animals at sea, because American fishers are required to land all their sharks with the fins still “naturally attached” (with the exception of the northeast dogfish fishery, which is allowed to remove the fins at sea to begin processing the meat and fins on the fishing boat).  So the consequences of this action will be to punish the fishers doing it right—U.S. shark fisheries—and reward the foreign fisheries doing it wrong.  That is a terrible message to send the world.

Furthermore, our position at the international negotiating table where shark conservation issues are discussed will be compromised if we withdraw from the fin market.  The message we will be carrying to that forum is, no matter what other nations do to create sustainability in their shark fisheries, it will never be enough to allow them to harvest the fins, in our view.  This loss of leverage will backfire for U.S. attempts to advance shark conservation around the world.  In addition, consider today’s realities with elephants and whales: elephants are still being poached as the ivory trade has been driven underground, meaning we can no longer track this commodity through world trade routes, and elephants are still declining.  And whales are still being hunted commercially by those nations who do not share our preservationist beliefs about marine mammals.  Along these lines, a domestic fin ban also sends a message to Asian cultures that even if they are using the entire shark, even if the sharks are not being finned and the level of fishing for them is sustainable, their use of fins to make soup is unethical.  This creates a clash of cultural values, both internationally and domestically, and our moral position will be difficult to defend.

Finally, by focusing our legislative efforts solely on the fin trade in the U.S., we send a message to American citizens that we are solving the worldwide problem in shark depletion by banning the fins here. Conservation groups then declare victory to their supporters, Congress moves on to other issues, and the U.S. public thinks the problem has been solved.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as sharks will continue to be caught by other nations for their meat and fins and suffer unsustainable levels of bycatch mortality in foreign fisheries.  This is where H.R. 5248 represents an evolution of thinking in how to address the issue, by not simply focusing on the fins and also including the rays, which are in as serious trouble as the sharks worldwide.

Therefore, in my view the message we will be sending the world if we implement a nationwide, domestic ban of the shark fin trade is this:  The U.S. does not believe in sustainable fishing for sharks, we do not subscribe to the full use doctrine for marine resources as laid out by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, we condemn Asian cultures for their consumption of shark fins even from sustainable shark fisheries, and we are okay with damaging our own domestic fisheries to construct a purely symbolic but misguided and ineffective message for shark conservation.   

 

For 50 Years, Deep-Water Trawls Likely Caught More Fish Than Anyone Thought

April 23, 2018 — Long before it lands on a restaurant menu, Chilean sea bass takes quite a journey to arrive on land. To catch these deep-sea dwellers, fishers usually drag nets along the ocean floor a quarter of a mile, or more, beneath the ocean’s surface — a form of fishing called bottom trawling.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization tries to keep tabs on bottom trawling, which rakes in juvenile fish and lots of other ocean species that are not the desired catch, depleting future fish stocks. It asks member countries to adhere to quotas and report fishing statistics.

But recent research, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, suggests that millions of tons of fish caught in deep-water trawl nets have gone unreported in the last 50 years.

Read the full story at National Public Radio

 

Caribbean looks to add climate change adaptation protocol into fisheries policy

March 20, 2018 — The Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) is seeking to put in place a protocol for climate change adaption in fisheries and aquaculture before the start of this year’s hurricane season.

Under an agreement signed with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the CRFM will oversee the development of a regional protocol that will integrate climate change adaptation and disaster risk management into the Caribbean Community Common Fisheries Policy.

The development of the protocol forms part of the FAO-led Climate Change Adaptation in the Eastern Caribbean Fisheries Sector (CC4FISH) Project, which is being funded by the Global Environment Facility.

The focus of the Caribbean Community fisheries policy is to integrate “environmental, coastal and marine management considerations, in a way that safeguards fisheries and associated ecosystems from human-induced threats and to mitigate the impacts of climate change and natural disasters.” The purpose of the CC4FISH Project is to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts in the eastern Caribbean fisheries sector.

To develop the protocol, the CRFM has retained the services of Leslie John Walling, a Caribbean consultant with expertise in coastal resources assessment and management, disaster risk-reduction planning, and climate change adaptation planning. Walling, will “be consulting with government and non-government stakeholders in fisheries/aquaculture, climate change, and disaster risk management, including the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency as he puts together the draft document,” the CRFM said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

IFFO’s Andrew Mallison responds to National Geographic article

February 9, 2018 — The following was released by the IFFO:

Following an article published this week in National Geographic, I would like to address a few points on behalf of IFFO, The Marine Ingredients Organisation. The article titled ‘Why Salmon Eating Insects Instead of Fish Is Better for Environment’, published on 5th February 2018, discusses fishmeal and fish oil replacement in salmon feed by a Netherlands based company but quotes information that is both out-of-date and incorrect. Although we agree with the need for additional feed options in aquaculture to ensure the growth of this vital industry, the total replacement of fishmeal and fish oil, as called for in this article, is unjustified and damaging to the fish farming industry.

The practice of feeding fish to fish is labelled as both inefficient and unsustainable in the article, but I would argue that responsibly sourced and used strategically, fishmeal and fish oil are both an efficient and sustainable feed choice. The growing management of wild capture fisheries has ensured that in recent years stocks are in fact steady and not declining (UN FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016). While catches of some small pelagic species used to produce fishmeal and fish oil are volatile, this is due to environmental fluctuation with permitted catches being varied in line with biomass abundance to protect the stocks. These small pelagic species are often not as palatable, spoil quickly and are less popular compared to other local fish, but can be turned into highly nutritious feed. Further evidence of sustainability in the production of marine ingredients is that over 45% of the global production of fishmeal and fish oil is now independently certified as being safe and environmentally responsible, including in its sourcing of raw materials, a figure that far exceeds any other source of feed ingredient.

Regarding the efficiency of the use of fishmeal and fish oil, our latest FIFO ((Fish In:Fish Out ratios) using 2015 data show a conversion rate of 1kg of wild fish used in feed creates 1.22kg of farmed salmon, demonstrating that farmed salmon now produce globally more consumable protein than is used in feed. This ratio is significantly lower than the out-of-date figures quoted in the article and shows how fishmeal and fish oil are now being more strategically used at key points in aquaculture production cycles with a trend towards optimising their nutritional contributions. In fact, looking at the FIFO ratio misses the rationale for the inclusion of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds as their contribution to growth and health of farmed fish goes well beyond the supply of mere protein and energy.

Many fed farmed fish species have evolved to digest fish protein and much of the modern fish farming industry has been built on feeds using fish based ingredients. An increasing amount (currently 35%) of fishmeal is produced from recycled by-product and waste from fish processing.  Fishmeal and fish oil are rich in many of the micronutrients that are required for health, many of which are classed as essential. Even reducing levels of fishmeal in feeds has resulted in feed companies having to supplement with specific materials that are both costly produce, and carry their own environmental impacts. Removing fishmeal as an ingredient to feed could therefore compromise the health of the fish and close an environmentally friendly way of recycling waste products. Production of marine ingredients like fishmeal and fish oil do not require the same levels of fresh water for irrigation, treatment with agricultural chemicals such as fertilisers and pesticides, or use land needed to grow crops. While insect meal may be a theoretical alternative, the production of the millions of tonnes needed to replace fishmeal is currently not viable. When it is clear that the amount of fishmeal and fish oil is not sufficient to meet the growing demand for feed manufacture and, in the best interests of the fish farming industry, the raw material sources for feed should be maximised, it makes little sense to exclude these valuable, responsibly sourced and highly effective ingredients. Although not such a punchy selling message, the reality is that there is an opportunity for alternative ingredients like insect meal without needing to displace fishmeal.

Read the release at IFFO here

 

“Whitefish wars” driving Vietnam’s pangasius away from EU, US

February 7, 2018 — The rapid growth of Vietnam’s pangasius shipments has met with several markets barriers in the European Union and United States, where the fish is being gradually pushed away.

With similarity in texture and taste to other whitefish such as cod, sole, haddock, and pollock, but with much lower prices, pangasius from the Southeast Asia nation has quickly become a competitive alternative in the U.S. and E.U., Nguyen Tien Thong, an assistant professor of applied economics and marketing research at the University of Southern Denmark, told SeafoodSource.

But Thong, also a research associate with analytics firm Syntesa, with a specialty in price formation and consumer preference for seafood, said pangasius’ growth in the U.S. and E.U. markets has been actively thwarted by market barriers erected by both the industry’s competitors and erroneous reporting by mass media.

Vietnam’s pangasius exports were worth USD 1.78 billion (EUR 1.43 billion) last year, up 4.3 percent from 2016. But the export value to the U.S. and E.U. fell 11 percent and 22.3 percent, respectively, recently released data from Vietnam Association of Seafood Producers and Exporters (VASEP) revealed.

Three “wars” against pangasius

European and Vietnamese seafood experts have collectively created a new term for the campaigns surrounding pangasius, calling them the ”whitefish wars.”

The most recent round of this war broke out in early 2017, when a television segment on Spain’s Cuatro channel claimed pangasius farming was polluting the Mekong Delta. Two weeks later, French retail giant Carrefour decided to suspend sales of Vietnamese pangasius in all its stores in Belgium, France, and Spain. Carrefour attributed its decision to “the doubts that persist about the adverse impacts that pangasius farms have on the environment.”

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council responded to Carrefour’s move with a statement insisting the facts did not support Carrefour’s pangasius decision, and VASEP said repeatedly that the Cuatro report provided distorted information. Seeking to help combat the growing ”PR crisis,” 20 of Vietnam’s leading pangasius exporters joined together to create a market development fund in June 2017. But the rebuttals appeared largely ineffective at halting the negative impact on pangasius sales.

However, Thong argues that the “whitefish war” began as early as 2000, and started in the United States. In that year, about 90 percent of the catfish imported by the U.S. was from Vietnam. Feeling threatened, U.S. catfish growers and wholesalers started a campaign to curtail imports of Vietnamese pangasius into the country.

For years, pangasius faced high anti-dumping duties imposed by the U.S government, and a push for increased inspections. After a protracted political debate, in August 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) began inspecting all imported pangasius. Only a few months after the decision, only two of 14 Vietnamese pangasius exporters are still shipping pangasius to the U.S., according to VASEP.

In the E.U., backlash against pangasius started in late 2010, when the World Wildlife Fund placed the fish on the “red list,” effectively branding it a no-buy for environmentally conscientious consumers, Thong said. The attempt, which Thong termed as the second “war,” was made after the fish became a significant substitute fish to other whitefish raised in many European countries.

A few years later, WWF reversed course on pangasius, giving its backing to all Vietnamese-produced pangasius awarded Aquaculture Stewardship Council certification.

Further controversy was ignited in 2011 when Member of the European Parliament Struan Stevenson, senior vice president of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee, attacked the pangasius’ environmental, social, and safety credentials during an address to the European Parliament.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Bering Sea Crab Fisheries Receive Certifications Recognizing Their Sustainability

February 7, 2018 — Five Alaska crab fisheries, including two Bering Sea ones, have met the Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) Standard.

According to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), the Eastern Bering Sea tanner crab is newly certified under the Alaska RFM for this year. Aleutian Islands’ golden king crab also received a new certification.

In terms of re-certified crab fisheries, Bristol Bay red king crab, St. Matthew Island blue king crab, and the Eastern Bering Sea snow crab all completed the assessment process successfully.

ASMI’s RFM model is based on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations code and guidelines for credible certification, which assures buyers that the crab is sourced from responsibly managed, sustainable fisheries.

Read the full story at KNOM

 

Mistake in fisheries statistics shows false increase in catches

February 7, 2018 — Countries’ improvements to their fisheries statistics have been contributing to the false impression that humanity is getting more and more fish from the ocean when, in reality, global marine catches have been declining on average by around 1.2 million tonnes per year since 1996.

A new study in Marine Policy explains why the reconstructed catch  of the Sea Around Us show declining , while the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations claims that catches have been more or less ‘stable’ since the 1990s. The Sea Around Us is a research initiative at the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia.

The problem – say authors Dirk Zeller and Daniel Pauly- occurs as an inadvertent side effect of well-intentioned efforts by countries to improve their national data monitoring and reporting systems. As they include new information, for example of a previously unmonitored or poorly-monitored fishery, region or fleet, these new data add additional catches to those of already monitored sectors, thus creating the impression of a growing trend.

But such upward tendencies in catches do not match reality in most countries because often national statistical systems do not correct their new numbers retroactively. This incidental by-product of updates in fisheries data collection systems is what Zeller and Pauly call a “presentist bias,” which means that the emphasis is on the ‘present’ at the expense of the ‘past.’

“In our paper, we use the example of Mozambique where officials reported that small-scale catches ‘grew’ by 800 per cent from 2003 to 2004. This is incorrect. What happened was that the small-scale sector was massively under-represented in the reported data for the longest time and when a new reporting scheme was put in place in the early 2000s, improved catch data by the always-present subsistence and artisanal fisheries were added. A very similar amount of fish was caught in previous years, it was just not registered in the reported data,” says Zeller, who is the lead author of the study and head of the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean at the University of Western Australia.

Read the full story at PHYS

 

Alaska: Five crab fisheries meet stringent criteria

January 26, 2018 — Five crab fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands have met the stringent requirements for certification under the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management program, two of them for the first time.

The newly certified fisheries were identified by ASMI on Jan. 18 as the Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab and Aleutian Islands golden king crab. The recertified fisheries were the Bristol Bay red king crab, St. Matthew Island blue king crab and Eastern Bering Sea snow crab.

“Both the reassessed crab fisheries and the new additions scored high in each of the assessment criteria exemplifying their fisheries management excellence,” said Susan Marks, sustainability director for ASMI.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Too Big To Ignore explores challenges to sustainable development of local fisheries

August 10, 2017 — Two years after FAO member states agreed to adopt a human rights-based approach to governing the small-scale fisheries in their countries, researchers invested in the development of small-scale fisheries have released a book outlining progress made in implementing those reforms and the challenges in doing so.

The book, “Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines: Global Implementation,”  reviews countries’ efforts thus far to implement the human rights-based principles, otherwise known as  Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries, at the local level. Comprising essays and case studies by more than 90 authors from academia, the FAO, and civil society, it also considers the need to contextualize the guidelines to fit local circumstances.

Edited by researchers associated with Too Big To Ignore, a research network and global partnership dedicated to the promotion and support of small-scale fisheries, the book considers case studies in 34 countries, including the Pacific, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Read the full story at Seafood Source