Saving Seafood

China fishing fleet defied U.S. in standoff on the high seas

November 1, 2022 — This summer, as China fired missiles into the sea off Taiwan to protest House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, a much different kind of geopolitical standoff was taking shape in another corner of the Pacific Ocean.

Thousands of miles away, a heavily-armed U.S. Coast Guard cutter sailed up to a fleet of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing boats not far from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. Its mission: inspect the vessels for any signs of illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing.

Boarding ships on the high seas is a perfectly legal if little-used tool available to any sea power as part of the collective effort to protect the oceans’ threatened fish stocks.

But in this case, the Chinese captains of several fishing boats did something unexpected. Three vessels sped away, one turning aggressively 90 degrees toward the Coast Guard cutter James, forcing the American vessel to take evasive action to avoid being rammed.

“For the most part they wanted to avoid us,” said Coast Guard Lt. Hunter Stowes, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer on the James. “But we were able to maneuver effectively so that we were safe the entire time.”

Still, the high-seas confrontation represented a potentially dangerous breach of international maritime protocol, one the U.S. sees as a troubling precedent since it happened on the Coast Guard’s first-ever mission to counter illegal fishing in the eastern Pacific.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Biden’s IUU memo leaves some advocates wanting more

June 28, 2022 — U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday, 27 June, 2022, issued a broad memorandum calling illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing a threat to American economic competitiveness and national security, the global fishing industry, and to the fight against climate change.

The announcement, though, left some advocates wanting more from the administration, particularly in terms of policies that still allow some fish harvested and processed by IUU means to enter U.S. ports. Biden’s proclamation coincided with the first day of the United Nations Ocean Conference, which runs through Friday, 1 July, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Biden aims at China in new illegal fishing policy framework

June 27, 2022 — The Biden administration is stepping up efforts to combat illegal fishing by China, ordering federal agencies to better coordinate among themselves as well as with foreign partners in a bid to promote sustainable exploitation of the world’s oceans.

On Monday, the White House released its first ever National Security memo on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or IUU, to coincide with the start of a United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Nearly 11% of total U.S. seafood imports in 2019 worth $2.4 billion came from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, a federal agency.

While China isn’t named in the lengthy policy framework, language in it left little doubt where it was aimed. The memo is bound to irritate Beijing at a time of growing geopolitical competition between the two countries. China is a dominant seafood processor and through state loans and fuel subsidies has built the world’s largest distant water fishing fleet, with thousands of floating fish factories spread across Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Specifically, the memo directs 21 federal departments and agencies to better share information, coordinate enforcement actions such as sanctions and visa restrictions and promote best practices among international allies.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

WTO deal on fishing subsidies received with mixture of praise and criticism

June 21, 2022 — Representatives of ocean-focused non-governmental organizations have issued a mix of praise and criticism of an agreement struck at the World Trade Organization to prohibit subsidy support for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and limiting fishing of overfished stocks.

The accord, agreed to on 14 June, ditched several parts of the draft text presented to ministers and was characterized by WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as a “first but significant step forward” to curbing fleet overcapacity by ending subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas. Okonjo-Iweala said the reporting requirements included in the deal will “finally shed light on the actual level of subsidies going to fishing.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

How Well is the Global Treaty to Ban Illegal Fishing Vessels Working?

June 6, 2022 — One of the biggest challenges facing the global ocean is illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Operating outside the constraints of laws, quotas and licences, IUU vessels commonly overfish, trawl in protected waters and take protected species.

IUU deprives countries of an estimated $26–50 billion annually. It depletes fish stocks and damages biodiversity, while threatening livelihoods and food security. It often takes place in developing coastal states that lack the governance and resources to monitor and protect their fish stocks effectively. More widely, IUU is linked to labor abuses, human trafficking and slavery.

To respond to these threats, in 2016 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) brought into force the first legally binding international agreement to tackle IUU fishing. So how does the Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) work, and what has it accomplished so far?

What is the PSMA?

The vast majority of wild-caught marine fish are landed in ports. The PSMA enables nations that are party to it – of which there are currently 70 – to use ports as a form of border control for foreign-flagged vessels. The treaty applies not only to fishing vessels, but also those that transfer catch and refuel at sea. Guided by the PSMA, port officials assess the risk that an incoming vessel may be engaged in illegal activities, and decide whether to let it dock.

By tightening port controls, in principle the PSMA shuts out vessels that profit from IUU activities, and slows the flow of illegal fish into global markets. Enforcing at ports is also safer and more economical than patrolling the high seas looking for vessels fishing illegally. The idea is that as more nations adopt the treaty and turn away vessels engaged in IUU, they will be forced to travel further and at greater expense to land their catch, until it’s no longer profitable, and they are deterred.

Read the full story at Maritime Executive

Huffman, Graves want Biden to make “strong statement” against IUU

June 6, 2022 — Two U.S. lawmakers pushing the federal government to take broader action against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing are asking U.S. President Joe Biden to take action ahead of a key international conference.

U.S. Representatives Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Garret Graves (R-La.) sent the letter on 2 June 2022, saying the country has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in the fight against IUU ahead of the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, which starts on 27 June. The conference – as well as June being World Oceans Month – presents an opportunity for the U.S. to make a “strong statement,” they said in the three-page letter.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Joint Analytical Cell opens new front in fight against IUU fishing

June 1, 2022 — A new collaboration by three data-driven campaign groups aims to give lower-income coastal states better access to fisheries intelligence, data analysis, and capacity-building assistance in the battle against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

The collaboration was founded by the USAID-funded International Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance Network; Global Fishing Watch; a partnership between Google and the advocacy groups Oceana and SkyTruth; and TMT, a nonprofit known for its detailed database of IUU-related vessels and operators. Dubbed the Joint Analytical Cell (JAC), the project aims to harness innovative technology and fisheries expertise to increase data sharing and collaboration among governments and non-state actors in the fight against IUU.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Vessel flag loopholes leaving door open for IUU fishing in Africa

May 9, 2022 — The number of fishing vessels exploiting African flags to escape effective oversight as they engage in illegal fishing continues to increase, a new report by TM-Tracking has found.

The report, published by Norwegian nonprofit TM-Tracking and a collection of experts under I.R. Consilium, found that the health of Africa’s fisheries, coupled with the limited enforcement capacity of the region’s governments, make Africa an “ideal venue for high-risk fishing operators.” An analysis of fishing operations and illegal fishing cases by TM-Tracking found perpetrators of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing are tapping into the USD 194 billion (EUR 184 billion) global fishing market without any “meaningful restrictions or management oversight.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

New Stanford Study Provides Targeting Guide for IUU Fishing Vessels

April 11, 2022 — IUU (Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported) fishing is a challenging problem for the maritime sector. Its implications for the health of marine ecosystems and for human rights have catalyzed calls for a speedy solution, and it is a focus of several recent corporate and government policy commitments. Unfortunately, the ability of these actors to intervene is compromised by a shortage of information that could be used to target labor abuse and IUU fishing risk.

Previous research has helped to underscore the broad relationship between labor abuse at sea and IUU fishing, but the scales and extent are not well understood. This was the focus of a Stanford University-led study released on Tuesday. Essentially, the study identifies the regions and ports at highest risk for labor abuse and illegal fishing.

Two main underlying risk factors emerged: A vessel’s flag state and the type of gear it carries onboard could be pointers to its illegal activities at sea. “We found fishing vessel flag to have the greatest impact on predicting port risk for both labor abuse and IUU fishing, followed by vessel gear type for labor abuse, and the interaction between flag and gear type for IUU fishing,” the authors concluded.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

 

High seas have become ‘safe haven’ for labor abuse, illegal fishing: study

April 6, 2022 — Coastal regions off West Africa, the mid-Atlantic near Portugal and waters off Peru are the riskiest spots for illegal fishing and labor abuse, with most occurring aboard vessels registered to China and other countries with poor anti-corruption oversight, a new study has found.

The study, published in Nature Communications, found that nearly half of more than 750 ports assessed worldwide are linked to either labor abuse or illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

The high seas have become “a safe haven” for illegal fishing, with millions of tons of such fish caught every year, authors wrote, incorporating an online survey of experts that revealed the pervasive nature of these practices.

Researchers found that vessels that engage is such activity also often have labor abuses on board, including practices such as forced labor, debt bondage and poor conditions.

Read the full story at The Hill