Saving Seafood

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

 

Fights over illegal fishing lead to armed conflict, deaths

March 31, 2022 — Around the world, from Sri Lanka to Argentina to the South China Sea, the ocean has become an expanding front in the armed conflict between nations over illegal fishing and overfishing, practices that deplete a vulnerable food source for billions of people worldwide. Jessica Spijkers, a researcher for Australia’s national science agency, found a rise in global fishing conflicts when she studied a four-decade period ending in 2016. Conflicts this century, she said, often involved claims of illegal and overfishing. Her analysis included nonviolent disputes that sometimes precede the outbreak of violence.

An Associated Press review of conflict databases compiled by non-governmental organizations, government tallies, and media reports found in the past five years more than 360 instances of state authorities ramming or shooting at foreign fishing boats, sometimes leading to deaths.

During that same time, another 850 foreign fishing boats were seized by authorities and systematically crushed, blown up, or sunk.

The figures cover incidents across six continents but are likely an undercount since no single entity tracks violent conflicts over fishing rights worldwide. The AP analysis did not include routine citations and arrests but focused on where and how violence has escalated in fishing grounds around the world.

Environmental and national security experts say countries that depend on fishing both as a source of food and commerce are at risk of greater conflict in the coming years. Already, industrial fishing boats extract droves of fish from the sea, with distant-water fleets from China and other countries roaming far beyond their domestic waters in search of stocks that have been depleted closer to home.

The search for new sources of fish comes as nations are tasked with feeding growing populations and climate change further endangers ocean life.

“It is getting significantly worse,” said Johan Bergenas, a World Wildlife Fund expert on oceans who first warned of a rise in global fishing conflicts five years ago.

“We are now seeing armed conflict and tensions and strains as a result of fish stocks and competition over in West Africa, in the West Indian Ocean, in Latin America,” he said. “There’s going to be conflicts and armed engagements over these incredibly important fish stocks around the world.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press

 

New poll finds US voters want assurances merchants are selling legally-caught seafood

March 25, 2022 — The Walton Family Foundation, in collaboration with Morning Consult, recently released a poll that found Americans would eat more seafood if they had greater knowledge of its health and environmental benefits.

The poll’s main focus was on Americans’ views on climate change, and what solutions towards its impacts respondents preferred. Overall, the poll discovered U.S. residents are unified on climate change and see urgent connections between it and the economy, agriculture, and health, according to Teresa Ish, the Oceans Initiative Lead and Senior Program Officer at the Walton Family Foundation.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Insurer nixes coverage for Atlantic tuna fishing fleet following IUU investigation

March 23, 2022 — Norway-based marine and energy insurance firm Hydor has decided to put an end to its contract covering a fleet of ships that were found participating in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) tuna fishing, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) reported.

The fleet of three ships – currently named Israr 1, 2, and 3 – has operated in the Atlantic for years and was blacklisted in December 2021 by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), following an EJF report detailing the fleet’s illicit activities. EJF’s attention was first drawn to the fleet when satellite monitoring of the vessels’ movements demonstrated they were long-lining for tuna without registering with ICCAT, the regional fishery management organization that oversees the Atlantic tuna-fishing sector.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

The Wild West of global fisheries

February 28, 2022 — While the term “Wild West” may conjure up images of outlaws acting with impunity in faraway outposts, it’s an apt metaphor for what’s taking place on the high seas just outside our 200-mile exclusive economic zone and around the world.

Too much of the world’s seafood – including seafood imported into the U.S. – is caught using slave labor used onboard vessels operated by Chinese, Taiwanese, and other nations’ companies. Global Fishing Watch estimates the number of enslaved seafood workers as reaching well into the tens of thousands. From a humanitarian perspective alone, this is outrageous. From an ocean-conservation perspective, the effects are devastating. Slave labor is the leading cause of overfishing for the simple reason that when you use slave labor, you can afford to deploy thousands more fishing boats and replenish them at sea, keeping them working 365 days a year.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

More than 100 scientists call on Congress to end illegal fishing, human rights abuses in seafood supply chain

December 13, 2021 — More than 100 scientists on Monday called for federal action on illegal fishing, fraud and human rights abuses in the seafood industry.

In a letter to Congress, scientists called on representatives to end harmful practices along the seafood supply chain, including illegal, unreported and unregulated — or IUU — fishing and abuses like forced labor and human trafficking.

Human rights abuses and IUU fishing typically go hand in hand, scientists write, because unsustainable fishing practices push vessels further out to sea for longer periods of time, meaning some fishing companies rely on forced or underpaid labor to turn a profit.

“The interconnected issues of IUU fishing and human rights violations demand the United States take action to ensure that only safe, legally caught, responsibly sourced, and honestly labeled seafood is imported into our domestic market. The human rights abuses prevalent in the seafood sector make it clear that the United States needs to build in labor protections for those working at every stage in the seafood supply chain,” the letter’s authors write.

Read the full story at The Hill