Saving Seafood

Labor issues improving with increased scrutiny, according to Thai industry rep

October 16, 2017 — Thai seafood producers claim they’re working to meet stricter reporting requirements, which they say are helping to improve labor and food safety problems in the industry.

There has been a rise in reporting requirements due to the U.S. Congress’ Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015, according to Panisuan Jamnamwej, chairman of the Committee on Fisheries and Related Industries at the Thai Chamber of Commerce. In addition, the introduction of QR code technology is increasing traceability and curbing abuses in Thailand’s seafood sector, according to Panisuan. Shrimp farmers are being encouraged to adapt the QR codes by being supplied with mobile data connections, he said, and wild-catch fishers are getting better at tracking their takes.

“Importers say you need to provide information such as the details of vessels and catches. Similarly on feed, if your fishmeal was caught at sea, you need the name of the ship, even if only one percent of the material came from that vessel,” Panisuan said.

In the past two years, Thailand’s fishing sector has faced sharp international criticism for its use of indentured Burmese laborers on some of its vessels, as documented by several NGOs. Thai industries have also run into trouble for their import of workers from neighboring Myanmar – the process itself is legal, but private recruiters have at times run afoul of the law. Burmese laborers made up the bulk of staff at several processing plants visited by SeafoodSource in Thailand recently.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Vatican official laments lack of fair trade label for commercial fishing

September 21, 2017 — VATICAN CITY — An upcoming world congress by the Catholic organization Apostleship of the Sea will focus on the plight of fishermen, who frequently face exploitation in carrying out their work, according to one Vatican official.

He lamented that no ‘Fair Trade’ certification exists for their product.

“We have to be educated,” Fr. Bruno Ciceri told CNA Sept. 20. “Frozen food here is cheap, but it’s because people are exploited, because there is forced labor, because there are trafficked people that work aboard these fishing vessels.”

Referring to the label given to products from developing countries that adhere to ethical standards of trading, he said, “We talk a lot about ‘Fair Trade.’ I don’t know the day when we will have ‘fair trade’ also in fishing. That will make a difference.”

Fr. Ciceri is a member of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He is also the Vatican delegate for the Apostleship of the Sea, which provides pastoral care for seafarers and their families.

Read the full story at the Catholic News Agency

IUU Fishing off Montauk Exposed as NY Fines Party Boat Taking Illegal Sea Bass and Dumping Fish

September 20, 2017 — State marine enforcement officers issued eight tickets and 22 warnings last month after people aboard a party boat were spotted throwing “hundreds of pounds” of illegal fish overboard in Montauk Harbor, authorities said.

The boat was later found to have hundreds more undersized and over-the-limit fish — a combined 1,000 fish in all, authorities said last week.

The Department of Environmental Conservation, in an email, said a marine enforcement unit was patrolling Montauk Harbor Aug. 31 when officers confronted fishermen on the boat, Fin Chaser, who were tossing fish overboard. Anglers ignored orders to stop, the DEC said

Once at the Star Island Yacht Club dock in Montauk, officers discovered 500 fish in 17 coolers. They issued tickets and warnings for possession of undersized black sea bass and fluke, excess possession of sea bass and scup, failure to stop dumping on command and an incomplete vessel trip report.

Read the full story from Newsday at Seafood News

Oceana claims four countries violated EU law by fishing illegally in African waters

September 14, 2017 — Environmental nonprofit Oceana is claiming vessels from the European Union’s distant-water fleet have been fishing unlawfully in the waters off the coasts of Equatorial Guinea and Gambia.

Using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data collected by satellite and terrestrial receivers tool Global Fishing Watch, Oceana said it tracked 19 vessels from Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain fishing unlawfully for more than 31,000 hours in African waters between April 2012 and August 2015.

The European Union has signed fisheries partnership agreements with several African countries, offering financial and technical support in exchange for fishing rights. However, its agreements with Gambia and Equatorial Guinea are “dormant,” signifying countries that signed fishing partnership agreements “without having a protocol into force, for structural or conjonctural reasons.” Under rules set by the European Commission, EU vessels are not allowed to fish in waters of countries with dormant agreements.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Sea Shepherd Activists Halt Pursuit of Japanese Whalers

August 30, 2017 — The environmentalist group Sea Shepherd has called off its annual pursuit of Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean, according to the group’s founder, who said it cannot keep up with Japan’s surveillance technology.

“What we discovered is that Japan is now employing military surveillance to watch Sea Shepherd ship movements in real time by satellite,” the group’s founder, Paul Watson, said in a statement. “If they know where our ships are at any given moment, they can easily avoid us.”

Sea Shepherd, a self described “eco-vigilante” group founded in 1977, has spent years patrolling the remote Southern Ocean, investigating and documenting illegal fishing and whaling operations, putting it directly at odds with Japanese vessels. In addition to filming the operations, the group uses confrontational tactics that include shooting water cannon and stink bombs at the Japanese vessels.

Mr. Watson maintains that his group acts within the law. “We never caused a single injury to any person in all of these years,” he said in an interview. “The criminals are quite plain to see.”

Since 2005, Sea Shepherd has patrolled the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, a protected area where whaling is prohibited. A few nations, including Japan, have special research permits that allow for some whaling.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Why the West should care about Thailand’s new fight against fishing slavery

August 23, 2017 — Thailand’s $7 billion fishing trade is among the world’s biggest. In recent years, it’s also been one of the most severely scandalized — an industry blighted by reports of slavery on fishing trawlers. Many of these tales recall 18th century-style barbarity at sea.

Each year, Thailand’s docks have traditionally launched thousands of trawlers into the ocean, often with crews of roughly 20 men. Most are not complicit in forced labor. But less scrupulous captains have taken advantage of the ocean’s lawlessness.

In port cities, they’ve bought men from Myanmar and Cambodia for $600 to $1,000 per head. Duped by traffickers, the migrants come to Thailand seeking under-the-table work in factories or farms.

Instead, they’ve found themselves hustled onto fishing boats that motor into the abyss, thousands of miles from civilization, where they are forced to fish for no pay. Various investigations have uncovered thousands of cases.

As one deputy boat captain of a Thai trawler told GlobalPost: “Once a captain is tired of a [captive], he’s sold to another captain for profit. A guy can be out there for 10 years just getting sold over and over.”

But Thailand is now installing a new system that — if effective — could seriously reform an industry that has been murky for far too long.

“We’re trying to change as fast as possible,” says Adisorn Promthep, director general of Thailand’s Department of Fisheries. “We want to make sure no vessel escapes our scope.”

Installed last year by Thailand’s military government, Adisorn is charged with bringing transparency to a business marked by opacity.

Read the full story at Public Radio International

 

Indonesia’s decision to share vessel tracking data ‘ill-advised,’ some say

August 22, 2017 — JAKARTA, Indonesia — Not everyone supports the Indonesian government’s decision to publish information on the location of fishing boats in its waters, via data mapping platform Global Fishing Watch, accessible to anyone with a computer.

The move, aimed at countering illegal fishing, has earned a backlash from some observers, who say it may prove “counterproductive.”

In June, Indonesia became the first country to share its Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data with Global Fishing Watch, a partnership between Google, conservation group Oceana, and SkyTruth, which uses tools like satellite imagery to monitor environmental issues. The platform provides both general data for the public and more detailed information seen only by authorities.

The move was praised by conservationists for its potential to deter illegal fishing. But some argue that publishing the data will reveal the location of Indonesia’s best fisheries, creating a run on the resources that further depletes them.

“Without any access restrictions to the data, fishing vessels will likely rush to sail to locations with the most fishing vessels, and this will result in massive exploitation of marine natural resources,” said Marthin Hadiwinata of the Indonesian Traditional Fishermen’s Union (KNTI).

“Isn’t that going to end up becoming unsustainable instead?”

Read the full story at Mongabay

New Study Reveals High Risk of Illegal Seafood Imports Entering Japanese Market

August 1, 2017 — TOKYO, Japan — A new paper published in the journal of Marine Policy estimates that 24–36% of 2.15 million tonnes of wild-seafood imports to Japan in 2015, valued at $1.6 to $2.4 billion, were of illegal or unreported origin.

The investigation, conducted by a team of leading researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC), assessed 27 seafood products coming from 9 leading source countries to Japan; some products such as imported Chinese eel were found to be up to 45-75% illegally harvested. Although Japan has taken recent steps to address the illegal seafood problem including the ratification of the Port State Measures Agreement, stronger actions must be taken to prevent illegal products from entering one of the world’s largest markets.

The current import control system in Japan—one of the top three seafood markets globally—poses very little deterrent to the entry of illegal seafood. Japan has yet to implement the same anti-IUU and traceability standards as the US and Europe, including a lack of import regulations to verify product legality. Although a limited catch documentation scheme is implemented for Bluefin tuna, Russian crab, and Patagonian Toothfish, as part of Japan’s commitments to Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMO) and other international agreements, such arrangements do not apply to the bulk of its seafood imports.

Read the full story at Ocean Outcomes

ARA BUAKAMSRI: Major change for the Thai and global seafood industry

July 27, 2017 — Thailand is on the brink of making real progress toward the elimination of destructive fishing and human rights abuses in its seafood supply chains. As a potential yellow card de-listing from the European Commission looms, it remains to be seen whether the country will take the steps needed to fully meet the standards to eliminate human rights abuse in the seafood industry.

It’s fair to say that Thai authorities have made progress in key areas, including reforms to the legal and regulatory framework for fishing that was drawn up in 1947, along with improvements to and the enforcement of labour regulations. At the UN Ocean Conference in New York this year, Thai delegates announced a voluntary commitment to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by rigorously controlling, monitoring, and inspecting all Thai-flagged fishing vessels operating inside and outside Thai waters. A key piece of this commitment is to eliminate all IUU fishing in Thai fishing fleets by 2019.

Understandably, this progress has been met with criticism, seen by some as insufficient and cosmetic.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangkok Post

A High-Tech Solution to Seafood Slavery and Illegal Fishing

July 20, 2017 — Inexpensive seafood can come at a high price. To make as much money as possible, it’s not uncommon for fishing vessels to spend more than a year at sea, fishing continuously, without supervision; some vessels spend as much as 525 straight days at sea, and others have logged 503 continuous days. This practice is only possible due to transshipment—the high-seas transfer of seafood catches between ships—and global fish stocks and human rights are taking the hit.

The U.S. is the world’s second largest market for seafood. Americans eat almost 16 pounds a year each, spending $96 billion (and that doesn’t include fish used in pet food). But 90 percent of that seafood is imported, and the odds are good that it was passed from one ship to another in international waters, where a whole range of illegal things may have happened.

Transshipment takes place when large fishing boats unload their catches to refrigerated cargo vessels, also known as reefers. It’s technically legal, and provides a cost-effective method for fishing boats to remain at sea and prolong their fishing trips without needing to head to port between catches. But because transshipment often happens far from monitoring eyes, it has also been linked to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (commonly referred to as “IUU”) fishing, along with human trafficking, slavery, and other criminal endeavors, including drug and illegal wildlife trade.

IUU fishing encompasses a grab bag of activities, not all strictly illegal. Fishing is illegal if it breaks national fishery laws or international fishing agreements—examples include fishing in prohibited areas or using illegal equipment. Unreported and unregulated fishing activities aren’t necessarily illicit—it might mean fishing in unregulated waters, or not reporting discarded fish. Illegal fishing can be difficult to accurately assess, but estimates say it’s responsible for $23 billion in economic losses.

In an effort to curb IUU, safeguard sovereign fish stocks, and strengthen ecological protections, NGOs and governments have taken an increasing global focus on transshipment practices in recent years. And several new projects are using technology to create the biggest and most accurate picture of transshipment to date.

Read the full story at Civil Eats