Saving Seafood

Taiwan Seeks to Improve Conditions in Fishing Fleet

October 4th, 2016 — Commercial fishing boat owners in Taiwan, one of the world’s biggest seafood exporters, face strict rules and potential fines under a new law aimed at preventing overfishing and protecting migrant crewmembers who work far at sea with little oversight.

The Distant Water Fisheries Act, which takes effect Jan. 15, 2017, comes amid growing pressure on Taiwan’s seafood industry to crack down on modern-day slavery and other abuses for the more than 20,000 migrants working on the island’s fleet of fishing vessels.

Frances Lee, a spokeswoman for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said new requirements for the foreign fishermen will include insurance, health care, wages, working hours and human rights.

Last year the European Union gave Taiwan a “yellow card” warning for failing to control illegal fishing on its commercial vessels, which sail around the world to catch some $2 billion a year worth of exported tuna and other seafood every year. Without improvements, Taiwan’s $14 million worth of seafood exports to the EU could face sanctions.

The U.S. State Department’s 2016 Trafficking in Persons report says that while Taiwan has cracked down on forced labor and sex trafficking, fishing vessels need more attention. The report says fishermen mostly from Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam have been fraudulently recruited to work on Taiwan-flagged vessels where they can face abuses including violence, limited food supplies and withheld wages.

The issues extend well beyond Taiwan. Commercial fishing boat owners around the world, including the U.S., recruit foreign crews for the dangerous and exhausting work of hauling in the catch. The migrant fishermen are vulnerable to human trafficking and other exploitation because the work takes place so remotely, far from police or labor officials, and they can remain offshore for years as their catch is shuttled in to port.

Several nonprofit advocacy groups including Greenpeace and the International Labour Organization have repeatedly raised concerns about working conditions for foreign crew in Taiwan’s fishing fleet.

Allison Lee at the Yilan Fishermen’s Labor Union, which represents migrant workers in Taiwan, said men have been beaten, overworked and denied pay on board boats.

Read the full story at The New York Times 

New AP story finds labor issues persist in Thai seafood industry

September 29, 2016 — A new Associated Press story explores progress made in the past year in reforming abusive labor practices in the shrimp processing sector in Thailand.

The article, “Promises unmet as Thailand tries to reform shrimp industry,” published 22 September, investigates the the difficulties faced by the industry in attempting to implement reforms. The article follows up on a March 2015 AP investigation titled “Seafood from Slaves,” which detailed the use of human trafficking, forced labor and violence against workers in the Thai seafood industry.

“The Associated Press…found that while some Thai companies that export shrimp to the U.S. have given formerly entrapped workers better jobs in-house, others still use middlemen who employ laborers in remote, guarded warehouses,” the AP reported in its new article. “That’s despite industry vows to end outside shrimp processing by the end of last year after human trafficking was exposed in the sheds.”

The owners of these sheds still disregard environmental, labor or safety laws, with 75 percent of the 109 sheds inspected so far this year receiving citations for violations and 24 were ordered to close, the AP reported.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

More than 80 percent want new safeguards against seafood fraud and mislabeling

September 28, 2016 — WASHINGTON — A new survey by Oceana finds more than 4 of 5 Americans want new regulations to eliminate seafood fraud and mislabeling of fish in the United States.

The survey found that support for traceability requirements – like documenting how and where various types of fish were caught or farmed – was high among registered Democratic voters – 87 percent and Republicans – 81 percent.

The national survey by Oceana, an international ocean conservation group, queried 1,000 registered voters from September 15-19.

It found 71 percent believe seafood fraud is a problem, 76 percent would pay more to know their seafood products are legally caught and labled correctly, while 88 percent feel it’s important to know the kind of seafood they’re consuming.

Read the full story from McClatchy DC at the Miami Herald

New satellite-based technology aims to crack down on illegal fishing

September 28, 2016 — Commercial fishing in Alaska is a multibillion dollar industry. But every year, billions of dollars are lost to illegal fishing around the world. A new satellite-based surveillance system makes it easier to track illegal fishing. But some fishermen aren’t ready for Big Brother watching their every move.

Worldwide, overfishing is a huge problem. Jacqueline Savitz, vice president of the conservation group Oceana, says populations of big fish, like halibut, have dropped 90 percent. But the fish can rebound when their habitats are protected.

“We actually see fish stocks coming back and getting to levels where they’re sustainable, so we can continue to live off the interest, if you will, and not fish down the principal,” said Savitz. “But we also have a problem with illegal fishing. It’s about a $23 billion industry globally.”

Now, there’s a new tool for people who want to prevent illegal fishing: Global Fishing Watch. It’s a free, web-based, interactive map of the world’s traceable commercial fishing activity, dating back to January 2012.

It’s based off information gathered from vessels’ Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). The boats broadcast  signals including their location, who they are, and where they’re headed.

Read the full story at KTOO

Missing fish catch data? Not necessarily a problem, new study says

September 27th, 2016 — Each day in fishing communities around the world, not every fish is counted. This happens in part because of illegal fishing, poor or incomplete surveys and discarded fish from commercial operations.

Recording how many fish are caught is one important requirement to measure the well-being of a fish stock — if scientists know the number of fish taken from the ocean, they can adjust management of that fishery to keep it from being overfished. Missing catch data, however, are rampant, causing concern that fisheries around the world are overfished.

A new study by University of Washington scientists finds that in many cases, this isn’t true. Specifically, misreporting caught fish doesn’t always translate to overfishing. The study was published online this month in the journal Fish and Fisheries.

“While quantifying total catch is important for understanding how much is removed from the system, it is possible to manage sustainably even if we don’t know those numbers,” said lead author Merrill Rudd, a UW doctoral student in aquatic and fishery sciences. “This paper shows there are some situations where, just because there is unreported catch, it doesn’t mean we are overfishing.”

The researchers modeled five different misreporting scenarios on a simulated fishery: complete reporting of catch numbers, constant over-reporting, constant under-reporting, increasing reporting rate over time and decreasing reporting rate over time. They found that in cases where misreporting was constant, the fish population could still be managed sustainably over the years because misreporting was proportional each year.

But in cases where misreporting increased or decreased year to year, those fisheries were found to be over- or under-fished.

In other words, the catch reporting trends — not the specific numbers of fish caught — are the most critical elements to consider when trying to understand a fishery’s overall status, the authors said.

Read the full story at UW Today 

‘Aquatic Cocaine’ Is Killing The World’s Cutest Porpoise

September 26th, 2016 — Five feet long and weighing about 120 pounds, the vaquita is the world’s smallest porpoise.

It may also be the world’s cutest porpoise, what with its snub snout and panda-like dark spots around its eyes. But with fewer than 60 of its kind left in the world, the vaquita is without doubt the most endangered.

And according to a new report issued on the eve of a major international meeting on wildlife conservation, these diminutive sea mammals face almost certain extinction unless action is taken to stem the illegal trade in “aquatic cocaine.”

Not familiar with the term? Aquatic cocaine is slang for the dried swim bladder of a marine fish known as the totaoba, itself an endangered species.

Dried fish innards may sound icky to you. But in certain parts of China, aquatic cocaine (also known as fish maw) is a believed to have medicinal value. And its cost rivals that of illicit drugs ― hence the “aquatic cocaine” moniker.

One pound of the stuff could set you back $5,000, The New York Times reported earlier this year. The report says a really good fish maw specimen can command a whopping $50,000.

Why would stopping the fish maw trade help save the vaquita from extinction? Because as luck would have it, both vaquitas and totoaba live only in Mexico’s Gulf of California ― and the former are drowning in the illegal nets that poachers use to catch the latter so that the maws can be smuggled to China.

Read the full story at The Huffington Post

Indonesia’s Solution to Illegal Fishing Boats Is Just to Blow Them Up

September 21, 2016 — The South China Sea and its surrounding waters are the most hotly contested fishing grounds in the world, with China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all laying claim to parts of the region and the delicious seafood within. But while the competing nations are engaging in dangerous standoffs and fishing the Sea to collapse, nearby, around the Natuna Islands, Indonesia has developed a policy of dealing with illegal fishing that’s having some unexpected benefits: by blowing up poachers’ boats.

And it’s working! They’ve put a dent in overfishing and rejuvenated their fisheries. Bloomberg reports that Indonesia’s policy of destroying illegal fishing vessels is giving the fishing stocks within Indonesia’s economic exclusivity zone (EEZ) the chance to rebound, according to Indonesia’s Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti. In recent years, Indonesia’s fishing haul has risen from 2.5 million tons to 6.6 million tons this year. Next year, the stock might even be sustainable, with Indonesian fishermen bringing in nearly 10 million tons of seafood.

Since the end of 2014, Indonesia has blasted 220 boats to the briny depths, making something of a show of the whole thing by dramatically blowing up the boats in public in various locations around the country.

Read the full story at VICE

Stricter standards for Hawaii’s longline fishing fleet

September 20, 2016 — More oversight and regulations are requested by outside groups and the industry itself.

After reports of slavery and unsafe working conditions, the industry takes steps to reel in problem boats and protect contract workers.

Unlike regular jobs, the fishing day ends when all the lines are back in, recovering broken lines, or hauling in completely full ones, making the long days even longer.

“Fishing is a brutal industry,” said Jim Cook, Hawaii Longline Association. “We have the highest fatality rate of anyone in the industry. We have working hours that the average person couldn’t come to grips with.”

After facing allegations of forced labor and poor working conditions on some boats, the Hawaii Longline Fishing Industry hopes to set standards for all crews to follow, including inspections of boats, questionnaires of workers to make sure conditions are safe, and proper documents; that includes a standardized crew contract.

If not come October 1st, they won’t be allowed to sell their catch at the Honolulu Fish Auction.

“We want you to show us your crew contracts, your I-95 & passports, prior to unloading, and if you don’t – you don’t get to unload,” said Cook.

The changes won’t shorten the long hours of fishing or hard work involved, but will make set standards for the industry.

“If there are outliers out there in this community, bad actors, we’re going to discover them. We’re going to find them,” said Cook.

Read the full story at KITV

HONOLULU CIVIL BEAT: Inquiry, Intervention Needed Now In Fishing Exploitation

September 20, 2016 — A human rights outrage that has quietly simmered below the public consciousness in recent years exploded on the national scene just days ago when the Associated Press disclosed near slavery conditions for foreign workers on American fishing boats in Honolulu and San Francisco.

A six-month investigation by Pulitzer Prize winners Martha Mendoza and Maggie Mason corroborated what has been known by senior U.S. officials and the Hawaii restaurant industry, among others, for years: U.S. flagged boats employ undocumented men, confining them to the ships sometimes for years because they lack the required visas to permit them to come ashore.

They’re paid as little as 70 cents an hour and often work 20 hours a day at backbreaking, sometimes dangerous tasks with the approval of the U.S. government but none of its legal protections.

As Civil Beat’s Washington, D.C., columnist Kirsten Downey reported Friday, the report has prompted the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate, with U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pushing for immediate action to provide protections for the workers. Congressional candidate Colleen Hanabusa called for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to investigate, as well — it is home to the Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to the AP report, Sen. Mazie Hirono sought to provide some help through legislation that would permit the fishers to fly into the United States. That would expand the transit visas already allowed the men, who are permitted to fly home from the Honolulu airport, despite technically never having legally entered the United States. But even that modest assistance did not pass.

Hanabusa and Schatz both made the point that, thus far, the matter consists of media findings that must be officially investigated. That’s of course necessary and appropriate, as well as long overdue.

Read the full editorial at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Blowing Up Boats Sets Indonesia’s Scarce Fish Swimming Again

September 19th, 2016 — Indonesia’s crackdown on illegal fishing — with the public spectacle of seized boats blown to smithereens — may have sparked tensions with China, but the country’s fisheries minister says it has led to a significant drop in overfishing.

The rejuvenation of fishing stocks will help Indonesia’s economy as other growth drivers falter, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said Thursday in an interview in Washington, DC. Growth is under pressure and set to be closer to the lower end of the central bank’s 4.9 percent to 5.3 percent target this year.

“Mining is going down, everything is going down, fisheries is the only one growing,” Pudjiastuti said.

Her role sees her defending an industry that along with farming and forestry makes up 14 percent of the economy of the world’s largest archipelago, and employs millions of Indonesians. The decline in fish stocks in north Asia has seen boats push into the territorial waters of Southeast Asian nations like Indonesia, often shadowed by their home country’s armed coast guards, which raises the potential for clashes at sea.

Pudjiastuti, 51, has been in cabinet since October 2014 and is popular with the public for her tough stance. Since the end of that year, Indonesia has destroyed 220 foreign boats. It has also faced increased Chinese claims that waters surrounding the gas-rich Natuna Islands are part of traditional Chinese fishing grounds.

Read full article from Bloomberg