Saving Seafood

New England’s 1816 ‘Mackerel Year’ and climate change today

January 19, 2017 — Hundreds of articles have been written about the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, at Indonesia’s Mt. Tambora just over 200 years ago. But for a small group of New England-based researchers, one more Tambora story needed to be told, one related to its catastrophic effects in the Gulf of Maine that may carry lessons for intertwined human-natural systems facing climate change around the world today.

In the latest issue of Science Advances, first author and research fellow Karen Alexander at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and 11 others including aquatic ecologists, climate scientists and environmental historians recount their many-layered, multidisciplinary investigation into the effects of Tambora on coastal fish and commercial fisheries.

Alexander says, “We approached our study as a forensic examination. We knew that Tambora’s extreme cold had afflicted New England, Europe, China and other places for as long as 17 months. But no one we knew of had investigated coastal ecosystems and fisheries. So, we looked for evidence close to home.”

In work that integrates the social and natural sciences, they used historical fish export data, weather readings,  and town growth chronologies and other sources to discover Tambora’s effects on the Gulf of Maine’s complex human and natural system.

The 1815 eruption caused a long-lasting, extreme climate event in 1816 known as the “year without a summer.” As volcanic winter settled on much of the Northern Hemisphere, crops failed, livestock died and famine swept over many lands. In New England, crop yields may have fallen by 90 percent. The researchers found that 1816 was also called “the mackerel year,” a clue to what they would find regarding fisheries.

Besides Tambora’s climate effects, the authors examined other system-wide influences to explain observed trends. These included historical events such as the War of 1812, human population growth, fish habitat obstruction due to dam building and changes in fishing gear that might have affected fisheries at the time. Employing historical methods in a Complex Adaptive Systems approach allowed them to group and order data at different scales of organization and to identify statistically significant processes that corresponded to known outcomes, Alexander says.

Read the full story at Phys.org

 

Indonesian, Portuguese companies secure eco-labels for Pacific Ocean tuna

January 13, 2017 — PT Karyacipta Buanasentosa (PT KCBS), the Indonesian tuna catch and processing company that is wholly-owned by Yamako Pacific Pte Ltd., has obtained Friend of the Sea certification for its skipjack and yellowfin tuna.

All of the company’s tuna species are fished by pole-and-line by Friend of the Sea-approved vessels in the Western Central part of the Pacific Ocean.

“Achieving the Friend of the Sea certification is an important step forward for PT KCBS and it reinforces our sustainability efforts,” said Masayuki Takaku, general manager at PT KCBS. “It sends a very clear message to our customers and suppliers regarding our continual commitment to sustainability. We are very proud to have achieved this recognition.”

Another company to secure Friend of the Sea certification for its skipjack and yellowfin tuna this year is Freitasmar, a Portuguese company specializing in canned seafood production.

Friend of the Sea certified supplier Frabelle – a fishing company from the Philippines – catches all of Freitasmar’s tuna. The fish are caught by purse seine in the Western Central part of the Pacific Ocean.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Can North Carolina’s Local Seafood Movement Help Save its Fishermen?

November 16, 2016 — North Carolina’s commercial fishermen—who work primarily in independent, small-scale operations—landed 66 million pounds of fish last year, but rather than ending up on North Carolina plates, the majority was whisked out of state to markets where it could fetch a higher price.

“I think more New Yorkers eat North Carolina seafood than North Carolinians,” says Ann Simpson, who grew up in a small town on the coast and currently directs North Carolina Catch, a partnership of smaller organizations working to strengthen the state’s local seafood economy.

To fill the void created by the export of its catch, North Carolina—like most states—ships in seafood from abroad. Today, around 90 percent of the seafood Americans eat has been imported from places like China, Thailand, Canada, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Ecuador, and the average fish travels more than 5,400 miles between the landing dock and point of sale.

“People come to the coast looking for fresh seafood, and for the most part, they’re getting seafood from halfway around the world, which they’re eating in a local setting,” says Noelle Boucquey, assistant professor of environmental studies at Eckerd College, who studied North Carolina’s fisheries while at Duke University. Patronize a vendor at the Outer Banks Seafood Festival in Nags Head, and you’ll face the same conundrum.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Why the death of coral reefs could be devastating for millions of humans

November 10th, 2016 — Coral reefs around the globe already are facing unprecedented damage because of warmer and more acidic oceans. It’s hardly a problem affecting just the marine life that depends on them or deep-sea divers who visit them.

If carbon dioxide emissions continue to fuel the planet’s rising temperature, the widespread loss of coral reefs by 2050 could have devastating consequences for tens of millions of people, according to new research published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS.

 To better understand where those losses would hit hardest, an international group of researchers mapped places where people most need reefs for their livelihoods, particularly for fishing and tourism, as well as for shoreline protection. The researchers combined those maps with others showing where coral reefs are most under stress from warming seas and ocean acidification.

Countries in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines would bear the brunt of the damage, the scientists found. So would coastal communities in western Mexico and parts of Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia. The problem would affect countries as massive as China and as small as the tiny island nation of Nauru in the South Pacific.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Tilapia has a terrible reputation. Does it deserve it?

October 24th, 2016 — When it comes to fish, no species brings out the haters like tilapia.

Read up on it, and you’ll find tilapia described with words like “muddy” and “earthy”; there are entire forum threads devoted to its inferiority. This very newspaper, back in 2007, called it “the fish that chefs love to hate.”

Should we really be so hard on this fast-growing freshwater fish?

In the world of food, there aren’t too many propositions that get universal agreement, but here’s one: Our oceans are overfished. If we’re going to continue to eat fish, and to feed it to the people scheduled to join us on this planet in the coming years, we have to farm it. And if we’re going to farm fish, an adaptable, hardy fish like tilapia is an excellent candidate.

Yet a combination of rumors and credible reports works against it. Perhaps you’ve heard that tilapia are raised in cesspools and live on poop? Even the USDA says there is — or, at least, used to be — some truth in that. The agency’s 2009 report on Chinese imports notes that “Fish are often raised in ponds where they feed on waste from poultry and livestock.”

Before we meet that fact with a chorus of “ewww,” it’s worth noting that turning feces into fish would be the agricultural equivalent of spinning straw into gold. Although there are important safety concerns in that kind of system, if you can manage those risks, you’ve got one of the most sustainable foods going. It’s a downright Rumplestiltskinnian miracle, and we should root for it, not against it.

The question is whether that still happens. To find out, I went to the source: Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which rates seafood choices based on whether they have been responsibly fished or farmed. Seafood Watch lists tilapia from nine different sources. Four (from Peru, Canada, Ecuador and the United States) are rated “Best Choices,” another four (from China, Taiwan, Mexico and Indonesia) are “Good Alternatives,” and only one (from Colombia) is rated “Avoid.” I asked Ryan Bigelow, the Seafood Watch program’s engagement manager, to give me a rundown on the sustainability issues.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

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 

Indonesian fishermen tell of being trafficked before SF escape

September 23, 2016 — A San Jose tuna boat captain was sued Thursday by two Indonesian fishermen who said they were forced into high-seas slavery aboard a Honolulu-based fishing vessel for several months before escaping when the boat docked at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

Abdul Fatah and Sorihin, who goes by a single name, filed a human labor trafficking lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Thoai Van Nguyen. They are seeking unspecified damages for purportedly being held captive on the Sea Queen II in late 2009 and early 2010 while fishing for tuna, swordfish and other seafood prized by U.S. stores and restaurants.

Efforts to reach Nguyen were unsuccessful.

The suit alleges the men were barred from leaving the ship, where they were victims of abuse and wage theft while working under dangerous conditions in breach of a contract both men had signed.

Their story echoes those of other men from Southeast Asia and Pacific island countries who say they were misled into working on vessels off Honolulu under poor and exploitative conditions — a situation affecting as many as 140 boats in the area, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.

The investigation found that, due to a loophole in federal law, men desperate for work made as little as 70 cents an hour without basic labor protections. The men are literally adrift, unable to set foot on shore since they don’t have visas.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle 

Fishermen who fled slavery in San Francisco sue boat owner

September 22, 2016 — SAN FRANCISCO — Two Indonesian fishermen who escaped slavery aboard a Honolulu-based tuna and swordfish vessel when it docked at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf are suing the boat’s owner for tricking them into accepting dangerous jobs they say they weren’t allowed to leave.

Attorneys for Abdul Fatah and Sorihin, who uses one name, say in a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday that they were recruited in Indonesia seven years ago to work in Hawaii’s commercial fishing fleet without realizing they would never be allowed onshore. They have since been issued visas for victims of human trafficking and are living in the San Francisco area.

The lawsuit alleges that San Jose, California, resident Thoai Nguyen, owner and captain of the Sea Queen II, forced Sorihin and Fatah to work up to 20-hour shifts, denied them medical treatment and demanded thousands of dollars if they wanted to leave before their contracts expired. Nguyen did not return calls seeking comment.

The lawsuit seeks payment for debts the men incurred, fees they paid and promised compensation but does not specify a value, and asks for unspecified damages for “mental anguish and pain.”

It comes two weeks after an Associated Press investigation found around 140 fishing boats based in Honolulu, including Sea Queen II, were crewed by hundreds of men from impoverished Southeast Asia and Pacific Island nations. The seafood is sold at markets and upscale restaurants across the U.S. A legal loophole allows them to work without visas as long as they don’t set foot on shore. The system is facilitated by the U.S. Coast Guard, as well as Customs and Border Protection who require boat owners to hold workers’ passports.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KWWL

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

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