Saving Seafood

Small-scale fishermen turn to apps and AI to tackle climate change

March 2, 2021 — From weather predicting apps to using artificial intelligence to monitor the fish they catch, small-scale fishermen and coastal communities are increasingly turning to digital tools to help them be more sustainable and tackle climate change.

Overfishing and illegal fishing by commercial vessels inflict significant damage on fisheries and the environment, and take food and jobs from millions of people in coastal communities who rely on fishing, environmental groups say.

In addition, climate change affects on small-scale fishermen – who account for about 90% of the world’s capture fishermen and fish workers – include fish moving to new areas in search of cooler waters or if their habitat is destroyed, rising sea levels, and an increase in the number of storms.

Launched in January by nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Small-Scale Fisheries Resource and Collaboration Hub (SSF Hub) is a multilingual website that aims to bring together fishermen, their communities and advocacy groups to connect, share ideas and find solutions to the problems they face.

Read the full story at Reuters

New Coast Guard cutter conducts long-range Indo-Pacific fisheries patrol

February 26, 2021 — The Honolulu-based Coast Guard cutter Kimball wrapped up a two-week expeditionary patrol in support of counter-illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries enforcement, “furthering the United States’ commitment to regional security and partnerships,” according to Coast Guard officials.

The Kimball is one of the newest national security cutters to be homeported in Hawaii. The advanced 418-foot ships displace 4,600 long tons displacement. With a top speed in excess of 28 knots and range of 12,000 nautical miles, they can maintain patrols up to 90 days, carrying a crew of up to 150.

The Kimball deployment was part of Operation Blue Pacific, with goals of maintaining stability and security throughout the Indo-Pacific region. The crew is trained in “targeted and intelligence-driven enforcement actions as well as counter predatory irresponsible maritime behavior,” according to the Coast Guard.

While patrolling 3,600 miles in the Philippine Sea, the Kimball’s law enforcement team conducted its first ever at-sea boarding. The mission included multilateral fisheries enforcement on behalf of international management groups such as the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

How new technology is helping to identify human rights abuses in the seafood industry

February 26, 2021 — After being at sea for two long years, 37-year-old Indonesian fisherman Darmaji finally stepped off the Taiwanese tuna fishing vessel he had been working on and back onto firm ground in May of 2020. Verbally abused daily, Darmaji’s largely Indonesian crew of 22 often worked 18-hour days—even when seven-meter waves flooded the boat interior—and were typically allowed to sleep for only three hours. Meals consisted of gummy rice, boiled chicken or fish, and, at times, even bait fish. The crew had to pay for any other food they consumed and drank largely distilled saltwater.

As if the daily indignities weren’t enough, Darmaji didn’t receive the full pay he was promised in his contract, and even had to pay a $1,200 security deposit before receiving his monthly salary. “It’s a prison at sea,” Darmaji said.

Lured by the promise of high wages offered by recruitment agencies, Darmaji is one of an estimated 23,500 Indonesians working on foreign boats. Globally, capture fishing employs 27 million people, primarily from developing countries. Indonesia is one of the biggest sources of cheap migrant labor for fishing fleets from China, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Darmaji experienced verbal abuse, debt manipulation, underpayment, and atrocious living conditions, but he is one of the luckier ones—thousands of other forced laborers also endure physical abuse at sea. Beatings for insubordination are not uncommon, said Max Schmid, deputy director at the Environmental Justice Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to raise public awareness of environmental and human rights abuses. One worker described getting locked in a freezer, and later electrocuted with a tool used to kill tuna, he notes. Schmid and colleagues have interviewed hundreds of Indonesian fishermen about working conditions on distant water fishing vessels mainly flagged to Taiwan, China or South Korea; over 20 percent of them described physical violence.

Read the full story at The Counter

MSC aims to increase activity and drive sustainable fishing in Mexico

February 25, 2021 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) plans to increase its presence and activities in Mexico, rolling out a strategic plan for the creation of a community of producers and commercial partners, while also implementing a communications campaign on the importance of sustainable fishing and the benefits of getting certified.

To increase environmental stewardship in Mexico’s fishing industry, MSC will work with key industry players to drive its chain of custody certification and its eco-labeling program of certified products in stores, which allows consumers to recognize fisheries that use resources rationally with a minimized impact on the ecosystem. and reward those fisheries with their purchases.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Technology Can Improve Safety and Security for Observers on Fishing Vessels

February 23, 2021 — The following was released by Pew Charitable Trusts:

The eastern Pacific Ocean is home to valuable tuna fisheries worth more than $5 billion each year.  These stocks are managed by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which is responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of tunas and other marine species, as well as enforcing rules to end and prevent illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Transshipment is a key part of the seafood supply chain in which catch is transferred from a fishing vessel to a carrier vessel that then takes it to port, but management of transshipment is rife with loopholes, and IUU-caught fish can easily slip through the cracks.

For years, onboard fisheries observers have been the primary source of independent information on at-sea activity, collecting data on catch, transshipment, and more, and reporting rules violations and potential IUU activity to domestic authorities and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) such as IATTC. But serving as an onboard observer is a risky job, and the casualty rate on fishing vessels is notoriously high. Observers can be at sea for months at a time, often without quick access to medical care or assistance if they are in a threatening situation.

Last year, MRAG Americas, a fisheries-focused consultancy, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Walmart Foundation, deployed a new model of two-way satellite communications devices to several IATTC transshipment observers to improve real-time exchanges of information and, hopefully, help observers feel more secure onboard vessels.

Read the full release here

Multi-Agency Investigation Cracks Down on Fish Fraud

February 19, 2021 — The following was released by the Better Seafood Board:

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has charged four men for their part in an alleged plot to import mislabeled fish into the United States.  The defendants were arrested yesterday and will appear before a judge today.

“This is a great example of agencies focusing enforcement efforts on fish fraud and having an impact,” said John Petrizzo Director of Operations for Harbor Seafood, Inc. and Chair of the Better Seafood Board. “Here we see the United States Attorney, Department of Homeland Security, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement and USDA’s Inspector General all working together to investigate and prosecute these suspects. Dedicating those kinds of resources to a fish fraud case sends a loud and clear message.”

Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent-in-Charge Peter C. Fitzhugh called the suspects part of a “transnational criminal organization.” The scheme allegedly involved bringing mislabeled fish in from Myanmar and Bangladesh for sale through a company called Asia Foods Distributor Inc. The criminal complaint shows law enforcement tracking mislabeled shipments as far back as 2018. Investigators describe the alleged crime as a “very lucrative scheme.”

“We don’t need new laws or more regulations, we need enforcement and that’s what we are seeing today from these federal agencies,” said Petrizzo. “Hats off to them and their efforts to stamp out fish fraud.”

In the fight to save the vaquita, conservationists take on cartels

February 17, 2021 — From above, the Sea of Cortez is a picture of serenity: turquoise waters lapping against rose-tinted bluffs and soft sand beaches. But down below, beneath the water’s surface, a war is raging.

Each year, typically between late November and May, huge gillnets — some stretching more than 600 meters (2,000 feet), or the length of five and a half football fields — are dropped into the waters to catch totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi). This critically endangered species is illegally fished for its prized swim bladders, which can fetch prices between $20,000 and $80,000 per kilo in China. While gillnets are highly effective at catching totoaba, they also catch just about everything else, including another critically endangered species: the vaquita (Phocoena sinus).

The vaquita is a bathtub-sized porpoise with silvery-gray skin and panda-like eyes that lives exclusively in a small section of the northern Gulf of California, close to the town of San Felipe in Baja California, Mexico. Right now, experts say there may only be about nine vaquitas left, despite the Mexican government spending more than $100 million to aid its recovery.

“The vaquita issue, in my opinion, is an example of epic, epic failure of conservation,” Andrea Crosta, executive director of Earth League International (ELI), an NGO that investigates wildlife crime, told Mongabay in an interview. “I don’t think rhinos and elephants combined have $100 million … and yet the vaquitas went from a few hundred individuals to … nobody knows how many now. Probably 12, 10, maybe less.”

But Crosta says it’s not the fishers deploying the gillnets that are the biggest threat to the vaquitas — it’s the people organizing the illegal trade of totoabas behind the scenes. They’re the ones placing the gillnets into the fishermen’s hands, he said.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Wisconsin Official Traded Sturgeon Research Eggs for Caviar, Prosecutors Say

February 17, 2021 — The eggs, processed into tiny black pearls prized by the gastronomic world for their burst-in-the-mouth, briny flavor profile, were said by state fisheries employees to be needed for research on the sturgeon population in Wisconsin.

But prosecutors say the state biologist who oversees the traditional sturgeon spearing season in Lake Winnebago and its watershed, a rite of winter for fishing enthusiasts in the state, had acquired an expensive and illicit taste for the caviar that is made from the eggs.

The biologist, Ryan P. Koenigs, an employee of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources since 2008, accepted at least $20,000 in jars of caviar in return for supplying to a caviar processor eggs that had been collected under the guise of research, a criminal complaint filed last week in Winnebago County said.

The caviar-processing business is run by a former biologist for the state, according to prosecutors, who said it was one of several caviar processors that obtained sturgeon eggs as part of the bartering scheme. The former employee, who prosecutors said obtained 65 pounds of roe in 2015 that produced $100,000 in caviar, has not been charged.

In Wisconsin, state law requires the eggs to be returned to the person who speared the sturgeon, if requested, or discarded. Prosecutors noted that caviar produced from sturgeon eggs can sell for more than $100 an ounce.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Over 150 companies endorse statement calling for increased seafood traceability

February 15, 2021 — Leading seafood companies across the globe – and the supply chain – have come together to issue a statement urging the rest of the industry and governments to take action on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

The statement, organized by five major industry collaborations, calls on the seafood industry to adopt the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) standard, and for governments to ratify the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

LINDA BEHNKEN & MIKE CONROY: Setting Biden’s seafood policy table

February 16, 2021 — Fishermen have been invited to be partners with the Biden administration on ocean policy and we are prepared to engage. Hard work, honest dialog and commitments to justice and equity will ensure that we remain at the table and not on the menu.

January’s executive order tackling climate change includes ambitious provisions that set agencies on a course to climate mitigation. Most importantly for America’s commercial fishing families, the order established two parallel processes to secure direct input from fishermen on, respectively the appropriate ways to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, an initiative known as 30×30, and ways to make our fisheries more resilient to climate change.

Fishing communities are precisely where policymakers should look for durable ocean-based climate solutions. Here are some starting points.

Today’s ocean is increasingly industrialized and our coasts are more densely occupied than ever. The historic pattern of ocean and coastal development exacerbated by climate change has resulted in reduced protections for fish habitat and serial declines of functional working waterfront. The administration has the ability to reverse both trends.

The U.S. should strengthen existing fisheries habitat protection processes by requiring federal agencies to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts to Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). EFH consultations are regularly conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), yet NOAA’s recommendations are routinely ignored by other agencies. Executive action requiring permitting agencies to incorporate NOAA’s EFH conservation recommendations into their decisions would significantly benefit fish habitat, fisheries and biodiversity.

Read the full opinion piece at The Hill