July 31, 2020 — A rights group is suggesting the U.S. should downgrade Thailand in its human trafficking ranking, as the latter has not done enough to improve the situation.
In its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report 2020 released in June, the U.S. State Department has kept Thailand’s ranking unchanged at Tier 2.
July 30, 2020 — Global Fishing Watch has launched a public web portal to track the activity of at-sea transshipment, and has also signed an agreement with the government of Costa Rica to give it access to its vessel-tracking data.
Global Fishing Watch is a partnership between Google and the advocacy groups Oceana and SkyTruth founded in 2015. The new portal, hosted on Global Fishing Watch’s platform, aims to reveal the breadth of transshipment activity worldwide, with the goal of raising awareness among fish suppliers and consumers of the commonality of transshipment and improve transparency. The Pew Charitable Trusts contributed to the development of the portal to guide its effectiveness and application, according to Global Fishing Watch CEO Tony Long.
July 27, 2020 — The non-governmental organization Human Rights At Sea earlier this month published a report with numerous recommendations to better protect fisheries observers who monitor fish catches by tuna vessels in the Pacific.
The report, Fisheries Observer Deaths at Sea, Human Rights and the Role and Responsibilities of Fisheries Organisations, highlights “the often challenging and solitary working conditions for observers who are away at sea without any immediate physical support,” according to the group – a registered charity in England and Wales that promotes the development and enforcement of human rights at sea.
July 24, 2020 — The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), and the Vietnamese Agriculture Ministry’s Directorate of Fisheries (DFISH), have entered into a memorandum of understanding in order to strengthen Vietnam’s fisheries management and law enforcement capabilities.
Vietnam Agriculture Ministry Director General Tran Dinh Luan and U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel J. Kritenbrink signed the MoU in Hanoi on 22 July, according to the Directorate of Fisheries.
July 23, 2020 — Orbital observations have revealed extensive illegal fishing of Pacific flying squid (Todarodes pacificus) in the Pacific Ocean around Russia, Japan and North and South Korea in 2017 and 2018, a new study reports.
In fact, “extensive” may not be a strong enough word. More than 900 vessels of Chinese origin probably violated United Nations sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters in 2017, and another 700 did the same in 2018, the study found.
These scofflaw ships likely hauled in more than 176,000 tons (160,000 metric tons) of Pacific flying squid over those two years, a catch worth about US $440 million, study team members said. That’s nearly equivalent to the combined T. pacificus catch of Japan and South Korea over the same span.
“The scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about one-third the size of China’s entire distant-water fishing fleet,” said study co-lead author Jaeyoon Park, a senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing ocean sustainability via greater transparency.
July 23, 2020 — Chinese “dark fleets” illegally fished a $440 million haul of the squid species Todarodes pacificus in North Korean waters during 2017 and 2018, according to a study published today in the journal Science Advances.
The study used a novel set of satellite images to track fishing vessels operating off the northeast coast of the Korean peninsula, including satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR), visible infrared imaging radiometer suite sensors (VIIRS), high-resolution optical imagery, and identification beacon data from some of the vessels themselves. Its authors say that this is one of the first times those technologies have been combined to map illicit fishing at such a large scale over a years-long period.
“We believe that this study marks the beginning of a new era in fisheries management, transparency, and monitoring,” said Jaeyoon Park, senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch and a co-lead author of the paper.
Park and his colleagues used data collected from Planet Labs, an Earth-imaging company that has also been instrumental in tracking deforestation caused by hard-to-track illegal gold mining, to map the movement of fishing boats in contested waters around the Korean peninsula. They found that in 2017, more than 900 Chinese fishing boats traveled to an area in North Korea’s exclusive economic zone, followed by another 700 in 2018.
July 23, 2020 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:
The U.S. International Trade Commission is investigating the extent to which imports of seafood products obtained via illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing impact the U.S. commercial fishing industry. Information about the ongoing investigation can be found here.
A virtual public hearing is being held in connection with this investigation. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. on September 3, 2020. Requests to appear at the hearing are due by 5:15 p.m., August 12, 2020. Instructions for participating in this hearing can be found here.
In lieu of or in addition to participating in the hearing, interested parties may file written comments. All written submissions should be received no later than 5:15 p.m., October 9, 2020. Written comments must be made through the Commission’s Electronic Document Information System (EDIS, https://edis.usitc.gov).
July 22, 2020 — A new study has uncovered a massive illegal fishing operation conducted by Chinese fishing vessels in North Korean waters.
The study, Illuminating Dark Fishing Fleets in North Korea, found at least 700 vessels of Chinese origin had fished illegally in North Korean waters in 2018, and that more than 900 had done so in 2017 – in violation of United Nations sanctions. It estimated the illegal take of Pacific flying squid from the participating vessels is more than 160,000 metric tons, worth over USD 440 million (EUR 380.2 million) in 2017-2018. The total take is greater than the entire catch of the fishing fleets of Japan and South Korea combined. The study found that such large, unregulated catches are depleting squid stocks in the region, with squid populations plummeting by 80 percent and 82 percent in South Korean and Japanese waters, respectively, since 2003.
July 14, 2020 — If there’s one thing most of the public knows about shark conservation, it’s that they’re under siege by global fleets of vessels that scoop them up, cut off their fins and deposit them back into the ocean to drown, a cruel practice known as shark finning.
But what if that practice, while real, isn’t the singular threat it’s made out to be?
“There are many threats facing sharks, but one, which is not the biggest threat, gets the most attention,” says David Shiffman, a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University who studies shark conservation.
An analysis of ten years’ worth of media reports, published in June by Shiffman et al in the open-access journal iScience, shows that two-thirds of all articles about threats to sharks focused on finning and the trade in shark fins — two separate issues that are conflated so frequently, write the authors, that “it was impossible to tease these two threats apart.”
A more pressing threat, overfishing, was mentioned in just four of ten articles. Recreational fishing for sharks, which the authors call an emerging threat, only made it into a tenth of the articles.
Critically endangered sharks, meanwhile, got a tiny fraction of the attention of the better-known species, like great white sharks. They showed up just 20 times in nearly 2,000 articles.
The result of the skewed media coverage, Shiffman says, is that “a concerned citizen learning about this important issue from newspapers would be badly misinformed,” which could lead them to support policies that, at best, won’t work.
Mongabay reached Shiffman over email for an interview that’s been edited lightly for length and clarity.
July 13, 2020 — An American longline fishing boat captain has been in jail for a month after he was detained in the British Virgin Islands on June 8 for traveling into BVI waters during coronavirus border closures. Now he is facing criminal charges and a months-long wait in a sweltering island prison cell.
Michael Foy, who lives in Puerto Rico and left the island on May 29 on a fishing expedition, was initially detained for illegal entry into the British Virgin Islands, but at his June hearing he was also unexpectedly charged with illegal fishing.