September 20, 2019 — Vessel location data suggests that more than 1,500 transfers of fish catch may have occurred on the high seas in the western and central Pacific Ocean in 2016 – far more than the 1,000 transshipments that were actually reported.
Another 700 or more transfers, called transshipments, may have taken place in national waters in the region.
September 19, 2019 — Raymond and Richie Canastra, the long-time owners of the Buyers and Sellers Exchange (BASE), the New Bedford, Massachusetts-based seafood auction, have made another apparent attempt to purchase some of Carlos Rafael’s commercial fishing vessels and again have been thwarted, Undercurrent News has learned.
This time the two brothers’ effort, which involved stepping in front of another buyer, has been done in by a state judge’s order.
Merita Hopkins, an associate judge in the Bristol County, Massachusetts, Superior Court, on Friday vacated her approval, given two days earlier, of a request by BASE for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would have stopped Rafael from selling seven of his 11 scallop vessels to Charlie and Michael Quinn, the father-and-son owners of Quinn Fisheries, a 33-year-old, New Bedford-based scallop operation with six vessels already harvesting, for nearly $46 million.
The move by the Canastras, whose auction handles roughly half of all the Atlantic scallops caught in New England as well as a considerable amount of groundfish, seems to have been a prelude to them making an offer themselves for the boats, which also come with some groundfishing quota.
September 18, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — More than 95 per cent of the Pacific’s challenge from the unsustainable exploitation of its fisheries resources come from licensed, not illegal fishing vessels, the region’s top fisheries official has warned.
The head of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA),Dr Manumatavai Tupou-Roosen, cited research from the organisation showing that licensed vessels present 95 per cent of the problems associated with Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IIU) fishing.
“Our challenge is not purely illegal [or] unlicensed vessels; our big challenge, over 95 per cent [of it] is licensed vessels which are not reporting, under reporting [or] misreporting,” said Dr Manu, who is the first female head of the FFA.
“So when we look at our monitoring control surveillance tools, we need to ensure that we put in place equipment that will ensure we get the right data in a timely fashion.
“For example electronic monitoring, electronic reporting is very much front and centre of our developments.”
In the same study from a few years ago by FFA discovered that although the cost of IUU fishing to the region is not in the billions anymore, the estimated figure of US$616 million is still very significant.
“The number that has been estimated of fish that has been harvested or transshipped waters in our region is in the order of US$616 million and so it is still a significant number and still a significant challenge that none of our countries can tackle alone,” she said.
This loss amounts to more than 12 per cent of the US$5 billion in dock value the Pacific generated in 2014.
“Which is why the way FFA has been set up is based on our cooperation we have put together and integrated monitoring control and surveillance framework to combat IUU fishing,” she said.
The FFA. are looking at baseline indicators to determine fishing levels in all countries including Samoa as part of a challenge to eliminate IUU fishing by 2023.
“It’s really important that we set baseline information so that we can tell by 2023 that we [have] worked down that figure and so as part of that exercise, we’ll look at how we do it across the board for the region plus the possibility of doing it for individual countries,” she said.
The challenge has also been marked as a key priority by the region after being taken to the Pacific Islands Forums and demanded cooperation between the FFA and the Pacific Community (SPC).
“In the context of climate change there is an intensified pressure on coastal resources and so there will be an increasing call on tuna the off shore resources to supplement local food security needs,” she said.
“So there is a responsibility on FFA, the SPC and all of our regional organisations to see how we best support our people, our members and their priorities including in this context of this serious threat of climate change.”
Although tools have been put in place to combat the issues, the Agency says it is still not satisfied as the perpetrators are constantly improving in their methods as well.
“We’re not complacent; the tools put in place are quite advanced but always the technology for fishers are quite smart and advancing how they will extract more fish and we need to stay in tune, in step with these sophisticated technologies and calibrate our [monitoring],” said Dr Manu.
Asked about China’s role, the FFA Chief said it does not matter who member states issue licenses to.
“For any vessel that we license, whether it is China or another partner, what we have to be clear on and our members are very good at underlining [is] what our minimum conditions of access are,” she said.
“And that it applies to all across our members so that our countries are not played off against each other and our members are leading in terms of monitoring control and surveillance tools.”
Dr Manu also highlighted that the Association’s work is not just about ensuring that members are maximising economic returns but regulating the labour market too.
“It’s also the human side to our works and the social responsibility and making sure that when we do license vessels to fish in our waters, whether they are foreign or domestic that they also ensure that crew on board [and] the conditions for their work are safe and decent,” she said.
“And it’s not just the source of employment, it comes hand in hand with ensuring a decent and worthwhile occupation for our people and so it’s the social responsibility together with the economic sustainability and the biological sustainability of our tuna fisheries resources.”
Fisheries access fees paid by foreign fishing vessels are significant sources of government revenue in several Pacific Island countries.
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
September 16, 2019 — The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s (WCPFC’s) management of transshipments in its waters is compromised by significant gaps in reporting, monitoring and data sharing, according to a report released by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Transshipment is the transfer of fish from the vessel that caught the fish to a carrier vessel that will deliver the fish to port, an activity that often takes place on the high seas and outside the view and reach of authorities. The practice allows unscrupulous fishing vessel operators to obscure or falsify data on their fishing practices. This contributes to millions of dollars of illegally caught fish entering the seafood supply chain each year.
The Pew Charitable Trusts combined commercially available Automatic Identification System data with the application of machine learning technology to analyze the track histories of carrier vessels operating in WCPFC convention area waters in 2016. Researchers then compared this analysis with publicly available information on transshipments and carrier vessels.
September 12, 2019 — Bbcom Secure, a German security company, has proposed a new method for combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing: Unmanned Aerial Systems, which are carried on vehicles commonly known as UAVs.
The proposal by the company would use unmanned drones that can survey fishing activities from the air, allowing for real-time monitoring from the shore day and night. The advantage, the company said, is that with modern video and drone technology, UAVs can provide a low-operating cost deterrent around the clock.
September 9, 2019 — The crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mellon, including two Canadian fishery officers, returned to Seattle on Sunday after an 80-day patrol detecting and deterring illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activity in the Pacific Ocean. The patrol was performed under the auspices of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the North Pacific Fisheries Commission.
Economists estimate that IUU fishing costs the international economy billions of dollars per year. By diminishing stocks, it undermines the livelihoods of legitimate fishermen around the world, with negative effects on food security in developing nations. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, combatting global IUU fishing through international partnerships is a priority for Canada and the United States.
“IUU fishing is one of the greatest threats to the ocean’s fish stocks,” said Capt. Jonathan Musman, Mellon’s commanding officer. “It was an honor to be on the front lines of enforcement efforts of the distant waters fishing fleets.”
September 5, 2019 — Four influential members of the US Congress have requested a federal investigation into the use by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (Wespac) of millions of dollars of funds intended to promote conservation, reports the Honolulu Civil Beat, an investigative journal based in Hawaii.
In a letter sent Aug. 29, Democratic representatives Raul Grijalva, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee; Jared Huffman, chairman of the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife; Ed Case, from Hawaii; and Gregorio Sablan, an independent representative from the Northern Mariana Islands, asked Peggy Gustafson, the US Department of Commerce’s inspector general, to conduct a “comprehensive review of the Western Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Fund…and report on lapses in transparency and accountability and possible waste and abuse of government funds”.
The fund, which was initially seeded by millions of dollars in fines against foreign vessels fishing illegally in US Pacific islands, now relies on contributions made by the Hawaii Longline Association, a group that represents most of the state’s 144-vessel fleet.
September 3, 2019 — The prospect of monitoring every vessel at sea in real time has moved a step closer to reality as a new generation of surveillance satellites takes to the skies.
The satellites are being launched by a small number of private companies with the potential to transform the monitoring of marine fisheries. One of those companies is Capella Space, which will launch a constellation of 36 surveillance satellites into orbit starting in December, following successful trials with a pilot satellite.
Capella’s “minibar-sized satellites” are equipped with synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) sensors, which ping signals down to Earth and use the information bouncing back to generate radar images. Though radar pictures lack the detail of optical images and cannot currently be used to identify specific vessels, they can detect the presence of any ship in the ocean, day or night, whatever the weather.
August 28, 2019 — China is flexing its muscles as an enforcer of international fishery rules after moving to enlarge its Coast Guard and place it under military command.
Two vessels of the China Coast Guard are operating in the North Pacific Ocean to enforce the Convention on the Conservation and Management of the High Seas Fisheries Resources in the North Pacific Ocean (NPFC), which came into force in 2015. A Chinese military TV channel has been broadcasting footage of the vessels returning to ports in Dalian and Qingdao after 27 days of patrolling, during which they sailed a combined nearly 10,000 nautical miles.
August 23, 2019 — A 50-year-old Coast Guard cutter is on the front line against illegal fishing on the high seas of the North Pacific, part of a growing international fight.
The cooperative effort targets uncontrolled distant-water fishing vessels, and tracks the business networks of carrier ships and fuel bunkering tankers that support them. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or IUU, operates outside the territorial waters jurisdiction of coastal nations.
But not beyond the reach of international law and cooperative regulation by fishing nations. In the North Pacific, that is what the North Pacific Fisheries Commission does.
The youngest of world’s ocean-spanning management groups, the NPFC only got started in 2015. It includes representation from Canada, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Chinese Taipei, the United States of America, and Vanuatu.