Saving Seafood

Brooklyn Seafood Dealer Pleads Guilty for Illegally Trafficking American Eels

April 6, 2017 — The following was released by the U.S. Justice Department:

Today, Tommy Water Zhou pled guilty in federal district court in Norfolk, Virginia, to trafficking more than $150,361 worth of juvenile American eels, aka “elvers” or “glass eels,” in violation of the Lacey Act. As part of his guilty plea, Zhou admitted to illegally selling or purchasing elvers in interstate commerce, which had been harvested illegally in Virginia.

According to the statement of facts filed with the plea agreement, in 2010, Zhou established a seafood distribution company known as Wilson Group Sea Trading LLC. The company’s principle place of business was Brooklyn, New York, and its operations included importing seafood for domestic consumption and exporting seafood to international markets. In 2013, the defendant obtained a Maine elver dealer license, authorizing him to purchase and resell elvers harvested in Maine. Thereafter, using his Maine dealer license to cover his illegal activity, the defendant began purchasing and exporting elvers that were actually harvested from Virginia waterways in violation of Virginia law.

This plea was the result of “Operation Broken Glass,” a multi-jurisdiction U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) investigation into the illegal trafficking of American eels. To date, the investigation has resulted in guilty pleas for eleven individuals whose combined conduct resulted in the illegal trafficking of more than $2.75 million worth of elvers.

The guilty plea was announced today by Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey H. Wood for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Acting Director Jim Kurth of the USFWS.

“We will not allow illegal wildlife traffickers to undermine managed fish species like the American eel,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Wood. “In this operation, we are actively partnering with states all along the East Coast to enforce the law and protect our nation’s waterways from further exploitation.”

Read the full release here

Restaurateur accused of operating illegal seafood network

April 6, 2017 — A well-known Houston restaurateur has been accused of operating an illegal seafood network that allegedly funneled nearly 28,000 pounds of unlawfully-caught finfish through his restaurants.

Texas game wardens allege that Bruce Molzan, 59, bought and then sold the illegal finfish off the menus at Ruggles Green and Ruggles Black. Molzan hasn’t been associated with Ruggles Green since 2016 but still owns Ruggles Black.

In addition, another restaurant illegally sold shrimp to Molzan for use in his restaurants in violation of commercial fish wholesale regulations, according to investigators.

The illegal catches were made by a web of about a dozen unlicensed commercial fishermen and sold to the restaurants, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife investigators. Their catches consisted primarily of highly-regulated red snapper, along with other protected game fish species, including tuna, amberjack, grouper and red drum.

The investigation expanded significantly last April after U.S. Coast Guard crews stopped an unlicensed commercial fishing boat in coastal waters near Freeport with 488 red snapper weighing approximately 1,900 pounds. Texas game wardens and the National Marine Fisheries Service seized the fish, which were illegally caught in the Gulf of Mexico off Freeport and Galveston, and investigators were able to link the subjects with the illegal seafood operation.

“This is a big deal and exemplifies the critically important work our Texas game wardens do to protect the state’s natural resources,” said Col. Craig Hunter, TPWD law enforcement director. “Not only did these unscrupulous actors violate recreational fishing regulations at an extreme level for personal profit, but they also circumvented restrictions and rules governing the possession, safe handling and sale of commercial aquatic products intended for human consumption.”

Read the full story at WTSP

Texas game wardens bust massive illegal seafood network

April 6, 2017 — A Houston chef is being accused by state wildlife officials of participating in an illegal seafood network that funneled tons of unlawfully caught fish to his businesses.

The network is made up of about a dozen unlicensed commercial fishermen who caught fish off the Texas coast and sold them to Houston-area restaurants, state wildlife officials said. The catches included protected fish species, including red snapper, tuna, amberjack, grouper and red drum.

State investigators said they suspect the network began operating in 2013, and could be the largest of its kind in Texas history.

“This is a big deal and exemplifies the critically important work our Texas game wardens do to protect the state’s natural resources,” said Col. Craig Hunter, the department’s law enforcement director.

“That is not something we in law enforcement will tolerate and we are confident these individuals will be prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”

A break in the investigation came in April 2016, when the U.S. Coast Guard stopped a commercial fishing boat in coastal waters near Freeport. The boat was carrying 1,900 pounds of red snapper.

Read the full story at the Galveston County Daily News

Corporate Coordination Can Stop Seafood Slavery

April 4, 2017 — In 2015, media investigations revealed horrific occurrences of physical and emotional violence, human trafficking, and murder on fishing vessels and in shrimp processing facilities primarily in Southeast Asia. The stories sent shockwaves through the seafood industry, but despite efforts by several companies to combat these abuses, seafood slavery persists and will continue to erode consumer trust without a more comprehensive response. At a moment when many U.S. policymakers and ordinary citizens are voicing skepticism over U.S. participation in a globalized economy, now is the time for the international seafood industry to take robust and unified steps toward a transparent and traceable seafood supply chain.

The U.S. Department of State has identified seafood-related human trafficking in more than 65 countries over the past half-decade, many of which supply seafood to the United States, including major exporters such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The paths by which seafood from these countries enters the United States is complex and often opaque. There are numerous points along supply chains at which fish caught or processed using forced labor are mixed with responsibly caught fish—some occurring even before the fish first hit dry land. For example, vessels will often offload their catch onto a supply ship in exchange for provisions and fuel, where it commingles with fish from other vessels. This practice, known as transshipment at sea, allows fishing boats to stay offshore for months—or even years—at a time, keeping laborers from escaping from what amount to floating prisons.

The international seafood supply chain is composed of tens of millions of people moving 158 million metric tons of fish and shellfish annually. This complexity alone poses a serious obstacle to eliminating slave-caught seafood from the U.S. market. The solution is not as straightforward as simply refusing to buy fish from boats with slaves on board. And yet, despite the complicated nature of the problem, the industry must address these abuses. The United States is the second-largest seafood importer after the European Union, and U.S. importers and retailers have a crucial role to play in the global fight against trafficking in persons and other labor abuses.

Read the full story at the Center for American Progress

You May Soon Be Able to Track Your Seafood in Real Time to Fight Fish Fraud

March 29, 2017 — Fishermen and chefs are working together to curb rampant fraud in the seafood industry by allowing people to track a fish from the moment it’s caught until it lands at a restaurant or market.

Dock to Dish, an organization that fights seafood fraud by connecting chefs with fisheries in their local communities, is building a tracking system in an effort to solve the common problem of mislabeled seafood. A global test of more than 25,000 samples of seafood found that 1 in 5 was mislabeled as the wrong type of fish, according to a 2016 report from ocean conservation advocacy group Oceana, meaning people often purchase and eat seafood that is not what they presume it to be.

“People want to know. They’re demanding to know where food is coming from,” Dock to Dish co-founder Sean Barrett said.

The organization has raised more than $69,000 of its $75,000 Kickstarter goal to build a tracking system called Dock to Dish 2.0. In addition to supplying local restaurants with the catch of the day, Dock to Dish aims to present a digitized “end to end program that can answer every single question a consumer might have,” Barrett said.

The program would enable restaurant guests to see where their dinners come from through an online dashboard that displays newly caught fish in barcoded bags, which can be tracked as they travel to eateries. Customers would also be able to chat with fishermen before heading out to eat.

Read the full story at Time 

Love Canned Tuna? More Grocers Want To Make Sure It Was Caught Responsibly

March 24, 2017 — For the last 20 years, Americans have been having a conversation about sustainable seafood that was largely focused on fish purchased at restaurants or fresh seafood counters. Armed with seafood guides, thoughtful customers were encouraged to pose questions about where their fish was caught and what type of gear was used — questions that are far trickier to pose in front of a wall of canned tuna in the middle of a supermarket.

While tuna poke may be winning over American palates today, our consumption of fresh tuna is still dwarfed by our collective appetite for the canned stuff. According to the National Fisheries Institute, Americans ate more than 700 million pounds of canned tuna in 2015. That’s 2.2 pounds per person, enough to keep it firmly among the top three seafood items Americans consume, a ranking held for more than a decade.

Unlike the sustainability conversations we tend to have over farmed vs. wild salmon — or on issues like bycatch, mangrove destruction or human slavery that swirl around shrimp — the hand-wringing over canned tuna has largely been focused on contaminants like mercury, rather than fishing methods or the health of fish stocks.

A handful of retailers are about to change that.

Last Wednesday Whole Foods Market announced that by January 2018, all canned tuna sold in its stores or used in its prepared foods departments will be sourced from fisheries that use only pole-and-line, troll or handline catch methods that eliminate bycatch (accidental harvest of other fish, birds or mammals) because fishermen are catching tuna one at a time.

The new Whole Foods’ policy also requires canned tuna products to come from fisheries that are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or are sourced from fisheries rated green (best choice) or yellow (good alternative) by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and The Safina Center. And Whole Foods has included a traceability requirement as well.

Read the full story from NPR

Pelagic Data Systems Announced as SeaWeb Seafood Champion Finalist

BOSTON — March 20, 2017 — The following was released by Pelagic Data Systems:

Pelagic Data Systems (PDS) is one of four finalists for the 2017 Seafood Champion Award for Innovation, SeaWeb announced today. A panel of seafood sustainability experts from industry and nonprofit organizations based in Asia, Europe and North America recognized the organization for its vessel-tracking technology, based on an affordable, solar-powered data collection device for small vessels. The technology has helped combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Gabon, Mexico, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and the U.S.

“We are incredibly honored to be a Seafood Champion finalist among such great and pioneering individuals and organizations,” said Dave Solomon, PDS CEO. “The innovation that has taken place in the seafood sector in recent years is truly heartening. We are pleased that SeaWeb is recognizing work on vital issues like seafood traceability and transparency.”

The annual Seafood Champion Awards program, now in its 11th year, recognizes individuals and organizations for excellence in promoting environmentally responsible seafood. There are 16 finalists in four categories. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on June 5 at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle.

“This year’s finalists have a global perspective, whether they act locally or at a broader level,” said Mark Spalding, president of SeaWeb and The Ocean Foundation. “Improving seafood’s sustainability requires addressing difficult political, technical, social and economic questions. To create change, you have to forge alliances and bring people together around a common cause. These are not easy things to do, but the Champions on this list have forged ahead and are making real progress.”

PDS was founded in San Francisco in 2014 with the goal of increasing transparency and traceability in the global seafood supply chain. Its vessel tracking system, roughly the size of a typical smartphone, records a vessel’s location multiple times per minute, and automatically and securely transmits stored data within network range. Using this data, fishers and regulators can track vessel and fleet fishing activity, confirming the legality and location of catch and the type of gear that was used.

“As the expectation of transparency and traceability in the seafood supply chain grows, we are working to develop technologies that serve fishermen, regulators, and the environment, making management and smart business decisions easily accessible,” said Melissa Garren, PDS Chief Scientific Officer. “We continue to be inspired and motivated by the creativity and innovation in this sector.”

The Seafood Champion Award for Innovation recognizes those who identify and apply new solutions to ecological challenges, market needs or sustainability barriers. In addition to Pelagic Data Systems, the finalists are:

  • FISH-i Africa, a partnership of eight East African countries that combats large-scale illegal fishing by sharing information and taking collective enforcement action. FISH-i’s string of investigations and prosecutions has created a more responsible fisheries sector.
  • Alan Lovewell of the 1,200-member, community-supported fishery Real Good Fish. He also runs Bay2Tray, a program within Real Good Fish that brings affordable local fish to public school districts with high poverty rates and sends fishermen into classrooms to teach about the ocean, fishing and health.
  • Karl Warr of Better Fishing. He has improved the sustainability of bottom trawling with an easily fitted cage mechanism that can free 95 percent of juvenile fish, saving fuel costs and allowing fishers to catch species selectively.

The Seafood Champion Award for Leadership recognizes people and organizations that bring stakeholders together to improve seafood sustainability or ocean health. The finalists are:

  • Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia’s Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries since 2014. She has banned the use of bottom trawlers and other unsustainable catching devices; led the fight against IUU fishing in her geographically dispersed island nation; and fought against the use of forced labor on fishing vessels.
  • Wally Stevens of the Global Aquaculture Alliance. A widely admired leading light in aquaculture, he has developed the GAA as both a competitive force, with its Best Aquaculture Practices certification, and a precompetitive convener via the annual GOAL Conference, the Responsible Aquaculture Foundation, the Global Aquaculture Advocate and other initiatives.
  • Mariah Boyle of FishWise. Known for bridging divides to unite businesses, NGOs and governments in pursuit of common goals, she has led companies such as Albertsons, Target, Hy-Vee and Sea Delight to improve traceability and reduce the risk of IUU fishing and human rights abuses in their supply chains. Her efforts have positively affected more than 7,500 stores and 250 million pounds of seafood.
  • Sea Pact, an innovative alliance of nine leading North American seafood businesses. The organization uses its collective power to lead improvement throughout the global supply chain, funding projects to drive change while showcasing how competitors can work together.

The Seafood Champion Award for Vision recognizes distinctive visions that significantly advance the sustainable seafood community. The finalists are:

  • Bren Smith, who is leading the development and promotion of 3-D ocean farms. His nonprofit GreenWave helps fishers become ocean farmers by adopting GreenWave’s open-source, replicable model, which restores rather than depletes ocean ecosystems.
  • Matthew Beaudin, executive chef of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who moved $1 million in buying power to seafood producers within a 90-mile radius. He also is a regional and cross-border leader, developing aquaponics programs to support orphaned, HIV-positive children in Mexico.
  • The Marine Research Foundation, a three-person nonprofit in Malaysia whose work protects endangered sea turtles while making Malaysia’s shrimp-fishing industry more sustainable. The MRF overcame entrenched opposition to the use of turtle excluder devices and now anticipates a full rollout of the devices, which will save an estimated 4,000 turtles. That will open access for Malaysia to a global market hungry for sustainable shrimp.
  • The Global Ghost Gear Initiative, the first effort to tackle the problem of abandoned fishing gear on a global scale. This international, cross-sector partnership works with stakeholders from fishers to the United Nations to collect data and develop and model solutions that remove ghost gear from the ocean.

The Seafood Champion Award for Advocacy recognizes the promotion of sustainability, use of the media to raise the profile of sustainable seafood, work to strengthen public policy and resource allocations, and championing of advances in sustainable seafood. The finalists are:

  • The International Pole & Line Foundation, which spearheaded an effort by Indian Ocean countries to reform tuna fisheries management and played a central role in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission’s groundbreaking adoption of a precautionary harvest strategy.
  • Ned Bell, Ocean Wise executive chef at the Vancouver Aquarium and founder of Chefs for Oceans, who has made sustainable seafood his mission. In 2014, he rode his bike 8,700 km across Canada, hosting 20 events alongside some of the country’s best chefs to raise awareness of sustainable seafood.
  • Dr. Caleb Otto, former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Palau to the United Nations, who has led his small island nation to a position of leadership on the international stage through his passionate advocacy for ocean health and sustainability at the United Nations.
  • Bill Mook of Mook Sea Farm in Maine, who is modeling how shellfish growers everywhere can address the threat of ocean acidification. He has become a resource for hatchery and farm operators in the U.S. and abroad, counseling them on how to avoid losses and exchanging innovative ideas for protecting the industry.

For more information on the awards and finalists, go to www.seafoodchampions.org. For more information on the awards ceremony and the Seafood Summit, go to www.seafoodsummit.org.

Read the release at Marketwired

EU still vulnerable to illegal fish imports

March 17, 2017 — Disparities and weaknesses in import controls in key member states of the European Union mean illegally caught fish can still slip through the net and into EU supply chains, according to an analysis published today by the Environmental Justice Foundation, Oceana, The Pew Charitable Trusts and WWF.

The analysis provides a comprehensive evaluation of countries’ progress in implementing import controls under the EU Regulation to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which came into force in 2010. This is the first published analysis of data reported by member states to the European Commission for the most recent two-year reporting period, 2014 to 2015. It reveals significant problems with the way a number of EU member states are executing controls of fish consignments. For example, authorities in some major importing countries still fail to apply robust checks even where consignments come from countries that have been warned by the EU for having inadequate measures in place to prevent and deter illegal fishing. In some cases, the procedures implemented by EU countries appear insufficient to comply with the minimum control obligations laid down in EU legislation.

The study calls for more harmonised and rigorous procedures, as well as the digitisation of catch certificate information within the EU by the end of 2017, to ensure unscrupulous operators do not attempt to move their catch through ports where weaker controls are in place. Imports entering the EU in shipping containers are identified as particularly challenging for enforcement authorities, with procedures for these not harmonised to a sufficiently rigorous standard to date.

The import controls are a cornerstone of the European Union’s 2010 Regulation to combat IUU fishing, which is seen as a world-leading piece of legislation in the global fight against illegal fishing. The analysis reinforces the findings of a recent case study published by the four NGOs revealing that the fraudulent use of paper catch certificates and lack of an EU-wide system for cross-checking import documents means illegal catch is still getting through.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

Hawaii legislature kills bills tightening rules on commercial fishing licenses

March 9, 2017 — Two separate legislative efforts to increase state oversight of commercial fishing licenses in Hawaii, initiated in response to an Associated Press investigation into the working conditions of foreign fishermen in the Hawaiian fleet, have failed to advance.

One bill would have required fishing license applicants to apply in person, “creating a logistical barrier because most of Hawaii’s foreign fishermen are confined to their boats,” according to the AP. Supporters of the bill said that interaction would give foreign fishermen “a chance to tell state officials if they were victims of human trafficking or having problems such as withheld wages,” the article reported.

The second bill had called for records of employment and fishermen contracts to be retained with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

However, following opposition by the Hawaii Longline Association, which argued that state officials should not be put in the position of having to review labor contracts, Hawaii’s House Judiciary Committee and Senate Committee on International Affairs and the Arts deferred action on the legislation, making the bills ineligible for further consideration in the state’s current legislative session.

“I think we all share an interest to ensure that there’s safety for the crews of these boats, but we just felt like the bill was more of a federal issue,” state Rep. Scott Nishimoto told ABC News. “I read through the bill and I didn’t really see how collecting contracts in different languages would do anything to ensure their safety.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Pair pleads guilty to illegal fishing

March 8, 2017 — The United States Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday in federal court that David Saunders Jr. and Michael Potter pleaded guilty to federal charges regarding the illegal harvest and sale of Atlantic striped bass from federal waters off the coast of North Carolina.

According to the indictments and information in the public records, in February 2010, a special agent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received information that commercial trawlers were illegally fishing for Atlantic striped bass in federal waters off the coast of North Carolina.

Upon receiving the information, NOAA engaged the assistance of the U.S. Coast Guard and a patrol vessel in the area intercepted one of 17 commercial trawlers.

Based on its review, NOAA determined that in seven separate fishing trips between Jan. 27, 2009, and Feb. 9, 2010, Saunders, then Captain of the Bridgot Denise, a commercial trawler, harvested approximately 14,579 pounds of Atlantic striped bass from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). He sold the fish to a fish dealer in Wanchese, NC. The estimated fair market retail value of the 14,579 pounds of illegally harvested fish exceeds $116,000.

Read the full story at WECT