Saving Seafood

Hawaii Fishermen Concerned Over Growing Chinese Presence

August 5, 2021 — Early morning in Honolulu, yellowfin, bigeye and other types of tuna, along with swordfish, are put up for auction after being offloaded from ships overnight. Longline boats, 145 of them, operate from this port, trailing kilometers-long baited lines. These vessels mostly fish in international waters at least 400 kilometers offshore, alongside boats from Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea. Wholesale buyers compete for the catch in an early morning auction, and a single high-quality tuna can fetch from several hundred dollars to more than $1,000.

Confrontations are rare on the high seas near Hawaii, where the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is based and the U.S. Coast Guard maintains a strong presence.

But fisherman here have watched with concern as Chinese fishing vessels intimidate Philippine fisherman in waters that China claims in the South China Sea.

U.S. fishing vessels, on the other hand, face more scrutiny than the Chinese ships. They are closely monitored under U.S. domestic law, says Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association, which represents local fishermen.

“We have independent observer coverage levels of at least 20% in our tuna fishery, whereas China barely scratches (reaches) 5%. And we have a whole suite of environmental laws, statutes and regulations,” he said.

Read the full story at Voice of America

US CBP takes action against Fijian tuna longliner, accusing it of using forced labor

August 4, 2021 — A Fijian commercial fishing vessel has received a withhold release order from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which claims forced labor may have been employed onboard the longliner.

The order requires all U.S. agencies to detain tuna and other seafood harvested by the Hangton No. 112, which is owned and operated by Suva, Fiji-based Hangton Pacific Co.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Global Competition Over Fish Stocks Increasingly Affects Hawaii

August 2, 2021 — In the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 1, 2020, the Robin II, a Honolulu-based fishing longliner, was confronted by a larger Taiwanese-flagged vessel about 115 miles south of Hawaii.

The American-flagged Robin II’s owner Jino Lee said the Chi Win No. 1688, also a longliner, aggressively charged his boat as members of both crews argued and shouted in different languages.

The Robin II, which is captained by Lee’s father and has five crew members, is 62 feet long and weighs about 69 tons, while the Chi Win No. 1688 has 30 crew members, is 138.5 feet long and weighs about 327 tons, according to a Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission registry.

As the Robin II’s captain best understood it, the Taiwanese longliner’s crew seemed to believe the Honolulu-based vessel had cut their fishing line. Lee insists that wasn’t the case.

Robin II’s captain got on the radio and told Chi Win No. 1688 that he had called the Coast Guard. The Taiwanese vessel eventually backed off, but not before crew members dumped paint on the deck and sides of Robin II. Repairs cost the Lees more than $2,500.

The confrontation offers a window into the bitter — and sometimes violent — disputes that have gripped fisheries around the world and are coming closer to Hawaii’s shores.

The Coast Guard also said that last year it intercepted several foreign fishing vessels operating within Guam and Hawaii’s maritime borders, known as exclusive economic zones, for the first time since 2012.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Somalia plans to streamline fishing permits to fight IUU

July 28, 2021 — Somalia, plagued with persistent incidents of piracy and rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, is aiming to tighten its fishing licensing regime in order to end loopholes that result in illegal activity.

Amid claims of deep-rooted corruption within Somalia’s fishing industry, the country’s Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR), under the leadership of Minister Abdillahi Bidhan Warsame, plans to eliminate uncertainty brought about by each federal state in the country issuing separate fishing permits that other federal states do not recognize – creating loopholes for IUU fishing operators to thrive along the Somalia’s 3,330-kilometer coastline.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

U.S. squid producers ally with others to fight illegal fishing

July 21, 2021 — Several prominent U.S squid producers and suppliers have joined with European, Canadian and Australian counterparts in creating a new international working group to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing through their global supply chains.

Working with technical support from the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, the new IUU working group includes:

  • Aqua Star, Seattle
  • Beaver Street Fisheries, Jacksonville, Fla.
  • Crocker & Winsor Seafoods, Needham, Mass.
  • Lund’s Fisheries, Cape May, N.J.
  • Netuno, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
  • Panapesca, Pembroke, Mass.
  • Sun Coast Calamari, Oxnard, Calif.
  • The Town Dock, Narragansett, R.I.

The Squid IUU Prevention Working Group was formed by members of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s Global Squid Supply Chain Roundtable (Global Squid SR), which brings together squid producers and suppliers to work together in a pre-competitive environment to drive improvement efforts in squid fisheries practices, management and policy.

“As importers and distributors of processed squid products, the Working Group members are united in their desire to clearly prohibit IUU-sourced squid product and labor and human rights abuses in their supply chains,” according to a statement from the partnership, an international marine conservation group founded in 2006.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

A Battle On The Gulf Pits The Coast Guard Against Mexican Red Snapper Poachers

July 19, 2021 — It’s the hidden U.S.-Mexico border war.

For years, Mexican fisherman have crossed into U.S. waters to illegally catch high-priced red snapper. It has become a multimillion-dollar black market, a Mexican cartel is involved, Texas fishermen are outraged and the federal government can’t seem to stop it.

The U.S. Coast Guard on South Padre Island has a one-of-a-kind mission among the 197 stations along the nation’s seacoasts. Its chief enforcement activity entails bouncing across the swells of the Gulf of Mexico near lower Texas in pursuit of wily Mexican fishing boats filled with plump, rosy fish destined for seafood houses in Mexico City and Houston.

These are the red snapper poachers.

“United States Coast Guard! Stop your vessel! Stop your vessel!” yells a Coastie into his bullhorn as the 900-horsepower, fast-pursuit boat pulls alongside the Mexican lancha. Four Mexican fishermen tried to outrun it but thought better and throttled down. The fishermen are handcuffed, their catch is confiscated and the boat is towed back to the Coast Guard station.

Read the full story at NPR

Biggest squid producers, suppliers form group to fight IUU fishing

July 19, 2021 — Some of the biggest names in the global squid sector have joined forces to fight for the elimination of products sourced from illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing from entering the market.

The newly formed Squid IUU Prevention Working Group was formed by companies including Spain’s Congalsa, WOFCO, and Grupo Alfrio; Australia’s Bidfood; the U.K.’s Sea Farms Ltd.; Canada’s Export Packers; and U.S. firms Netuno, The Town Dock, Panapesca, Beaver Street Fisheries, Lund’s Fisheries, Sun Coast Calamari, and Crocker and Winsor Seafoods. The companies have promised to address IUU squid fishing through global squid supply chains, seeking to rid domestic and international markets of IUU-tainted squid product.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Traceability software for the seafood industry becoming industry standard

July 16, 2021 — Leif Anderson is the director of sales and services for Kirkland, Washington, U.S.A.-based Dynamic Systems Inc. He spoke with SeafoodSource about the company’s SIMBA traceability and barcode labeling software, its use in the seafood sector, and the trend for industry standards.

SeafoodSource: You have noted increased demand for traceability products from the seafood sector. Is that demand coming from a requirement from the government to be able to do recalls, or other factors?

Anderson: Recalls are part of it, but with sustainability, it’s also about making sure companies aren’t fraudulently substituting one whitefish for another. So, it’s all those elements of traceability. It’s knowing where your food came from for a recall if there’s a need for that, but it’s also the sustainability, it’s reducing fraud and/or overfishing in certain areas. So, there’s lots of different things that drive companies to look at products like ours.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Overwhelmed by Chinese Fleets, Filipino Fishermen ‘Protest and Adapt’

July 12, 2021 — The fishermen along the western coast of Luzon Island, in the Philippines, have known for generations that the seas, the tides and the weather can determine their fortunes. More recently, they have added China to that list.

Scarborough Shoal, a nearby triangular chain of reefs and rocks in the South China Sea, was once the source of bountiful catches of large reef fish. But the fishermen are no longer allowed to go near it.

“The Chinese have already swallowed Karburo whole, but that area is really ours,” said Johnny Sonny Geruela, using the Filipino name for Scarborough. Mr. Geruela lives in Masinloc, a small fishing community just 124 nautical miles from the shoal.

China’s Coast Guard has had ships anchored near Scarborough for almost a decade. Five years ago this week, an international court ruled that the territory was well within Manila’s exclusive economic zone, and invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. Beijing has effectively ignored the ruling and expanded its presence in the region.

Filipino fishermen like Mr. Geruela now avoid the shoal, where they once sheltered during storms, exchanged greetings and cigarettes, and harvested the abundant reef fish. And the lessons of Scarborough are playing out elsewhere in the South China Sea, as China continues to flex its muscle on the water and pursue power through a campaign of steady provocation.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Billions in fishing subsidies finance social, ecological harm, report finds

July 7, 2021 — A new report shows that the world’s top fishing nations are using subsidies worth billions of dollars to exploit the high seas and the waters of other nations, including some of the world’s least-developed countries.

Published by researchers at the University of British Columbia and supported by the NGO Oceana, the report takes a shrewd look at “harmful fishing subsidies,” payments made by governments that allow fishing fleets to operate beyond their normal capacity. The researchers found that 10 countries — China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, the U.S.A., Thailand, Taiwan, Spain, Indonesia and Norway — spent more than $15.3 billion on harmful fishing subsidies in 2018, which has likely contributed to a number of social, economic and ecological issues.

About 60% ($9.2 billion) of these harmful fishing subsidies used by these 10 nations were spent on domestic fishing, while 35% ($5.4 billion) was spent on traveling long distances to fish in the waters of 116 other nations. The remaining 5% ($800 million) was spent on fishing in the high seas, which are parts of the ocean beyond any nation’s jurisdiction.

China was found to be the top provider of harmful fishing subsidies, worth about $5.9 billion, followed by Japan at $2.1 billion and the European Union at $2 billion.

Kathryn Matthews, chief scientist at Oceana, says the report shows the scale and magnitude of harmful fishing subsidies, which can transfer the risk of overfishing from one place to another.

Read the full story at Mongabay