Saving Seafood

Global Fishing Watch opens doors on new MPA management portal, transshipment data

May 27, 2021 — Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the sustainability of our ocean through increased transparency of human activity at sea, is seeking to improve science-based management of marine protected areas with a new digital tool aiming to “revolutionize [the] ability to dynamically monitor and conserve marine ecosystems.”

On 27 May, it formally launched its Global Fishing Watch Marine Manager, a technology portal that will allow regulatory authorities and researchers to monitor vessels involved in commercial fishing and other activities, such as vessels involved in tourism, oil drilling, and shipping. Vessel information can be overlaid with other datasets in the portal, including environmental such as salinity and sea surface temperatures, according to Global Fishing Watch CEO Tony Long.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

U.S. Asks WTO to Address Forced Labor on Fishing Vessels

May 27, 2021 — The U.S. asked the World Trade Organization’s members to address the problem of forced labor on fishing vessels, seeking the issue to form part of ongoing talks to curb subsidies in the industry.

The U.S. proposal also calls for WTO members’ explicit recognition of the forced-labor problem and proposes additional transparency with respect to those vessels or operators that use forced labor, the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement Wednesday.

“Forced labor harms the lives and well-being of fishers and workers around the world and it must be eliminated,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in the statement.

Global leaders in 2015 tasked the WTO with ending excessive and illegal fishing through eliminating government subsidies that spur companies to deplete the world’s fish stocks and threaten coastal economies. Negotiators have failed to reach an agreement.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has made the issue her top priority, and plans a July conference that could help seal an international accord.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

NORTH CAROLINA: ‘It’s fraud’: DNA tests reveal seafood mislabeled in Triangle markets

May 27, 2021 — Fresh and local are huge selling points for seafood, but when you buy fish or shellfish from local grocery stores and markets, are you getting what you’re paying for?

“People want Carolina shrimp. It’s that simple,” said Doug Cross, co-owner of Pamlico Packing, which gets locally caught seafood to North Carolina plates.

“Our shrimp, most of them, are caught in a more brackish environment in the Pamlico Sound, which is one of the best places in the world to grow a shrimp,” Cross said.

But Cross’ competition is not just coming from other coastal fishermen. With demand for fresh and local, many sellers are cutting corners by getting their seafood from other countries. And in some cases, high-demand fish is being mislabeled.

In the past two years, two North Carolina-based crab meat companies admitted in federal court they were labeling crab as a U.S. product when a lot of the meat was foreign.

Read the full story at WRAL

NOAA Fisheries seeks predictive analytics and dedicated staff for SIMP

May 25, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries has published a report on the implementation of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) and detailed how the initiative to deter illegal and unregulated seafood products from entering the country can be fine-tuned in the years ahead.

Among the possibilities is the use of predictive analytics, which other government agencies have used to fight fraud. The report states that giving authorities that technology will help it better identify shipments for inspections or audits.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

U.S. Coast Guard Needs Money And White House Attention To Tackle Depredatory Chinese Fishing

May 25, 2021 — President Joe Biden sketched out the business case for a larger U.S. Coast Guard last week, addressing new graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. But that busy future may not get the cash it needs to become reality.

The mismatch between rhetoric and resources—always a challenge with the “can-do” Coast Guard—is particularly stark in the battle to constrain depredatory deep-sea fishing. Motivational speeches are nice to hear, but as Joe Biden’s Pentagon embraces a high-tech vision for America’s national security, the unprecedented emergence of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing as a major national security issue risks being overlooked, sunk under a hail of hypersonics, artificial intelligence and robots that big defense contractors with big pockets really, really want the U.S. to pursue.

For some of President Biden’s newly appointed Pentagon leaders, disinterest in illegal fishing may well be a case of “not invented here.” And that’s a shame. One of the bigger surprises of the Trump administration is that illegal fishing managed to go “viral” during one of the most environmentally unfriendly administrations in American history. The policy focus was developed behind the scenes, ignored as high-level Trump administration officials focused on almost everything else but the sea. The issue was quietly advanced via a low-key confederation of oft-ignored professionals in the State Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, elements of the Department of Defense as well as certain intelligence agencies.

Read the full story at Forbes

Dutch firm harnesses DNA, blockchain for sturgeon traceability solution

May 21, 2021 — A Dutch firm is harnessing blockchain and DNA to disable what it has identified as a burgeoning illicit trade in wild sturgeon passed off as farmed product.

Geneusbiotech, which describes itself as a “genomics specialist company,” has introduced a traceability solution for sturgeon and caviar sold in Europe in a three-year collaboration with the Berlin Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). The Amsterdam, the Netherlands-based company develops solutions for the food, luxury goods, and pharma sectors.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

National Fisheries Institute Statement on NOAA’s Report on Implementation of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program

May 21, 2021 — The following was released by the National Fisheries Institute:

The National Fisheries Institute opposes any illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.  We appreciate NOAA’s focus on ridding the globe of pirate fishing.  We are pleased that today’s report on the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) highlights the fact that, “the majority of SIMP audits do not identify noncompliance,” and that of non-conformances “only a small number rise to the level that they warrant enforcement action.” NFI looks forward to working with NOAA to improve any information discrepancies found in entry filings.

We note that NOAA’s report clearly states, “SIMP does not prevent or stop IUU fish and fish products from entering U.S. commerce.”

In fact, NOAA highlights that, “most of the issues that have been found relate to issues apparent from the documents themselves (e.g., vessel permit dates do not match harvest dates, documents are missing).”

In the report NOAA Fisheries emphasizes it remains “focused on maintaining the risk-based nature of SIMP.”  Calls for expanding SIMP to all species undercut this focus on risk.

The seafood community estimates it has spent over $50 million on SIMP regulatory and paperwork compliance for just the 13 species covered by the program, a burden on an industry working to feed Americans during a time of recovery.  SIMP expansion would impose hundreds of millions of dollars of annual expense for a program that “does not prevent or stop IUU fish and fish products from entering U.S. commerce.”

Taiwan Ordered to Address Forced Labor on Its Fishing Vessels

May 19, 2021 — Taiwan’s lucrative seafood industry is back under the gun after the country’s top government watchdog demanded corrective measures to prevent forced labor aboard fishing boats.

The Control Yuan, Taiwan’s official government ombudsman body, has issued a series of demands to three government entities due to their failure to address systemic work abuse against the predominantly Southeast Asian fishermen working on Taiwanese vessels.

The United States Department of Labor last year listed fish caught by Taiwanese vessels as products of forced labor, a label that could serve as a basis for government decisions to block imports from Taiwan’s $1.3 billion seafood industry.

Wang Yu-ling, a member of the Control Yuan, said earlier this month that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, and the Fisheries Agency had done nothing to address the issue, despite knowing the environmental organization Greenpeace planned to share findings from its own research with the U.S. government.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Montauk Gosman fish dealer family members arraigned on conspiracy, obstruction charges

May 19, 2021 — Two fish dealers who are members of the Montauk-based Gosman family pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and obstruction charges in federal court in Central Islip Wednesday in a case alleging they dealt in illegally caught fluke and black sea bass.

Bryan and Asa Gosman entered not-guilty pleas before U.S. Magistrate Judge James Wicks to a two-count indictment alleging they conspired to defraud the government by submitting false fishing reports and obstructed justice by withholding documents or emails requested in a grand-jury subpoena. The men were released on $100,000 signature bonds with their travel restricted to the continental United States.

George Stamboulidis, an attorney for the Gosmans, declined to comment outside the courtroom. He had requested the men be released without the $100,00 bond, which Wicks denied.

Christoner Winkler, a Montauk fisherman who allegedly sold the Gosmans fish caught over the legal limits, was arraigned last week and pleaded not guilty to related conspiracy and obstruction charges, said his lawyer, Peter Smith of Northport, who declined to comment further.

The federal indictment unsealed last month charges Winkler, 61, Bryan Gosman, 48, and Asa Gosman, 45, with a conspiracy the government said took place between May 2014 and July 2016 involving more than $250,000 of over-quota fluke and black sea bass.

Read the full story at Newsday

Fraudulent Fish Foiled by Cancer-Catching Pen

May 18, 2021 — When chemistry graduate student Abby Gatmaitan first visited the University of Texas at Austin on a recruiting tour, she learned about the MasSpec Pen—a handheld device that scientists there were developing to diagnose tumors on contact. “I knew that was where I wanted to do my research,” she says. Shortly after joining the lab, she realized that if the pen could categorize human tissue, it would probably also work on other animals.

Gatmaitan had a very specific problem in mind, and her hunch paid off. Her research, published this spring in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, showed that touching the tip of the “pen” to a sample of raw meat or fish could correctly identify the species it came from. The device was tested on five samples and took less than 15 seconds for each of them. Roughly the length of a typical ink pen, the tool provided answers about 720 times faster than a leading meat-evaluating technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing—and it was much easier to use. Gatmaitan says it could help scientists tackle a global conservation issue: mislabeled seafood.

Seafood fraud is not just a concern for the restaurant diner who orders expensive, wild-caught red snapper, only to wind up with a plate of mercury-laden tilefish. Such deception also threatens the environment. Mislabeled fishes often come from poorly managed fisheries that can harm local ecosystems. Sometimes a fish is passed off as the wrong species or is falsely claimed to have been caught in a different geographical area in order to evade conservation laws or sell a catch for more money than its market value.

Read the full story at Scientific American