Saving Seafood

Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Prevention Act unveiled by Graves

June 4, 2021 — U.S. Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) on May 11 introduced a bipartisan bill to end foreign Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing, which he says is negatively impacting America’s fisheries, particularly in his home state of Louisiana. 

“Generations of Louisiana’s fishing families have made our state one of the top seafood producers in the country. The combination of great chefs and our seafood has resulted in Louisiana being a foodie destination,” Rep. Graves said. “However, hurricanes, government regulations, the pandemic and unfair competition from foreign fishing fleets are threatening the future of these hard-working men and women and threatening the sustainability of fisheries around the globe. 

“It has evolved from an environmental issue to an economic issue to a national security issue,” he said. 

The Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Prevention Act, H.R. 3075, which Rep. Graves introduced with bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), would establish monitoring and detection programs to identify and prevent IUU fisheries from unfair competition with United States domestic fishing boats, according to a bill summary provided by Rep. Graves’ office.

Read the full story at The Ripon Advance

China brushes off US sanctions against Dalian Ocean Fishing

June 4, 2021 — U.S. sanctions filed last week against a Chinese distant-water fishing firm for alleged forced labor abuses amount to “American slander,” according to a Chinese state media outlet.

The China Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party Youth League, has sought to link the  U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s sanctioning of the Dalian Ocean Fishing Co. to other Western claims of human rights abuses as part of a coordinated effort to “tarnish” China.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Greenpeace report finds forced labor among Indonesian migrant fishermen

June 3, 2021 — Greenpeace Southeast Asia is claiming that 20 Indonesian manning agencies and 26 fishing firms from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nauru are allegedly involved in forced labor practices against Indonesian migrant fishers.

The allegations were presented by the organization in a report released 31 May, “Forced Labour at Sea: The Case of Indonesian Migrant Fishers,” released in partnership with Indonesian migrant workers union Serikat Buruh Migran Indonesia (SBMI).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hundreds of fishing fleets that go ‘dark’ suspected of illegal hunting, study finds

June 2, 2021 — Giant distant-water fishing fleets, primarily from China, are switching off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in a possibly illegal hunt for squid and other lucrative species on the very edge of Argentina’s extensive fishing grounds, according to a new study by Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.

Every year, vessels crowd together along the limits of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to take advantage of the lucrative fishing grounds.

By monitoring the ships’ tracking beacons between January 2018 and April 2021, Oceana found that more than 800 vessels apparently conducted nearly 900,000 hours of fishing within 20 nautical miles of the invisible border between Argentina’s national waters and the high seas.

“During this three-and-a-half-year period, there were over 6,000 instances in which these fishing vessels appeared to go ‘dark’ by potentially disabling their electronic tracking devices, known as Automatic Identification Systems (AIS),” says the report, published on Wednesday, titled, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Vanishing Vessels Along Argentina’s Waters.

In all, these vessels were “hidden” for over 600,000 hours during which Oceana suspects they crossed over into Argentina’s territorial waters for illegal fishing.

“It’s very suspicious that they have their AIS turned off for such a large proportion of the time they are out fishing,” said Marla Valentine, an ecologist at Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.

Read the full story at The Guardian

US issues order against Chinese fishing company accused of forced labor

June 1, 2021 — A Chinese spokesperson on Monday, 31 May, rejected American claims that a Chinese fishing company has committed forced labor violations, calling the claims “totally unfounded.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday, 28 May, that Customs and Border Protection officials had issued an order against the Dalian Ocean Fishing Company, Ltd. That order came after agency officials said they identified all 11 signs of forced labor during an investigation. Those signs included isolating workers, withholding wages, using intimidation, and retaining workers’ identification documents.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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