Saving Seafood

Hawaii’s Fishermen Are Worried About China’s Fleet. So Is The Military

May 17, 2021 — Hawaii’s commercial fishermen and the U.S. military have a potential threat in common — China’s fleet of government-subsidized ships that has been straying into more distant waters in search of seafood and more influence.

Local longliners have reported seeing increasing numbers of Chinese vessels near the islands, accusing them of overfishing and intimidating tactics.

Sometimes the ships are fishing, sometimes they’re making their way into the eastern Pacific and sometimes they’re seemingly just sitting at sea, says Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association.

He noted that a group of Chinese vessels seemed to be loitering north of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge last week. “What are they fishing for? I don’t know,” said Kingma. “But it’s an example of them being close to Hawaii and, we believe, getting closer.”

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

HOUSE BILL TARGETS ILLEGAL FISHING, SEAFOOD TRADE SLAVERY

May 14, 2021 — The following was released by The Office of Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA):

A bipartisan bill introduced this week seeks to end slavery and human rights abuses in the international seafood supply chain and fight illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, commonly known as IUU fishing.

“IUU fishing is an environmental and humanitarian crisis, and the U.S. should be a global leader in solving it,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife and sponsor of the bill, H.R. 3075, called the “Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Prevention Act.”

“Illegal fishing operations damage ocean ecosystems and healthy fisheries, and are often the same ones that rely on atrocious, illegal practices like human trafficking and forced labor,” added Huffman, who introduced the bill Tuesday with Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.).

Among other things, the bill would expand NOAA’s seafood import monitoring program to cover all species and increase data requirements for monitoring, including the consideration of labor conditions and improved detection of imports deemed to be at risk of IUU fishing.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office criticized U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials for not doing enough to stop the use of slaves and illegal labor practices in the seafood industry.

Customs works with officials at the seafood import monitoring program and others to find seafood that has been illegally produced (E&E News PM, June 18, 2020).

The focus on the issue has grown in Congress in recent years, with the U.S. importing nearly 90% of its seafood.

In 2016, the Associated Press won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of stories that exposed the use of slaves in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia. The stories showed how the seafood ended up in U.S. supermarkets. After the 18-month investigation, more than 2,000 slaves were freed.

The Huffman-Graves bill would also establish new seafood traceability and labelling requirements, increase outreach on seafood safety and fraud issues, and seek to improve both seafood inspections and the federal enforcement of seafood fraud.

Another provision in the bill would expand the authority of U.S. officials to revoke port privileges for any fishing vessel associated with IUU fishing.

“Our new legislation tackles IUU fishing to protect human lives, promote responsible fishing around the world, and level the playing field for U.S. fishermen,” Huffman said in a statement.

“Not only do we need to ensure an ethical seafood supply chain, but we also need to stop IUU products from entering our markets and competing with those who follow the rules and who keep our domestic fishing industry sustainable.”

Up to a third of the annual global seafood catch, or as much as 56 billion pounds, is the product of IUU fishing, according to estimates.

In the United States, a report by the U.S. International Trade Commission in 2019 found nearly 11% of the nation’s total seafood imports — worth $24 billion — were the products of illegal or unreported fishing.

That report also found that if those IUU imports were eliminated, U.S. fishers would increase their income by nearly $61 million per year.

“The United States can close our markets to illegally sourced seafood, and this bill offers a promising pathway to level the playing field for U.S. fishermen, protect workers at sea and prevent seafood fraud,” said Beth Lowell, deputy vice president of U.S. campaigns for Oceana, one of a handful of organizations that endorsed the bill.

Fisheries research

Separately, Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young introduced H.R. 3128, a bill that would establish the American Fisheries Advisory Committee, a panel that would aid in the awarding of federal grants for fisheries research and development.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee yesterday approved its version of the legislation, S. 497, the “American Fisheries Advisory Committee Act,” sponsored by Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) (Greenwire, May 12).

Rampant Fishing Industry Abuses Dull Taiwan’s Rights Record

May 13, 2021 — Taiwan’s lucrative fishing industry has come under fire for subjecting its migrant workforce to forced labour and other abuses, contrasting with the government’s promotion of the democratic island as a regional human rights beacon.

Taiwan operates the second largest longline fishing fleet in the world with boats spending months — and sometimes years — crossing remote oceans to supply the seafood that ends up on our supermarket shelves.

But those who work on its vessels — mostly poor migrants from the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam — paint a grim picture of punishing work hours, docked pay, months without family contact, regular beatings, and even death at sea.

Last year the United States added fish caught by Taiwan’s deep water fleets to its list of goods produced by forced labour for the first time.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

Sharing Information on Fisheries Activities Across International Boundaries Has Benefits

May 13, 2021 — According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of fish stocks are overfished while another 60% cannot sustain increases in fishing, a problem exacerbated by illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It doesn’t have to be this way, and a recent study suggests that States can better detect and curtail IUU fishing through improved sharing of fisheries information.

One reason overfishing is such a persistent problem is that fishing vessels frequently operate across international boundaries, and many governments lack the technological, operational, and institutional capacity they need to collect, analyze, and share information about what’s happening in their waters.

The benefits of information sharing

The study, by the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), found that sharing fisheries data—including which vessels are operating where and how—can make the involved States both more aware of and more able to combat IUU fishing. This finding holds even when only one government shares such information, unreciprocated.

Such cooperation could be enormously helpful, for example, when a vessel flagged to one country fishes in another’s waters and then offloads the catch in the port of a third State. The benefits grow as countries increase the amount of information shared.

Read the full story at Pew Charitable Trusts

North Coast Rep. Huffman introduces bill to fight illegal fishing, forced labor

May 13, 2021 — North Coast Congressional Rep. Jared Huffman on Tuesday introduced legislation to combat illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.

In a press release, Huffman said the Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Act would also address human rights abuses in the seafood supply chain.

“This legislation would link IUU fishing to forced labor in the seafood supply chain and make seafood import monitoring more effective,” the release said. “It would also increase transparency and traceability from catch to plate, strengthen enforcement against IUU fishing and forced labor, improve interagency cooperation, and increase pressure on other countries to tackle IUU fishing and human rights abuses.”

Huffman, chair of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife, introduced the bill along with Rep. Garret Graves, a republican congressman of Louisiana.

“IUU fishing is an environmental and humanitarian crisis, and the U.S. should be a global leader in solving it,” Rep. Huffman said via the press release. “Illegal fishing operations damage ocean ecosystems and healthy fisheries, and are often the same ones that rely on atrocious, illegal practices like human trafficking and forced labor. Our new legislation tackles IUU fishing to protect human lives, promote responsible fishing around the world, and level the playing field for U.S. fishermen. Not only do we need to ensure an ethical seafood supply chain, but we also need to stop IUU products from entering our markets and competing with those who follow the rules and who keep our domestic fishing industry sustainable.”

Read the full story at KRCR

Congressmen file bill to combat IUU fishing, increase SIMP enforcement

May 12, 2021 —  Two U.S. congressmen have filed legislation that would expand the role of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) to include all species, including shrimp.

U.S. Representatives Jared Huffman (D-California) and Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) unveiled the Illegal Fishing and Forced Labor Prevention Act on Tuesday, 11 May. The purpose of the legislation is to better connect illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing to forced labor practices in the seafood trade, and to bolster the effectiveness of SIMP.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New low-cost solutions could save sea turtles from a climate change-induced sex crisis

May 10, 2021 — Because of global warming, most newborn sea turtles are female, which could put their long-term survival at risk. New research reveals that in addition to more widely used techniques such as shading and irrigation, the splitting of the turtle nests, which has not been tried before, could even out the sex ratio of turtle hatchlings.

Scientists also argue that to increase the resilience of sea turtles, turtle conservation must address threats beyond climate change, including ocean pollution, unsustainable fishing and illegal wildlife trade.

Understanding turtle reproduction

While the sex of mammal offspring is determined genetically, certain reptile groups such as crocodilians, lizards and turtles rely on temperature-dependent sex determination, or TSD, meaning that the gender of the hatchling would depend on the egg’s incubation temperature.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sea turtle eggs which incubate below 81.86 Fahrenheit – around 28 Celsius degrees – will typically hatch into a male baby, while incubation temperatures above 87.8 Fahrenheit – 31 Celsius degrees – would tend to produce female hatchlings.

Temperatures that fluctuate between the two would result in a mix of female and male baby turtles, while extreme temperatures beyond this range could lead to embryo malformation and higher mortality rates. The exact range might also vary slightly based on the type of sea turtle or the location of the nesting beach.

Read the full story at The Hill

WTO Chief Sees Fisheries Deal as Key to ‘Watershed’ Year

April 28, 2021 — The world’s most important trade negotiation this year centers on a deal aimed at saving the world’s fisheries.

Back in 2015, global leaders tasked the World Trade Organization with ending excessive and illegal fishing. The idea was to eliminate government subsidies that incentivize companies to deplete the world’s fish stocks and threaten coastal economies.

But year after year, deadline after broken deadline, WTO negotiators failed to secure such an agreement.

This year it sounds different.

“It’s like a watershed year — we have to deliver some successes,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday at a European Commission trade conference. She then recited her 2021 agenda with a fisheries deal atop the list.

A failure to conclude a fisheries deal would show that the WTO lacks credibility and is incapable tackling the more pressing problems of the modern global trading system. Okonjo-Iweala sees it as a way to signal to the world that the WTO is back.

There’s one big problem.

China, India and other developing nations are more focused on carving out exemptions than agreeing to enforceable disciplines that would help foster the sustainability of the world’s fish stocks.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

July moment of truth for WTO fishery subsidy talks

April 28, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organisation is hoping to present a final text of a deal on ending harmful fishery subsidies to a virtual meeting of trade ministers in July.

A series of meetings in April between heads of delegations focused on several key issues which remain to be resolved, including potential exemptions for subsidies to subsistence or small-scale fishing; due process for determining illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and the approach to the prohibition of subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

IAN URBINA: Out on the high seas, when news happens no one sees it

April 26, 2021 — About 100 miles off the coast of Thailand, three dozen Cambodian boys and men worked barefoot all day and into the night on the deck of a purse seiner fishing ship. Fifteen-foot swells climbed the sides of the vessel, clipping the crew below the knees. Ocean spray and fish innards made the floor skating-rink slippery.

Seesawing erratically from the rough seas and gale winds, the deck was an obstacle course of jagged tackle, spinning winches and tall stacks of 500-pound nets. Rain or shine, shifts ran 18 to 20 hours. At night, the crew cast their nets when the small silver fish they target — mostly jack mackerel and herring — were more reflective and easier to spot in darker waters.

This was a brutal place, one that I’ve spent the past several years exploring. Fishing boats on the South China Sea, especially in the Thai fleet, had for years been notorious for using so-called sea slaves, mostly migrants forced offshore by debt or duress.

Two-thirds of the planet is covered by water and much of that space is ungoverned. Human rights, labor and environmental crimes occur often and with impunity because the oceans are vast. What laws exist are difficult to enforce.

Arguably the most important factor, though, is that the global public is woefully unaware of what happens offshore. Reporting about and from this realm is rare. As a result, landlubbers have little idea of how reliant they are on the sea or the more than 50 million people who work out there.

Read the full opinion piece at the Los Angeles Times