Saving Seafood

Patchwork of policies holding back US aquaculture industry growth

June 7, 2019 — The 47th United States-Japan Natural Resources Scientific Symposium “Marine Aquaculture in a Changing Environment” will be held November 12 to 15, 2019, in Okinawa, Japan. It will be the last year for the three-year theme, “Marine Aquaculture in a Changing Environment.”

The symposium is part of a regular collaboration between NOAA Fisheries and the Japanese Fisheries Research and Education Agency, organized through the U.S.-Japan Natural Resources (UJNR) Aquaculture Panel. The panel is an annual meeting framework that allows scientists to share research results, new technology, and approaches to sustainable seafood farming. Last year’s meeting took place in Mystic, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Mike Rust, a NOAA Fisheries scientist and the U.S. chair of the UJNR Aquaculture Panel, told SeafoodSource the exchanges represented an important path to improving the state of U.S. domestic aquaculture.

“The learning opportunities are tremendous on a number of fronts. The United States is behind in both the scale of marine aquaculture and the science and technology effort to support a sustainable industry. This partnership gives U.S. researchers a chance to understand where Japan is going in aquaculture and learn from Japan’s experience,” Rust said. “The low-hanging fruit in some ways is to look around the world to see where other people are on the technical side.”

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Moving to TAC system, Japanese fisheries managers get lessons from US experts

March 25, 2019 — Japanese fisheries officials heard from their international counterparts about methods for incorporating more data into their fisheries science and management at a recent workshop in Tokyo.

The workshop,“New Resource Management Based on Data Innovation: Current State of the United States and Future Vision of Japan,” took place at the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries building on 7 March. The event was co-sponsored by the Fisheries Agency, the Fisheries Research and Education Organization, and the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Japan’s Fisheries Reform Act, the first major reform of Japan’s fishing laws in 70 years, was approved in the Diet at the end of last year. The law will move Japan from a total allowable effort (TAE) system – in which the number, size, and period of operation of fishing boats, and the types of gear allowed, are regulated – to a total allowable catch (TAC) system with vessel quotas for most species.

In comparison with other countries, Japan has so far set a TAC for only a few species. Those include saury, Alaska pollock, sardines, mackerel, Southern mackerel, horse mackerel, squid, and snow crab – and recently for juvenile bluefin tuna. But with the reform, Japan will have to set TAC for many more species and fisheries, some of them data-poor, and also monitor and enforce the TACs. To accommodate the move, the government is planning an expansion of the country’s stock assessment system and an expansion of the use of data from fishing operations.

Masanori Miyahara, president of the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA), said under Japan’s current slow paper-based system, scientific assessments and quotas are made based on two or three-year old data. That leads to complaints from fishermen that stock assessments do not reflect what they are actually seeing when they fish. When a stock is recovering, this results in a TAC that is too low, and so it is bad for the fishermen. He also said that computerization of survey and landing data is becoming a global standard and may be required in future for sustainability certification schemes. Japan may find itself at a disadvantage in global markets if it cannot meet these standards, Miyahara said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Eel farming coming closer to reality in Japan

March 6, 2017 — At the 14th annual Seafood Show Osaka, held 22 to 23 February at ATC Hall, the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency operated a booth highlighting its work in closed-cycle breeding of Japanese eel.

Osamu Tamaru, a researcher at the research Center for Fisheries System Engineering, of the National Research Institute of Fisheries Engineering, said that his group has achieved survival rates of 10 percent, but estimates that this figure needs to be doubled to be commercially viable. Asked what the difficult point was, he said, “The feed, the tank, everything…”

That is to say, it often hard to discover the cause of mortality. However, as commercialization of closed-cycle breeding of bluefin tuna is advancing in Japan, there is hope that pressure on threatened eel populations can be relieved through the research.

Read the full story at Seafood Source