Saving Seafood

JOHN FIORILLO: A Retraction is Not Enough

November 1, 2018 — The following editorial was originally published by IntraFish. It was written by IntraFish Executive Editor John Fiorillo:

Patience may be a virtue but how long must we wait for a scientific journal to decide if it is going to retract a controversial paper that the US government, eminent fisheries scientists and industry executives say is a bunch of crap?

It has been more than a year – yes, I said a year – since US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Chris Oliver requested a retraction of the controversial scientific paper published in the journal Marine Policy that alleges a significant portion of Alaska salmon, crab and pollock is entering the Japanese market from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fisheries.

Last October, Oliver challenged the veracity of the scientific paper and asked that it be retracted to avoid damaging the reputation of the US fishing industry and its fisheries management. In December, a team of top US fisheries scientists, led by preeminent fisheries researcher Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, joined the US government in demanding a retraction of the paper. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), under which the fisheries are certified sustainable, also came out in support of the industry.

In June, Hance Smith, editor of the journal Marine Policy, told IntraFish: “The status is simply that we have been waiting for additional reviews of the paper. I expect we shall be able to progress shortly.”

Shortly?

On Monday, I asked Smith again for an update on the status of the paper and its possible retraction. I was told: “We are still waiting for a response from the corresponding author.”

Umm. OK. What?

Anyway, this is about more than getting a retraction. This is a scientific paper, that critics — bonafide critics, not crackpots — say is fundamentally flawed. And if that is not bad enough, it is eerily similar to a 2014 paper by the same researchers — Tony Pitcher, Katrina Nakamura, and Ganapathiraju Pramod — that provided estimates for IUU fish entering the US market. This report has been cited at least 59 times in academic reports and countless times in government and NGO reports. In other words, repeat the story enough times and it becomes unquestioned gospel.

The 2014 study was cited regularly by those supporting the creation of the US Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), which was indeed launched in January and requires a new level of record keeping by US importers aimed at eliminating IUU fish from the US seafood supply chain.

Made up

Hilborn, in December, said the paper at the heart of the current controversy cites several dozen published papers as sources yet none have any mention of IUU fishing. “The paper also lists a number of ‘sources’ of IUU such as ‘unreported catch in artisanal fisheries’ which do not exist,” said Hilborn. “As near as we can tell, the paper made up all of its results without any data on IUU fishing.”

NOAA’s Oliver, in his October 2017 letter to the report’s authors, said the “allegations made in the paper, are absent of transparency regarding the data, and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions.”

The Japan study claims that an estimated 15 percent of the US pollock entering Japan is from IUU fisheries. Further, the study says between 10 and 20 percent of the salmon and crab coming from Alaska fisheries is IUU. In the paper, Pitcher and the other authors argue for the creation of a seafood traceability program in Japan to thwart what they claim is the importation of seafood produced by IUU fishing activity.

The paper was funded by the Walton Foundation, which has largely skirted the fray. “Independently, we are reaching out to talk with all of the parties to ensure we fully understand the issues,” Barry Gold, director of Walton’s Environment Program, said a year ago.

But Pitcher told me Tuesday in an email that “neither the Walton Foundation nor the Marine Stewardship Council has been in touch with us to ascertain the truth of the matter.”

He also said he has a revised table showing “only 2 percent IUU from that US pollock fishery,” and he says that the revised table “has been waiting to be inserted [into the paper] for almost a year now.” In other words, the original 15 percent IUU estimate is wrong.

“The editor wants us to retract and then resubmit to include the new table, and despite our arguing that is not necessary as they can easily insert a correction, Ray Hilborn in Seattle has queered the pitch by a ridiculous letter accusing us of data fraud and absurd unprofessional threats that the journal will be ‘exposed on his blog,'” Pitcher said in his email to me.

“My co-author has been travelling extensively (earning his living!), and so have I, so neither of us have had the time required to deal with this. We are aiming to get it done before Xmas.”

What a mess.

Look, we need to be able to trust science, especially in this Trumpian era where science is dismantled, devalued and dismissed.

It’s time for the editors of the Marine Policy journal to settle this issue so we don’t allow flimsy science to contribute to the potentially unnecessary creation of another new traceability program in Japan, as it did for the new SIMP program in the US market.

Marine Policy editors need to retract the report, and while they are at it they need to look at the authors’ 2014 report. And stop being careless with fisheries science.

Read the editorial at IntraFish

9 countries and the EU protected the Arctic Ocean before the ice melts

October 12, 2018 —  It’s easy to miss the truly historic nature of the moment.

Last week, nine countries—the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway, Greenland/Denmark, China, Japan, Iceland, South Korea, and the European Union (which includes 28 member states)—signed a treaty to hold off on commercial fishing in the high seas of the Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years while scientists study the potential impacts on wildlife in the far north. It was an extraordinary act of conservation—the rare case where major governments around the world proceeded with caution before racing into a new frontier to haul up sea life with boats and nets. They set aside 1.1 million square miles of ocean, an area larger than the Mediterranean Sea.

But to really grasp the significance of this milestone, consider why such a step was even possible, and what that says about our world today. For more than 100,000 years the central Arctic Ocean has been so thoroughly covered in ice that the very idea of fishing would have seemed ludicrous.

That remained true as recently as 20 years ago. But as human fossil-fuel emissions warmed the globe, the top of the world has melted faster than almost everywhere else. Now, in some years, up to 40 percent of the central Arctic Ocean—the area outside each surrounding nation’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone—is open water in summer. That hasn’t yet been enough to make fishing attractive. But it is enough that boats may be lured in soon.

So, for perhaps the first time in human history, the nations of the world set aside and protected fishing habitat that, for the moment, does not even yet exist. The foresight is certainly something to applaud. But it’s hard to escape the fact that the international accord is a tacit acknowledgment—including by the United States, which is moving to back out of the Paris climate accords—that we are headed, quite literally, into uncharted waters.

“The Arctic is in a transient state—it’s not stable,” Rafe Pomerance, a former State Department official who once worked on Arctic issues and now chairs a network of Arctic scientists from nongovernmental organizations and serves on the polar research board of the National Academy of Sciences, said last year.

Read the full story at National Geographic

‘Historic’ Agreement Bans Commercial Fishing Across a Vast Swath of the Arctic

October 4, 2018 — As the Arctic’s mantle of protective sea ice grows smaller and sadder by the year, new waters are opening up, setting the stage for industry and tourism to take off. But a vast swath of those chilly seas will soon be off-limits to at least one human enterprise: commercial-scale fishing.

On Wednesday, nine nations and the European Union signed an agreement to place a moratorium on unregulated commercial fishing across 1.1 million square miles of the central Arctic Ocean. These waters are becoming increasingly accessible as Arctic sea ice melts, and conservationists have been pushing for more protections so that exposed and potentially fragile ecosystems can be properly studied before we screw them up beyond repair.

Apparently, Arctic nations and those looking to exploit the ocean’s riches in the future—a list that includes the U.S., Russia, Canada, China, and Japan—are listening. The moratorium, which builds off protections the U.S. put in place in 2009, will be in effect for 16 years unless a science-based management plan can be established sooner, according to a press release from Pew Charitable Trusts. There’s also the potential to extend the fishing ban for additional five year increments depending on the results of a new research and monitoring program, which will focus on how the central Arctic Ocean ecosystem is changing and how best to manage any emerging fisheries.

Read the full story at Earther

Japan, Peru using cutting-edge technology to combat IUU fishing

October 2, 2018 — Japan and Peru, two of the world’s biggest players when it comes to seafood, are hoping to crack down on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in their exclusive economic zones through increased use of cutting-edge technology.

A key player in both countries’ efforts is the Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit organization with the goal of “advancing sustainability of the oceans through increased transparency.” Its mapping platform, which can be found on the GFW website, allows anyone to view or download data and investigate global fishing activity in near real-time, for free. GFW was founded in 2015 through a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google.

Global Fishing Watch’s tracking of automatic identification system (AIS) messages from ocean-going boats is now being used to fight illegal transshipment inside and near Japan’s exclusive economic zone. GFW recently signed onto a collaboration with the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA) and the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong to investigate IUU fishing and strengthen transparency and governance of fisheries within the region.

To detect pairs of vessels meeting at sea, GFW and analysts at SkyTruth and Google applied machine learning algorithms to more than 30 billion automatic identification system (AIS) messages from ocean-going boats to find tell-tale transshipment behavior, such as two vessels alongside each other long enough to transfer catch, crew, or supplies. AIS is a collision avoidance system that constantly transmits a vessel’s location at sea. These transmissions are collected by satellite receivers and delivered to GFW for automated processing. Nearly all refrigerated cargo vessels carry AIS and those ships receiving fish can be identified and their activity plotted on the map.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Reps. Bishop, Westerman Probe Earthjustice’s Ties to Japan

October 2, 2018 — The following was released by the House Committee on Natural Resources:

Today, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) sent a letter to Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen, requesting information regarding Earthjustice’s relationship with the Japanese government.

“Foreign members of the anti-base coalition represented by Earthjustice appear to have already engaged in extensive political activity within the United States, including lobbying government officials and holding media events designed to influence public opinion. During a visit to San Francisco, a foreign delegation met with representatives of a U.S. Senator and a U.S. House Representative. This delegation also traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with lawmakers, as well as, the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, the Advisory Council on Historic Foreign members of the anti-base coalition represented by Earthjustice appear to have already engaged in extensive political activity within the United States, including lobbying government officials and holding media events designed to influence public opinion.

“During a visit to San Francisco, a foreign delegation met with representatives of a U.S. Senator and a U.S. House Representative. This delegation also traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with lawmakers, as well as, the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and unspecified “other groups.” Beyond serving as the coalition’s attorney, Earthjustice has directly participated in the publicity campaign condemning the base relocation such as by sending open letters to the President of the United States and Japanese Prime Minister.

“The Committee is concerned that your organization’s political activities within the United States in opposition to the relocation of MCAS Futenma and the continued U.S. military presence in Okinawa may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).”

Click here to read the full letter.

Fisheries nations to decide fate of declining bigeye tuna

October 1, 2018 — PARIS — Dozens of nations with commercial fisheries in the Atlantic Ocean will grapple next week with a new finding that bigeye tuna, the backbone of a billion dollar business, is severely depleted and overfished.

Unless catch levels are sharply reduced, scientists warned, stocks of the fatty, fast-swimming predator could crash within a decade or two.

Less iconic than Atlantic bluefin but more valuable as an industry, bigeye (Thunnus obesus) — one of several so-called tropical tunas — is prized for sashimi in Japan and canned for supermarket sales worldwide. It is not farmed.

An internal report by 40-odd scientists working under the inter-governmental International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), finalized last week, shows that populations have fallen to less than 20 percent of their historic levels.

Even more critical, the stock is barely half the size needed to support a “maximum sustainable yield” — the largest catch that can be taken without compromising long-term stability of the species.

Current harvests, overwhelmingly legal, are also more than 60 percent above levels that would give bigeye at least a fighting chance of recovering its numbers, the report said.

Read the full story at Yahoo

New research partnership formed to investigate illegal fishing in North Pacific

September 17, 2018 — Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA) will help Global Fishing Watch and the Australian National Center for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales, with their investigation of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Following a memorandum of understanding signed on Sept. 3, the groups have agreed to share “relevant open public data and analytical methodologies, including vessel movement data, catch data and satellite imagery; collaborate on relevant research activities, and publish research outcomes to advance international understanding on IUU fishing and its impacts,” according to a press release.

They intend to analyze night-time satellite imagery, the groups say, as squid jigging most often takes place at night, using bright overhead lights to attract the squid.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Japan prevented from resuming commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean after failed IWC bid

September 17, 2018 — Japan will not be able to resume commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean after losing its bid at the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Overnight the commission held a meeting in Brazil where Japan’s proposal that would have opened the door to commercial whaling was defeated 41 to 27.

In response, Japan is threatening to quit the commission.

It has been arguing that whale stocks have recovered sufficiently for the ban to be lifted.

Japan’s Agriculture Minister Masaaki Taniai has warned his country will consider its options, if different positions and views cannot coexist.

“Then Japan will be pressed to undertake a fundamental reassessment of its position as a member of the IWC,” he said.

Read the full story at ABC News

Japanese proposal for bluefin catch increase rejected

September 14, 2018 — Japan’s proposal for increasing the catch quota of Pacific bluefin tuna by about 15 percent from 2019 has been rejected.

Japan made its request at the committee meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Fukuoka, Japan, which took place 3 to 7 September. Japan pushed for the quota increase after scientific data showed a recovery in the stock.

The WCPFC has set a mid-term target of increasing stocks of adult Pacific bluefin tuna (those weighing 30 kilograms or more) from the latest estimate of the current 21,000 metric tons (MT) to 43,000 MT in 2024. The scientific committee of the commission announced in mid-July that the probability of achieving the target would be 74 percent if the total catch, including both fish weighing less than 30 kilograms and those over, were to increase by 15 percent from 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Boom in taste for octopus squeezes market

August 14, 2018 — Whether it’s spiced in the Spanish style or sliced as Japanese sashimi, octopus as a dish is becoming a victim of its own popularity.

Prices for the tentacled mollusc have about doubled in the past two years due to a global boom in appetite for these classic dishes. And supplies have tightened, with fisheries not yet able to farm octopus and relying on ocean currents to yield a good harvest.

This year has been hard, with lower catches in major producing countries like Morocco and Spain.

“The price will rise even more,” says Carmen Torres Lorenzo, who has been selling fish for three decades in the market of Bueu in Spain’s northwestern region of Galicia, famed for its octopus dish. “I wish a lot of octopus would appear … and the price will come down, but that won’t happen.”

The price of a regular size, locally caught octopus has risen from about 7 euros to 14 euros per kilogram (from $8 to $16 for 2.2 pounds) in the last two years. The price is typically somewhat higher in other countries, like the U.S., that do not specialize in its fishing.

The Food and Agriculture Organization says prices are expected to continue to grow as demand has risen in all major markets, including Japan, the United States, China and Europe. Meanwhile, catches have been limited, even in the biggest producing countries, Morocco, Mauritania and Mexico.

Some scientists in Japan and Spain are working on techniques to farm octopus, but they are not ready yet for commercial purposes. Octopus eggs are laid on the ocean floor, where they are fertilized and transported by currents, a condition that is hard to reproduce in a controlled environment.

“There is a lot of demand for this product, and what we can offer is little, so the price skyrockets,” said says Jose Manuel Rosas, president of Bueu’s fishermen guild.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Gloucester Daily Times