Saving Seafood

Maine fisheries experts head to Japan to learn scallop practices, buy machinery

October 4th, 2016 — Expanding on earlier visits to Japan, 10 aquaculture and fisheries experts from Maine are headed for Aomori Prefecture in the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu to learn successful techniques to grow scallops and to buy machinery to help harvest them.

“Sea scallops are among the most lucrative commercial marine species caught in the United States,” Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries project director at Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI), of Portland and the trip leader, told Mainebiz as he was preparing to leave for Aomori last Friday. “The nationwide landings value of sea scallops remained high in 2013 and was ranked fourth among all species with a total worth of $467.3 million. In 2015 the Maine wild caught scallop season witnessed prices at $12 per pound for 20-30 counts … [and up to] $16 per pound for 10 counts.”

Maine’s scallop industry was worth $5.7 million in 2015 for 3,770,760 million live pounds of scallops, down from 2014’s $7.6 million and 5,042,648 live pounds, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The per pound price remained similar however, at $12.70 in 2015 and $12.67 in 2014.

Read the full story at Mainebiz 

Beware the invasion of China’s ‘little green boats’

September 1, 2016 — In early August, Japan’s coast guard witnessed an unconventional Chinese assault on its territorial waters.

According to Japanese officials I met with last week, at least 300 Chinese “fishing vessels” began incursions into the exclusive economic zone around the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, disputed territory administered by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan as well.

Japan has seen similar probing activities for years. But in August, the Chinese escalated. There were far more boats than before, and the Chinese sent armed coast guard vessels to accompany these “fishermen.”

This may sound fairly benign compared to the shooting wars in Ukraine and Syria. But for Japan, the matter could not be more serious. Its military assesses that many of these sailors are really Chinese militia irregulars, similar to the non-uniformed “little green men” whom Russia has sent to eastern Ukraine to stir up separatist sentiment. Call them “little green boats.”

Nonetheless, Japan has gone out of its way not to take China’s bait and respond militarily. Instead, it sends its own coast guard to escort the boats and inform them of their trespassing over loudspeakers.

Diplomatically, Japanese officials have taken to lodging angry, formal complaints in late-night phone calls to their Chinese counterparts, a tactic usually favored by Beijing’s envoys.

There are three reasons Americans should watch the rising tensions in the East China Sea carefully.

Read  the full story at the New York Post 

New Tokyo leader postpones plan to move world’s biggest fish market

September 1, 2016 — TOKYO — The newly elected governor of Tokyo has postponed a plan to relocate the world’s biggest fish market, one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

Gov. Yuriko Koike announced Wednesday that she will decide on a date only after an environmental assessment of the new site is completed in January. The move had been scheduled for early November.

The current Tsukiji fish market is to be moved to the site of a former gas plant in Toyosu, a reclaimed area in Tokyo Bay, raising concerns about soil contamination.

“It is a market that handles fresh food and seafood,” Koike, a former national environment minister, said at a news conference. “The perspective of consumers about food safety is valuable, and I believe that citizens come first.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times 

Is the eel industry on the slippery slope to extinction?

July 25, 2016 — As we approach the end of July, supermarkets [across Japan] are beginning to stock up on one of the nation’s much-loved summer fish: freshwater eel.

In recent years, however, the cost of eel has risen sharply and consumers are now facing the upcoming Doyo no Ushi no Hi (Day of the Ox, a day dedicated to eel consumption) on July 30 in the knowledge that they’ll be expected to pay through the nose for a slab of the freshwater fish.

Rampant overfishing and the scientific community’s overall lack of knowledge on the biology of eel has left the industry in a crisis. The dwindling domestic eel population has consequently pushed up prices and forced a number of specialist eel restaurants to close. So scarce is the fish in restaurants these days that it’s almost considered to be something of a luxury item.

“I think that the soaring eel prices are truly unfortunate,” says Torami Murakami, chairman of the All Japan Association for Sustainable Eel Aquaculture. “If prices continue to stay at this level, an important part of Japanese food culture will remain out of consumers’ reach.”

Murakami himself enjoys packing away what has become a delicacy, but realizes that increasing prices are making it more difficult for eel to remain on dining tables across the country.

“Eel has been loved in Japan for millennia,” Murakami says. “It’s crucial that we continue this ancient Japanese food culture.”

The eating of freshwater eel — or unagi — is a culinary romance that has lasted more than 5,000 years. Indeed, eel bones have been found in shell mounds dating back to the Jomon Period, which lasted from around 10,000 B.C. to 200 B.C.

Read the full story at the Japan Times

SUSAN POLLACK: Fishing For Progress: Saying No To ‘No Women On Board’

June 10, 2016 — In 1982, as supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment fought claims that that the proposed amendment to the Constitution would destroy the American family, I confronted an older mythology: Women are bad luck on boats.

I was a young maritime reporter for The East Hampton Star on Eastern Long Island. I loved boats and the sea, and I’d always loved adventure. That summer, I planned to join local fishermen aboard a state-of-the-art Japanese squid ship. This was several years after the United States enacted its 200-mile limit, but before American fishermen had fully developed a squid fishery of their own. In exchange for sharing their technical know-how, the Japanese would be permitted to catch squid in our waters.

I was game.

But as I was readying my boots and gear, I received an unexpected warning from the American sponsors of the U.S-Japan venture: no women on board.

Surely, something must be wrong: I’d spent the previous five years in gurry-soaked oil skins reporting on life at sea on American draggers, lobster boats, bay scallopers, gillnetters, long-liners and clamming rigs. I’d photographed the sun rising over the stern of a dragger hauling its catch of yellowtail and blackback flounders, cod, haddock and scup. I’d spent bone-chilling winter days in an open skiff, culling bay scallops – separating the delicate fan-shaped bivalves from whelks, rocks and seaweed. I’d danced on the boat, not for joy, but to keep warm.

On summer evenings, I’d helped my neighbor lift his gillnets, gingerly plucking out sharp-toothed bluefish and the occasional striper. And I’d finally succeeded in filleting a flounder without mangling the fragile flesh.

Read the full story at WBUR

How unstable supply is forcing Japanese fish farmers to get creative

June 23, 2016 — Fishing for anchovy started late this year in the main producing area of Peru, and the supply of fish meal used as an ingredient in feed for farmed fish is unstable.

In the main producing area of Peru, catches were poor at the end of 2014 and no quota was allocated for the 2015 season. The poor catches are attributed to the El Niño phenomenon, which changes ocean currents and water temperature.

In Peru, the season for catching anchovy for fish meal is usually from April to July and from November to February. Trial fishing was conducted before the season, to determine the total allowable catch. Usually the quota is announced in April, but this year no announcement was made until well into June, so fishing is only getting started. As it is rare for the fishing the season to be extended into August or later, it is likely that the season will simply be shortened, resulting in a continued supply shortage.

The good news is that the El Niño may have ended. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on 9 June reported that El Niño indices were near zero by the end of May. Based on surface and subsurface water temperatures NOAA reported, “For the first time in 2016, atmospheric anomalies over the tropical Pacific Ocean were also consistent with ENSO-neutral conditions.” (ENSO stands for El Niño–Southern Oscillation.)

Spot prices for prime fish meal were at a high point of USD 2,390 (JPY 248,966; EUR 2,119) per metric ton in December 2014. Currently, the price is at USD 1,530 (JPY 159,379; EUR 1,356). So, it is less a problem of price than of unpredictable supply.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Maine scallop farmers borrow from Japan in test to expand fishery

June 13, 2016 — Maine sea farmers are taking a page from Japan (again), an industry titan, to test a new method of farming scallops they hope will grow larger mollusks, and grow them faster than current methods do.

The experiment, in which sea scallops are pinned in pairs to vertical ropes suspended in the ocean water, exposes the animal to more water flow. That, in turn, causes them to open and close their shells more often to feed and helps their adductor muscle, the part that Americans eat, grow larger through exercise during the scallops three-year seed-to-harvest cycle. Farmers hope the “ear-hanging” method will allow them to develop their test farms into commercial-scale operations, which are needed to keep up with rising consumer demand.

And they hope that three scallop pinning, drilling and cleaning machines that a Maine-based investor is bringing to the state from Japan will help them rein in the high labor costs of ear hanging, so they can turn a bigger profit.

The state has granted a handful of limited leases to test the potential market, tapping into the small, tight-knit network of farmers who already raise oysters, clams, and mussels in leased state waters up and down Maine’s 3,500-mile shoreline. These demonstration projects will help scientists determine which husbandry methods, nutrient mix, hanging heights and water temperature grow the biggest, fastest, and healthiest scallop meats, and if it’s profitable enough to become a commercial aquaculture fishery.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

This giant tuna just sold for the price of a new Toyota

June 6, 2016 — A tuna from Nagasaki, Japan, has been sold at an auction for the price of a car in the eastern Chinese city of Fuzhou, in Fujian province, according to an official media report.

The giant fish, weighing more than 100kg, was bought by a local restaurant owner for more than 260,000 yuan ($39,590) after 29 rounds of “intensive bidding,” the China News Services reported on Friday.

The cost per kilogram was almost double the market price, and the total sum paid could buy a brand-new Toyota Crown sedan on the mainland.

But the unidentified buyer was satisfied with the deal, saying that most tuna sold at Chinese seafood markets was farmed, while the Japanese tuna was a more a natural product.

Read the full story at Business Insider

Sushi Alert: Grim Outlook for Bluefin Tuna

April 20, 2016 — TOKYO — The latest scientific assessment paints a likely bleak future for the Pacific bluefin tuna, a sushi lovers’ favorite whose population has dropped by more than 97 percent from its historic levels.

A draft summary of a report by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the North Pacific Ocean seen by The Associated Press shows the current population of bluefin tuna is estimated at 2.6 percent of its “unfished” size. A previous assessment put the population at an already dire 4.2 percent.

Overfishing has continued despite calls to reduce catches to allow the species to recover. In some areas, bluefin tuna is harvested at triple the levels considered to be sustainable.

“The situation is really as bad as it appears,” said Amanda Nickson, director for Global Tuna Conservation at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Limits imposed after the previous estimates actually allowed some countries to up their catches, she said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Largest US fishery (Alaska Pollock) proves it’s sustainable, again

January 14, 2016 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

Seattle, WA – The largest fishery in the U.S. and the largest certified sustainable fishery in the world1, Alaska Pollock has again achieved re-certification to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Standard. This science-based standard is the world’s most credible and recognized standard for environmentally sustainable wild-caught seafood. The Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska Pollock fisheries have been certified to this standard since 2005.

Alaska Pollock is among the top five most consumed fish per capita in the U.S2. Its mild flavor and flaky texture make it popular for consumers around the world. Primary markets for Alaska Pollock products are the U.S., Europe (where it is Germany’s most consumed fish) and Japan. The U.S. and Europe are the main markets for fillet-type products, which are used for fish and chips, fish tacos, fish sandwiches and fish sticks. Japan is the principal market for Alaska pollock surimi, which is used as the primary ingredient in a wide range of surimi seafood products (kamaboko).

Jim Gilmore, At-sea Processors Association, the fishery client for the Alaska Pollock reassessment emphasizes, “We are proud to be one of the 10 fisheries globally to be certified as meeting the MSC’s rigorous sustainability standard three times. Alaska Pollock continues to earn among the highest certification scores of any fishery in the MSC program. This re-certification reaffirms the Alaska Pollock industry’s continued leadership in responsible fishing.”

The 2016 Alaska Pollock season will begin on January 20. A federal fishery advisory body, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, recommended to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce a precautionary 1.34 million metric ton annual quota for the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands, which is several hundred thousand tons less than federal fishery scientists determined can be sustainably harvested. The Gulf of Alaska Pollock fishery is set at 257,872 metric tons, a 30% increase from the 2015 quota and within the safe harvest level determined by federal fishery scientists. 

Pat Shanahan, Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers, the marketing trade association for Alaska Pollock said: “The fishery management system is known for its conservative management practices, so these quota increases indicate an exceptionally healthy Alaska Pollock fishery in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. Seafood buyers and consumers can rest assured that Alaska Pollock is one of the world’s largest and most sustainable fisheries.”

The internationally recognized blue MSC ecolabel will continue to assure consumers that Alaska Pollock products can be traced back to a certified sustainable source. 

Brian Perkins, MSC regional director – Americas, said: “The MSC’s vision is for oceans to be teeming with life for future generations. Alaska Pollock has successfully created and maintained new markets, especially in the U.S. and Europe, over the past decade. We are extremely pleased to see this fishery succeed in the MSC process yet again.”

The independent assessment of the Alaska Pollock fisheries was conducted by MRAG Americas, an accredited third-party conformity assessment body. MRAG Americas assembled a team of fishery science and policy experts to evaluate the fishery according to the three principles of the MSC Fisheries Standard: the health of the stock; the impact of fishing on the marine environment; and the management of the fishery. The MSC process is open to stakeholders and all results are peer reviewed.