Saving Seafood

Pacific bluefin tuna group puts off new moves to save fish

September 3, 2015 — An international body that monitors fisheries in most of the Pacific Ocean ended a meeting in Japan on Thursday without agreement on fresh measures to protect the dwindling bluefin tuna.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission was unable to get a consensus on either short-term or long-term measures to help restore the bluefin population, whose numbers are estimated to have fallen 96 percent from unfished levels.

Last year, the 10-nation commission recommended that the catch of juvenile tuna be cut to half of its average level in 2002-2004. But conservation groups say more must be done to counter the sharp decline of the species.

The lack of a required three-quarters quorum prevented any agreement, since representatives from China, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu and the Philippines did not attend. So any decisions on new long-term measures were pushed back to 2016, the Japanese Fisheries Agency said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Powerful typhoon kills 11,000 farmed tuna in Japan: reports

Tokyo, Japan (AFP) — July 24, 2015 — A powerful typhoon which lashed Japan last week has killed more than 11,000 farmed bluefin tuna, costing over $10 million in damage, local media said Saturday.

Typhoon Nangka made landfall in southwestern Japan on the night of July 16 and slowly moved northward before turning into a tropical depression.

Torrential rain and gusts of wind wreaked havoc in various parts of western Japan, also causing high waves and clouding sea water in the fish farm near the Pacific coastal town of Kushimoto, Kyodo News and the Asahi newspaper reported.

Read the full story from the Agence France-Presse at Business Insider

Challenges in Japanese Eel Production

July 16, 2015 — Today the Japanese consume around 100,000 tons, or 70 – 80 per cent of the worldwide eel catch, but in 2013 the Japanese Ministry of the Environment designated the fish as a species at risk of extinction, and in June 2014 it was placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species.

In Japan, aquaculture is extremely important to the eel industry’s success, with most eel caught in the wild as juveniles and then raised on fish farms. However, the overfishing of juvenile glass eels has now become a huge problem.

Fed on a diet of fishmeal and kept in fossil-fuel-heated greenhouses, eel are usually collected along the Pacific Coast between December and April and put into tanks where their chances of survival are improved thanks to heating apparatus that helps increase water temperature particularly during the winter, and a circulating filter system in which water is filtered and re-circulated.

Ponds or specialized tanks are then used to grow the eels in temperatures of around 23oC – 28oC, after which regular grading takes place in which the eels are separated according to size and harvested once they are large enough to have reached market value.

Read the full story at The Fish Site 

 

Japanese fisherman preparing to reunite with his boat in B.C., four years after tsunami

July 3, 2015 — After the earthquake, a 23-metre-high tsunami ripped through the Japanese port town of Ofunato, destroying houses, tumbling cars like toy blocks and capsizing ships in the harbour. Stacks of freight containers were swept off the docks and sent hurtling through the town. People fled up the steep streets around the harbour, and the air was filled with the terrifying screeches of buildings being torn apart.

This was how the great earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, arrived in Ofunato, a town of 41,000 that, through the miraculous journey of one small boat, has become linked to the tiny fishing village of Klemtu, population 450, on British Columbia’s Central Coast.

When the wave of water that rose along coastal Japan that day swept back out to sea, it left more than 15,000 people dead and took almost five million tonnes of debris with it. Lost were about 1,000 vessels, including many of the boats in Ofunato harbour. Most of the debris soon sank, but an estimated 1.4 million tonnes drifted offshore.

Four years later, fragments of the communities shattered in Japan continue to reach North America’s West Coast, raising pollution concerns but also serving as touching reminders of what was lost. Everything from small plastic toy soldiers that washed up on beaches to a 50-metre fishing boat that eventually sank in the Gulf of Alaska has made the crossing. Most of the debris can’t be traced, but occasionally serial numbers allow a connection to be made.

Read the full story at The Globe and Mail