Saving Seafood

Japanese tech companies aim to solve fisheries and aquaculture problems

March 25, 2022 — Japanese companies are increasingly creating high-tech solutions for problems faced in fishing and aquaculture, using things like artificial intelligence, robots, and more.

At the 24th Japan International Seafood Show – scheduled for 24 to 26 August at Tokyo Big Sight (officially known as Tokyo International Exhibition Center) – several companies plan to show off some of the new tech at a co-event called Fish Next Technology EXPO. Exhibitors will feature labor-saving technology for fishing boats, technology to achieve high-quality production, big data conversion, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), information and communication technology (ICT), and robots.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Japan revokes Russia’s “most-favored nation” status

March 22, 2022 — Japan will follow America’s lead by revoking Russia’s most-favored-nation (MFN) status, resulting in higher prices to Japanese consumers for most imports from the country.

MFN status allows a country to receive the best trade terms given by its trading partner, such as the lowest tariffs or highest import quota, ensuring all countries with the status are treated equally. By revoking the status, Japan will subject imports from Russia to higher tariffs.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

USDA trade officer in Japan sees opportunity for US seafood exports

January 28, 2022 — The Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintains Agricultural Trade Offices (ATOs) in U.S. embassies and many consulates. The ATOs provide market information and help to coordinate promotions for U.S. exporters. SeafoodSource talked with the new director of the ATO in Osaka, Japan, Alexander Blamberg. Before taking up the post in August 2021, he was agricultural attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, where he focused on trade policy, working to expand exports of U.S. livestock, dairy, and poultry products to Japan.

SeafoodSource: What are your priorities coming into the post? Are there any new initiatives that you intend to try?

Blamberg: Japan is a highly developed market. It’s the fourth-largest market for U.S. agricultural exports overall, and it’s the third-largest market for U.S. seafood products. Still, it’s a very dynamic and competitive market. One of the most significant changes to the market in the last few years has been Japan’s implementation of new trade agreements – the CPTTP [Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership], an agreement with the European Union, and of course, a bilateral agreement with the United States.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Tokyo Olympics’ sustainability legacy outweighs actual sales

September 8, 2021 — The Tokyo Paralympics wrapped up on 5 September, following the first-ever Olympic Games without spectators, and despite challenges related to COVID-19, the event was still a win for seafood sustainability – both the advocates and the organizations promoting it.

Exactly how much certified seafood was sold during the Olympics, and what percentage of that total was comprised of products certified as sustainable, will not be known until an external review of the procurement code and its operational performance is completed, which is expected by the end of 2021.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

EDF building bridges between US, Japanese fisheries managers

August 4, 2021 — A virtual climate and fisheries workshop hosted in July by the Environmental Defense Fund had the goal of building bridges between fisheries managers in Japan and the United States.

The seminar organized by the New York City, U.S.A.-based NGO brought together scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service and Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency to discuss current and future climate-related changes in fisheries, data gaps impeding optimal management practices, and opportunities for collaboration.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Elvers plentiful in Japan, harvest remains capped

June 28, 2021 — The return of glass eels to Japan improved this year, but a subcommittee of the Fisheries Policy Council meeting held in Tokyo approved maintaining the current cap on the number that can be stocked to aquaculture ponds in line with a regional resource management agreement.

The amount of elvers of the Japanese eel, anguilla japonica, collected in Japan had been in decline since the latter half of the 1950s, corresponding with channelization of rivers for flood control and filling of wetlands for reclamation.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

GAA Announces “Hybrid” GOAL Conference; In-Person Event Set to Take Place in Seattle This Fall

June 25, 2021 — The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) is continuing to adapt to the current circumstances with the coronavirus pandemic. The organization announced on Monday that this year’s GOAL Conference will be going “hybrid,” with virtual events beginning in April and an in-person event set to take place later this year in Seattle.

This is the first time that GAA will be taking the hybrid approach to their GOAL conference. The 2020 event was supposed to take place in Tokyo, Japan, but GAA ultimately decided to make the event virtual due to COVID-19. The 2021 conference was supposed to take place in Tokyo, but GAA decided to postpone the in-person event in Tokyo to 2022. Instead, GOAL attendees will be able to participate in a face-to-face meeting in Seattle this fall. A venue and dates have yet to be announced.

Read the full story at Seafood News

WTO DG fixes July ministerial meeting on over-fishing rules

May 11, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organization plans to host a ministerial meeting on July 15 where she hopes an agreement can be reached on cutting fisheries subsidies after 20 years of talks, a document showed on Monday.

Governments including major subsidisers China, the European Union and Japan spend billions of dollars a year to prop up their fishing fleets, contributing to over-fishing that is decimating wild stocks. The WTO was tasked by world leaders in 2015 with striking a deal to roll them back but missed a key deadline last year. read more

Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took charge of the global trade watchdog in March, has made fisheries a top priority and urged ministers in an invitation letter seen by Reuters “to find the common resolve and spirit of compromise that the WTO needs to bring these twenty-year-plus negotiations to a successful conclusion at this meeting”.

Intensive negotiations will continue in Geneva with the chair of the talks, Santiago Wills, expected to issue a fourth version of the draft agreement this week.

Read the full story at Reuters

Trial shows Calysta’s FeedKind can replace 30 percent of fishmeal in yellowtail feed

April 26, 2021 — A trial at Japan’s Kindai University has shown that Menlo Park, California-based Calysta Inc.’s FeedKind bacterial protein meal (BPM) can replace up to 30 percent of fishmeal protein – or up to 20 percent of total feed – in the diet of yellowtail without any impact on growth rate, digestibility, daily feeding rate, or feed efficiency.

The paper, “Methanotroph (Methylococcus capsulatus, Bath) bacteria meal as an alternative protein source for Japanese yellowtail, Seriola quinqueradiata,” written by a group of researchers led by Amal Biswas, was published in the journal Aquaculture. It details two trials – one of 1,500 yellowtail fish, and the second of 800 – analyzed over an eight-week period. In both cases, a control diet was used alongside increasing concentrations of FeedKind. Fish survivability was 100 percent across all tests, with no significant difference between the control diets and the 25 percent inclusion rate across both trial groups.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

A decade after Fukushima nuclear disaster, Alaska expands seafood monitoring

April 21, 2021 — State environmental regulators announced Monday they’re expanding radiation testing of commercially harvested Alaska seafood to include crab using a Gamma radiation detector at a state laboratory in Anchorage. That’s thanks to continued federal funding from the Food and Drug Administration.

A devastating earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan in 2011 killed tens of thousands and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant which released radioactive material into the air and ocean.

That led to global concern about the safety of Pacific seafood. Alaska began screening fish samples in 2014. It now routinely tests prime export products including Bristol Bay salmon and Bering Sea pollock to reassure consumers that Alaska seafood is safe.

“We have not detected any elevated levels that are deemed harmful for consumption or for the health of the animal,” Bob Gerlach told CoastAlaska.

He’s the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s chief veterinarian and runs Alaska’s seafood monitoring program. He says the agency is now finalizing plans to begin testing several species of crab to capture more of the complex marine food web.

Read the full story at KCAW