Saving Seafood

U.S. charity deploying fish to front lines of fight against Zika

VIRGINIA (March 17, 2016) –The Zika virus is spreading around the globe, becoming a major health crisis, and now one humanitarian organization is deploying mosquito-eating fish throughout Central America in an effort to stop the epidemic.

The virus has triggered outbreaks in recent months in 41 countries and is transmitted by mosquitos which thrive in pools of standing water. Normally, Zika causes fever and rashes and not much more, but there is a particularly alarming link between the virus and a rare neurological syndrome that can be fatal, Guillain-Barré, as well as an increase of babies born with abnormally small heads.

To combat the mosquitoes, Operation Blessing International, a Christian humanitarian organization based in Virginia, is deploying small gambusia or Sambo fish in cities and villages throughout El Salvador and Mexico. The fish feast on the larva of the Aedes aegypti mosquitos, which carries Zika, dengue and yellow fever.

Read the full story at Fox News Latino

In Mexico, Fish Poachers Push Endangered Porpoises to Brink

March 1, 2016 — In 2013, Song Shen Zhen, a 75-year-old resident of Calexico, California, was attempting to re-enter the United States from Mexico when border patrol noticed a strange lump beneath the floor mats of his Dodge Attitude. The plastic bags beneath the mats contained not cocaine, but another valuable product: 27 swim bladders from the totoaba, a critically endangered fish whose air bladders, a Chinese delicacy with alleged medicinal value, fetch up to $20,000 apiece. Agents tracked Zhen to his house, where they discovered a makeshift factory containing another 214 bladders. Altogether, Zhen’s contraband was worth an estimated $3.6 million.

The robust black market is grim news for totoaba — but it’s an even greater catastrophe for vaquita, a diminutive porpoise that dwells solely in the northernmost reaches of the Gulf of California, the narrow body of water that extends between the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico. Since 1997, around 80 percent of the world’s vaquitas have perished as bycatch, many in gill nets operated by illegal totoaba fishermen.

Today, fewer than 100 vaquitas remain, earning it the dubious title of world’s most endangered marine mammal. Scientists fear the porpoise could vanish by 2018. “The possible extinction of the vaquita is the most important issue facing the marine mammal community right now,” says Barbara Taylor, a conservation biologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

The vaquita — “little cow” in Spanish — is a creature of superlatives. Not only is it the most imperiled cetacean, it is also the smallest, at less than five feet long from snout to tail, and the most geographically restricted: Its entire range could fit four times within Los Angeles’ city limits. Prominent black patches ring its eyes and trace its lips, giving Phocoena sinus a charming, panda-like appearance. The porpoise, which typically travels in pairs or small groups and communicates using rapid clicks, is famously cryptic; conservationists recently went two years without documenting a single sighting. Some Mexican fishermen insist the vaquita is already extinct, photographic evidence notwithstanding.

Read the full story at Yale Environment 360

U.S. Determines that Mexico’s Measures to Reduce the Bycatch of Sea Turtles are Insufficient

August 19, 2015 — Mexico was identified for bycatch of a protected living marine resource (PLMR) in the 2013 Biennial Report to Congress. For a number of reasons, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) decided not to make a certification decision on the 2013 PLMR bycatch identification in the 2015 Biennial Report.

First, Mexico made meaningful progress late in 2014 to develop a draft regulatory program to address loggerhead sea turtle bycatch, which culminated in the December 5, 2014, publication of a proposal to establish a refuge area within the Gulf of Ulloa for the conservation of this species. Second, the Government of Mexico gave assurances that this program would be adopted by April 1, 2015. Although the 2015 Biennial Report stated an intention to issue the final certification determination in May 2015, this determination was delayed as NMFS did not receive the adopted regulatory program from Mexico until April 10, 2015. NMFS now issues the PLMR bycatch certification determination for Mexico in this Addendum to the 2015 Biennial Report to Congress.

For the reasons explained below, NMFS has determined that Mexico should receive a negative certification concerning its actions, to date, to address the issues raised in the 2013 bycatch identification. Basis for Mexico’s 2013 Identification for Bycatch of PLMRs. In 2012, Mexican fishing vessels in the gillnet fishery in Baja California Sur incidentally caught North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles, a PLMR shared with the United States. In October 2012, the Mexican Fisheries Research Institute published a report on bycatch reduction trials conducted earlier in 2012 in the gillnet fishery in Baja California Sur.

Read the full story at the Yucatan Times