Saving Seafood

How the digital wave is contributing to the rise of sustainable fisheries

November 12, 2020 — World fish consumption has almost doubled between the 1960s and now, and some estimates suggest fish contributes to at least 50 percent of total animal protein intake in developing nations. Despite higher demand for seafood and fish, world reserves have not kept up, and aquaculture is becoming more common as a result.

Aquaculture uses techniques of breeding marine species in all types of water environments as a means to supplement seafood demand. The practice comes with many advantages, including reducing the dependence on wild-caught species, but also raises environmental concerns, which some industry experts are trying to address with up-and-coming technologies such as analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence and the internet of things.

Jennifer Kemmerly, vice president of global ocean initiatives at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said a focus on sustainability is necessary in the field, as 3 billion people rely on seafood, and 60 million people rely on the seafood industry for their livelihood. But this demand comes with noticeable problems, Kemmerly observed during a breakout session during VERGE 20 in late October.

“There’s a lot of overfishing, or depleted fish stocks on the wild side of capture fisheries. There is illegality and mismanagement traceability back to the source of where the seafood is coming from, even whether it is farmed or wild… There are environmental issues and concerns that need to be dealt with,” she said.

Read the full story at GreenBiz

Science Center for Marine Fisheries Welcomes Atlantic Red Crab Company as Newest Member

November 5, 2020 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) is pleased to announce that the Atlantic Red Crab Company has become the latest company to join the Center’s Industry Advisory Board. With this new addition to our growing list of industry partners, the Center is ready to continue its record of collaborative fisheries research.

For the past 7 years, SCEMFIS has brought together leading academic researchers and members of the fishing industry to identify the most pressing needs in marine science research. With the support of its industry partners, SCEMFIS scientists have published innovate studies providing new understanding of finfsh and shellfish. In 2020 alone, the Center funded $191,000 in new research projects addressing these priorities.

“The Atlantic Red Crab Company has been involved in cooperative science for years, and sees this opportunity to join SCEMFIS as a way to leverage resources and gain a broader scientific perspective,” says Jon Williams, owner of the Atlantic Red Crab Company.

Based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the Atlantic Red Crab Company harvests red crab in the waters of the Northeast U.S. The red crab fishery is sustainably managed, and red crab is listed as a “good alternative” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.

“The Atlantic Red Crab Company is a great new addition to SCEMFIS,” said Greg DiDomenico, the Chair of SCEMFIS. “Their commitment to sustainability and collaborative research closely aligns with the Center’s mission.”

SCEMFIS, established in 2013, is one of the centers in the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program, which facilitates collaborative research between academia and industry. This year, SCEMFIS researchers have published studies on the economic impact of the squid and summer flounder fisheries; how the federal government did not properly consider the impact offshore wind development has on fisheries; the current state of the Atlantic menhaden stock; and ways to improve the management of gray seals and the fisheries that interact with them.

About SCEMFIS

SCEMFIS utilizes academic and fisheries resources to address urgent scientific problems limiting sustainable fisheries. SCEMFIS develops methods, analytical and survey tools, datasets, and analytical approaches to improve sustainability of fisheries and reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates. SCEMFIS university partners, University of Southern Mississippi (lead institution), and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, are the academic sites. Collaborating scientists who provide specific expertise in finfish, shellfish, and marine mammal research, come from a wide range of academic institutions including Old Dominion University, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, University of Maryland, and University of Rhode Island.

The need for the diverse services that SCEMFIS can provide to industry continues to grow, which has prompted a steady increase in the number of fishing industry partners. These services include immediate access to science expertise for stock assessment issues, rapid response to research priorities, and representation on stock assessment working groups. Targeted research leads to improvements in data collection, survey design, analytical tools, assessment models, and other needs to reduce uncertainty in stock status and improve reference point goals.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program reduces staff

April 27, 2020 — The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program has “substantially” reduced its workforce through furloughs and layoffs, according to a 27 April press release from the aquarium.

The Seafood Watch program maintains a set of standards by which it ranks the environmental sustainability of the world’s fisheries. It also produces a consumer guide in which it ranks fisheries via a three-tiered system: Green, or “Best Choice” seafood, which has minimal adverse impacts on the environment; Yellow, or “Good Alternative” seafood, which are good options when “Best Choices” aren’t available; and Red, or seafood to “Avoid,” meaning the seafood is not sourced using environmentally responsible means.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Environmental groups urge Americans to eat more fish while hunkering down against virus

March 23, 2020 — Environmental groups have long fought for animal rights, rallied against pollution and pushed back on overfishing, but a new message this week urged the nation to eat more seafood as it hunkers down during the coronavirus pandemic.

Specifically, many are asking you to please buy American-caught seafood.

“Over the past 20 years, American fisheries have become some of the best managed and most sustainable in the world thanks to policy reforms and the hard work of fishermen,” said Eric Schwaab, senior vice president for the Environmental Defense Fund’s oceans program. “But now fishermen need our help. By incorporating more seafood into our diets, we can support fishermen and coastal communities that depend on seafood harvesting as a way of life.”

The global spread of COVID-19 has triggered widespread economic chaos, and American fisheries are suffering due to restaurant closures and the collapse of export markets, advocates say.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

‘Environmental DNA’ Lets Scientists Probe Underwater Life

February 24, 2020 — Tracking down marine life isn’t easy. Ocean scientists drag nets through the water to find the fish or plankton they are looking for, tag whales with harpoon-like devices, or scuba dive with an erase-proof whiteboard and hand counter to tally reef fish. That’s how you count creatures underwater. But an emerging technology called environmental DNA, or eDNA, is easing this time-consuming and expensive process for scientists by allowing them to grab water samples and check for DNA.

Each drop of seawater contains thousands of microorganisms, as well as bits of skin, mucus, and waste shed by passing fish and mammals. Using a robotic laboratory mounted on an underwater drone that filters and sequences the DNA that it finds, scientists and engineers can now identify marine life without coming back to shore. “You don’t need a big ship to collect your samples,” says Chris Scholin, executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which is developing this new technology along with several other research groups across the US. “This has become portable and small enough to operate in real time on an autonomous underwater vehicle.”

Sampling remotely means that scientists might not have to go to sea in stormy weather to collect data, and can allow them to sample over a long period of time, instead of collecting information during a three- or four-week cruise. It also doesn’t require them to harvest the fish. Robotic vehicles recently traced the DNA of great white sharks congregating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, tracked tropical fish along the Jersey Shore as they headed north to escape climate change, and found farm-raised fish genes while screening samples from New York Harbor.

This new technology is driven by the marriage of a device the size of a thumb drive called an Oxford Nanopore Minion sequencer to another recent invention, ocean-going autonomous vehicles (AUVs) that no longer take commands from ship or shore. These devices can follow environmental signals, such as temperature, salinity or the optical properties of plankton, just like a hound sniffing out an escaped convict’s trail. (Researchers use sonar to find plankton, the way an angler would use a fish finder.)

Read the full story at Wired

SFP unveils joint global seafood data project

November 18, 2019 — The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership:

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), together with four other NGOs, is pleased to announce that a new data tool for measuring seafood sustainability worldwide is now online and available for public use.

The Sustainable Seafood Data Tool is designed to offer users a clearer picture of environmental and social performance for global seafood production, along with a more detailed look at eight priority seafood sectors.

The Seafood Certification & Ratings Collaboration, a collective group of five NGOs—The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program, SFP, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship Council, and Fair Trade USA, worked together to produce the tool, which includes sustainability-related data from all five NGOs.

Information available through the tool includes rating and certification status where applicable, whether a fishery or seafood farm is improving through a targeted project, and whether or not sustainability improvements are needed in a specific fishery or seafood farm. Users can filter the data by wild or farmed, region, or country.

“SFP is working to ensure that by 2020 at least 75 percent of global production in key seafood sectors is sustainable or moving toward sustainability,” said Braddock Spear, SFP Systems Division director. “The collaboration is critical for this goal, because it harmonizes improvement advice for specific fisheries and aquaculture sources and aligns efforts to engage the industry from key and emerging markets in driving improvements.”

Certifying collective releases new tool looking at seafood’s environmental, social performance

October 24, 2019 — The Certifications and Ratings Collaboration, a collective of leading global seafood certification and ratings programs, recently released its Sustainable Seafood Data Tool this month. An online resource, the new tool offers a first-of-its-kind interactive overview of the environmental and social performance of worldwide seafood production, the collaboration said in a press release.

The analysis offered in the Sustainable Seafood Data Tool gives an overarching view of all global production and also drills down to give snapshots of wild and farmed seafood production. Each of the tool’s overviews provides details of the proportion of seafood production that has been certified or rated as meeting a high level of environmental performance; whether the area in question is improving through fishery or aquaculture improvement projects; if it needs improvement; or if its status is unknown.

The data within the resource can be filtered, the collaboration said, a capability that allows users to display similar overviews for particular regions or countries. Additionally, tool also allows for the combination of geographic filters with filters for wild capture, farmed, or both.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Lobster distributor Maine Coast receives “Excellent” score under SQF’s Food Safety Code

September 17, 2019 — York, Maine-based company Maine Coast has achieved certification under Safe Quality Food’s (SQF) Food Safety Code for Manufacturing, the North Atlantic lobster distributor announced on 17 September.

The company, which is known for its Lively Lobster, achieved a score of 97 and an “Excellent” status under SQF’s criteria, it confirmed in a press release. Maine Coast sources its lobster from Maine and Canadian fisheries that are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and recognized as producing “Good Alternative” catch by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

13 Environmental NGO’s Call For 100% Observer Coverage on Industrial Tuna Fishing Vessels

June 27, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A total of 13 environmental NGO’s – including Fishwise, International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), Monterey Bay Aquarium, PEW Charitable Trusts and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership – are joining forces to request that Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMO) that regulate tuna fishing in the Indian, Pacific, Atlantic and Southern Oceans, require observer coverage on all industrial tuna fishing vessels.

According to these NGOs, many tuna fisheries lack independent monitoring of fishing activity. This means that illegal fishing, misreported or unreported catch, as well as bycatch of endangered, threatened and protected species, goes unseen. However, RFMOs could change that by requiring that these tuna fisheries have 100% observer coverage – whether it be human or electric.

“100% observer coverage can and must happen soon,” reads a press release from the organizations. “There are no longer credible reasons to delay. We are committed to working together to make 100% observer coverage a reality.”

As part of their effort, the NGOs are seeking support from fisheries organizations, conservation organizations, and foundations. Consumers can also join the fight by signing a petition posted on The Action Network.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

No longer enemies: Industry embracing partnerships with NGOs

April 15, 2019 — There was a time when many in the seafood industry openly disliked the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And not long ago, the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program didn’t think very highly of much commercially-produced seafood, such as the equivalent of the industry’s bread and butter – farmed salmon. As recently as 2013, Seafood Watch advised its millions of sustainability-conscious adherents to avoid farmed salmon altogether.

But a month ago, at the 2019 Seafood Expo North America event, Jennifer Kemmerly, Monterey Bay Aquarium’s director of global fisheries and aquaculture, stood on stage at a special assembly hosted by the Chilean Salmon Marketing Council and declared that previous era of combativeness to be over.

“There is no ‘us-versus-them’ mentality anymore,” she said. “There’s no time or room for that. The only way to get the job done is to work together.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source