Saving Seafood

Targeted Ocean Protection Could Offer 3x The Benefits

March 23, 2021 — The new paper is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood and provide a cheap, natural solution to address climate change, in addition to protecting embattled species and habitats.

As reported in Nature, researchers identified specific areas of the ocean that could provide multiple benefits if protected. Safeguarding these regions would protect nearly 80% of marine species, increase fishing catches by more than 8 million metric tons, and prevent the release of more than one billion tons of carbon dioxide by protecting the seafloor from bottom trawling, a widespread yet destructive fishing practice.

BLUEPRINT TO PROTECT NATURE

The study is also the first to quantify the potential release of CO2 into the ocean from trawling. It finds that trawling pumps hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the ocean every year.

“Ocean life has been declining worldwide because of overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change. Yet only 7% of the ocean is currently under some kind of protection,” says lead author Enric Sala, an explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society.

“In this study, we’ve pioneered a new way to identify the places that—if protected—will boost food production and safeguard marine life, all while reducing carbon emissions,” Sala says. “It’s clear that humanity and the economy will benefit from a healthier ocean. And we can realize those benefits quickly if countries work together to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.”

To identify the priority areas, researchers analyzed the world’s unprotected ocean waters, focusing on the degree to which they are threatened by human activities that can be reduced by marine protected areas (for example, overfishing and habitat destruction).

Read the full story at Futurity

Government subsidies serving to prop up destructive high-seas fishing: study

June 8, 2018 — Much of the fishing that takes place in international waters would be unprofitable without the billions of dollars in subsidies pumped in by governments to sustain the ecologically destructive industry, a recent study has found.

International waters, or the high seas, are not governed by any one international body or agency, and account for nearly two-thirds of the ocean’s surface. There is currently no comprehensive management structure in place to protect the marine life that relies on them.

Researchers poring over information for fishing in these zones in 2014, the most recent year for which complete datasets are available, concluded that 54 percent of high-seas fishing would be in the red if not for governments covering some of the industry’s costs.

In their study published June 6 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers noted that labor exploitation and underreported catches could also explain how some operators could afford to keep fishing in the high seas, where species like tuna are often overfished, and migratory sharks — 44 percent of which are threatened species — are often killed as bycatch.

“While our analysis is for a single year, the slight increase in high seas catch and revenue, coupled with the high and constant price of fuel between 2010-2014, suggest that our estimate of profits is likely to be representative of, or slightly higher than, the average state during the first half of this decade,” the researchers wrote.

Read the full story at Mongabay News

Report: Illegal Fishing Should be Major National Security Issue

November 17, 2017 — Illegal and unregulated fishing supports transnational crime, piracy, insurgency and terrorism and should be treated as a national security issue, a new report from the National Geographic Society and the Center for Strategic and International Studies says.

Although illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing provide pathways for a host of criminal activities, “it doesn’t have the consciousness of government imagination” not only in the United States but globally, John Hamre, CSIS chief executive officer said on Wednesday.

Active enforcement of exclusive economic zones and protected maritime areas is “largely the Wild West” in legal terms because one nation’s laws differ from another, said Gregory Poling, one of the report’s authors. Nations have not agreed-upon definitions of what is permitted even in protected maritime areas.

Transnational criminal networks become involved through the use of large fishing vessels staying at sea for a year or more, said Daniel Myers, of the National Geographic Pristine Seas project. In reality, “You have slave labor” working on these ships. Often a two-step “trans-shipping” system is used. In the first step, the smaller boats unload illegal catches onto a large mother ship. The mother ship, in turn, refuels and resupplies the smaller fishing vessels, allowing them to remain out from port for months and keep the crews working, often against their will.

Additionally, “you have illegal fishing boats used as cover for narco-trafficking,” Myers said. The stomachs of illegally-captured sharks or other fish are filled with cocaine. The results are profits from the illegal catch and the drug smuggling.

Read the full story at USNI News

Garden State Seafood Association lauded for conservation efforts by New York Aquarium and Urban Coast Institute

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – September 28, 2015 – The following was released by the Garden State Seafood Association: 

Ernie Panacek, President of the Garden State Seafood Association (GSSA), Richard B. Robins, Chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Jay Odell, Director of the Mid-Atlantic Marine Program at the Nature Conservancy will be recognized as Regional Champions of the Ocean for the roles their organizations played in the preservation of 38,000 square miles of ocean floor in the mid-Atlantic as habitat for native deep-water corals and other marine organisms.  The awards will be given on October 29 at the 11th annual Future of the Ocean Symposium at Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute. Also to be recognized as National Champions of the Ocean will be Dr. Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence, and Terry Garcia, National Geographic Society Chief Science and Exploration Officer.

This honor follows the recognition of GSSA’s Executive Director Greg DiDomenico and Council Chairman Robbins as Conservation Leaders by the New York Aquarium at their Sip of the Sea event on September 16th. This event was further recognition of the successful effort to protect coral in the offshore canyons of the Mid-Atlantic.

The habitat preservation resulted from an unprecedented cooperative effort between the fishing industry and the conservation community. Facilitated by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the protection preserves unique deep water environments, while allowing commercial fishermen to sustainably harvest the region’s abundant fish and shellfish. GSSA hopes this process will set a precedent for future cooperative efforts, avoiding the antagonistic confrontations of the past.

According to GSSA’s Ernie Panacek, “As is the nature of all successful compromises, the result didn’t give either side exactly what we wanted, but we all can, and will, live with it. With the Mid-Atlantic Council acting as referee, it’s our hope that we’ve opened the door to future cooperative efforts.”

“We demonstrated that two stakeholder groups; one committed to the preservation of our living marine resources and the other to balanced sustainable harvest, can work together to protect the resource, while preserving each side’s interests,” said GSSA Executive Director Greg DiDomenico.

Mid-Atlantic Council Chairman Richard Robins said “this historic action by the Council was made possible by the cooperation of a broad group of fishermen, advisors, coral researchers, conservation groups, Council members and staff.”

Unfortunately, this process stands in stark contrast to an ongoing campaign launched by the Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental groups. These groups have called upon the Obama Administration to circumnavigate the existing process and unilaterally declare a National Marine Monument in the Gulf of Maine surrounding Cashes Ledge.

The successful outcome in the mid-Atlantic region resulted from a good faith effort by concerned individuals and organizations, utilizing existing administrative mechanisms, to develop a “bottom-up” compromise solution. As it did in the mid-Atlantic, the existing ocean governance system will work in New England. All it takes is a good faith effort.

View a PDF of the release here 

 

AP: Proposal to Protect Offshore Sites Draws Support, Opposition

September 3, 2015 (AP) — Environmental advocates say the federal government should extend permanent protection to two underwater sites off the New England coast by making them national monuments.

Fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood said Wednesday it opposes more restrictions on the areas, already closed to fishing and monitored by federal regulators.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage wrote President Barack Obama last week saying he opposes the proposal, which he said would hurt the state’s economy.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

 

Conservation groups eye protection for Cashes Ledge

August 31, 2015 — National groups this week plan to call for sprawling areas in off Cape Ann, Cape Cod and Rhode Island to be declared the first “marine national monument” on the Eastern Seaboard.

A January 2009 presidential proclamation established three Pacific Marine National Monuments — the Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll, which is on the Samoan archipelago 2,500 miles south of Hawaii and is the southernmost point belonging to the United States.

Now the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and partners such as the National Geographic Society, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Natural Resources Defense Council are seeking protections for the Cashes Ledge Closed Area, about 80 miles due east of Gloucester in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts off Cape Cod — areas CLF describes as “deep sea treasures.”

A CLF official told the News Service on Monday that the Cashes Ledge area covers 530 square nautical miles in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts encompasses 4,117 square nautical miles, for a total of 4,647 square nautical miles of protected areas.

The designation, according to CLF press secretary Josh Block, “ensures that this area remains permanently protected from harmful commercial extraction, such as oil and gas drilling, commercial fishing and other resource exploration activities.”

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times