Saving Seafood

EU, Greenland ink new fisheries partnership agreement

January 11, 2021 — Negotiations have concluded for a new sustainable fisheries partnership agreement (SFPA) and protocol between the European Union and Greenland that will strengthen their cooperation in the fisheries sector for the next four years, with the possibility of a two-year extension.

According to the European Commission, the agreement is “a new important milestone” in the long-standing bilateral cooperation between the E.U. and Greenland on fisheries issues, and renews their commitment in promoting a sustainable use of marine resources.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Norway’s seafood exporters have near-record year despite COVID challenges

January 6, 2021 — Despite the ongoing challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Norwegian seafood exporters managed to have a near-record year of sales.

Norway exported 2.7 million metric tons (MT) of seafood products worth NOK 105.7 billion (USD 12.6 billion, EUR 10.2 billion) last year, the second-highest trade value ever achieved by the Scandinavian country, falling just 1 percent short of 2019’s record.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

In Scotland, the battle for scallops and the future of sustainable fisheries

January 4, 2021 — People enjoy scallops in Oban. “We can’t get enough of them to satisfy demand,” smiles Carol Watt, whose family business has been selling fish for more than a century in the port city of Argyll.

Watt explains how she likes to cook the mollusks: pan-fried and eaten with pancetta, Italian bacon, as a line of masked shoppers forms outside her tiny mustard-yellow shack.

Watt beams with excitement as she shows off a tray of shucked scallops, palm-sized, pale, fleshy slices with the fiery red roe still holding on, which some customers find too spicy, wearing an apron emblazoned with a species-rich school of fish.

In the past, scallops, often referred to simply as “clams” in Scotland, were never so common. In 1960, the Scottish ports landed just sixty tons of the species. There were 15,000 tons in 2019, down 2% from 2018 but still worth almost £ 36 million.

The boom, however, has sparked an often bitter conflict about how scallops, which grow on the seabed, are harvested between environmentalists and the fishing industry.

Some “scallops” are lifted from the sea sustainably by divers, who charge a premium for doing so.

Read the full story at Brinkwire

Norwegian Seafood Council, EAT team up for UN food summit

December 28, 2020 — The Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) and non-profit EAT have entered into a partnership to promote the increased consumption of sustainable seafood ahead of a United Nations summit on future food systems.

Oslo, Norway-based EAT describes itself as a science-based global platform for food system transformation. It was created through funding from the Stordalen Foundation, the Stockholm Resilience Center, and the Wellcome Trust.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

EU vows ‘final push’ in UK trade talks but fish rift threatens deal

December 22, 2020 — The European Union is making a “final push” to strike a Brexit trade deal with Britain, although there are still deep rifts over fishing rights, the bloc’s chief negotiator said on Tuesday.

Britain will complete its departure from the EU on Dec. 31 when its current free trade arrangements expire. The two sides have been struggling for months to define a new relationship covering everything from trade to transport and energy.

The much-delayed final stages of the already tortuous negotiations now coincide with a fresh crisis after EU members and other countries suspended most travel to and from Britain to curb a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus.

“We are really in a crucial moment. We are giving it a final push,” said the negotiator, Michel Barnier, as he arrived to update the bloc’s 27 national envoys on Brexit.

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said he believed negotiators were more likely than not to strike a deal, but that talks may go beyond Dec. 25.

Read the full story at Reuters

Atlantic, North Sea, Mediterranean, and Black Sea fishing opportunities agreed to for 2021

December 17, 2020 — Agreements on next year’s catch limits for more than 200 commercial fish stocks in the Atlantic, North Sea, Mediterranean, and the Black Sea have been reached by European Union fisheries ministers following two days of intense negotiation at the annual Agrifish Council meeting.

As more than 100 of the stocks in the Atlantic and North Sea have historically been co-managed with the United Kingdom, and given the ongoing E.U.-U.K. negotiations on their future relationship, ministers agreed to set provisional quotas for the fish stocks shared with Britain.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Layers of regulations to protect European seas ‘not working,’ audit finds

December 2, 2020 — Europe is failing to protect its oceans, despite having policies in place to safeguard its marine environment, according to a report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) on Nov. 26.

The ECA, an independent institution within the European Union (EU), looked at marine protection efforts between 2018 and 2020 to see if existing policies within the EU framework were addressing key pressures on marine biodiversity and habitats. What the report ultimately found was that the EU had not taken sufficient action to restore its ailing seas, or to keep fishing at sustainable levels, especially in the Mediterranean.

“It’s pretty grim,” a member of the audit team told Mongabay in an interview. “Europe does have a framework in place, but what is there isn’t working.”

There is an intricate web of rules, laws and directives to manage the EU’s marine environment, including the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), designed to regulate fishing fleets and conserve fish stocks; the Birds and Habitats Directives (BHDs), which aim to protect threatened species and habitats through a network of protected areas; and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) that provides an overarching marine policy meant to integrate fishing and environmental regulations. While these policies appear adequate, they’re not being put into practice, according to the report.

“It all looks great on paper,” the auditor said. “It all looks very sensible, but the reality is that when you try to apply [them] there are gaps.”

In some instances, policies even seem to be at odds with each other. For example, many EU member states have established marine protected areas (MPAs) in their territorial waters as per the conservation commitments set out in the MSFD and the BHDs, which allows them to impose fishing restrictions on vessels owned and operated by their own citizens. However, the CFP gives EU member states the right to fish in other member states’ waters, even within other countries’ MPAs. To ban other EU members from fishing within these MPAs, nations would need to engage in multilateral discussions under the CFP, a process that could take many years.

Read the full story at Mongabay

MSC certificates to be suspended for all Atlanto-Scandian herring and blue whiting fisheries

December 1, 2020 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

The independent assesssors responsible for certifying fisheries to the MSC Fishery Standard have today annouced that Atlanto-Scandian herring and blue whiting fisheries will be suspended from the program on 30 December 2020.

The suspension affects eight certificates covering fisheries from the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Russia, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and most recently the United Kingdom, which claimed independent Coastal State status in 2020.

Atlanto-Scandian herring and blue whiting caught on or after 30 December 2020 cannot be sold as ‘MSC certified’ or bear the blue MSC label.

The Atlanto-Scandian herring fisheries that will be suspended land between 600,000 to 700,000 tonnes per year, which is around 50% of the total MSC-certified herring catches landed annually. MSC labelled herring is sold to consumers via supermarkets and fishmongers throughout Europe.

The landings of the soon to be suspended blue whiting fisheries are predominantly used to produce fishmeal for farmed salmon, a small quantity is sold as surimi to consumers in Japan, Australia and France.

Lack of an international quota sharing agreement

The reason for the fisheries´ suspension is the lack of an international agreement on how to manage catch levels between different nations. The absence of an effective stock management – in particular, a quota sharing agreement between the involved nations in line with scientific advice – has led to the combined catch exceeding the recommended catch levels for a number of years.

In 2019, Atlanto-Scandian herring fisheries collectively caught 32% more than the scientific advice for the year. Following the catch quotas announced by the individual states, the same will happen in 2020 [1].

The annual meeting of the Northeast Atlantic Coastal States held in October 2020 did not reach a solution to this stock management problem.

The MSC’s Northern Europe Director, Erin Priddle, said:

“We urge nations to commit to a quota-sharing agreement in line with the scientific advice. Only through effective stock management can we ensure the health of the herring and blue whiting stocks in the short, medium and long term. While individual fisheries often make great efforts to improve their sustainability, ultimately, they cannot do it alone. Migratory species like Atlanto-Scandian Herring do not observe national boundaries, so we need international agreements to manage whole ecosystems in an adaptive, scientific way, rather than managing fish resources based on national interest.”

No sustainability without effective stock management

The MSC is focused on securing and maintaining the long-term health of fish stocks. Avoiding the boom-bust cycle of overfishing and recovery is a fundamental principle of the MSC’s Standard for sustainable fishing. This is even more important in the context of climate change which is already impacting on the productivity and distribution of fish stocks [2].

Independent assessors identified that the absence of a quota-sharing system could threaten the health of the stock and set a condition that nations must reach an agreement by 2020 for continued MSC certification. This was stipulated in 2015, giving fisheries a five-year time frame to work towards. Due to a lack of progress on this condition, the fisheries are now having their MSC certificates suspended.

For the same reason MSC certified mackerel fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic were suspended in 2019 and have not yet been reinstated due to ongoing concern about how catch is managed in response to scientific data on stock levels and inability to agree a quota share arrangement between the relevant fishing states.

Fisheries facing suspension from MSC certification

Atlanto-Scandian herring: 

Blue whiting:

A dead right whale calf found on North Carolina shore bodes ill for species birth rate, according to experts

November 25, 2020 — Scientists with National Marine Fisheries Service found a North Atlantic right whale calf dead on Friday, Nov. 20, at Cape Lookout National Park in North Carolina, boding ill for the birth rate of a critically endangered species.

The newborn likely died during birth or very soon after, according to a government report issued Monday.

The species’ birth and death rates are under extended scrutiny with an overall population decline to under 400 animals, with a possible threat of extinction.

Right whales visit Cape Cod Bay in the late winter and early spring as part of their annual migratory pattern along the Atlantic coastline from Florida to Canada. The calving season for the whales takes place in the winter off Florida and Georgia.

Read the full story at Wicked Local