Saving Seafood

Inside the secret, million-dollar world of baby eel trafficking

June 26, 2019 — In the parking lot of an Irving gas station in Aulac, N.B., not far from the Nova Scotia border, Curtis Kiley popped the trunk of a Toyota Corolla.

Inside was a white bucket containing what looked like a giant hairball, the type that might be pulled from a bathtub drain.

Except it was alive — a wriggling, slithering mess.

This was just an initial sample Kiley had brought to show a prospective black-market buyer, a woman he knew only through text message as “Danielle.”

He was ultimately hoping to unload up to 300 kilograms of the tiny creatures, a huge haul worth $1.3 million on the open market, but one he was offering at a steep discount.

Moments later, Kiley’s world turned from dollar signs to handcuffs. He’d been nabbed in a federal fisheries sting, one targeting poaching in a little-known but enormously lucrative industry that plays out each spring in Nova Scotia’s rivers and brooks.

At the centre of the undercover operation by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in May 2018 was the most unlikely of creatures — baby eels.

Read the full story at CBC News

How ocean mapping changed the way a seafood giant fishes

June 5, 2019 — North America’s largest shellfish company showcased some of its advanced ocean-mapping technology Tuesday at an Oceans Week conference in Dartmouth, N.S., illustrating how it is making the industry more efficient and sustainable.

Geographic information systems, or GIS, has transformed the way Clearwater Seafoods fishes, said Jim Mosher, the company’s director of harvest science.

Ocean mapping reduced the fuel bill in its offshore lobster fishery by shaving nearly 10,000 kilometres a year in vessel transiting, or movement in the fishing ground, he said.

In the scallop fishery, this technology reveals areas that should be closed because scallops are too young to harvest.

Read the full story at CBC

McDonald’s rolls out Canada-wide product featuring MSC-certified haddock

May 14, 2019 — After a successful pilot in Atlantic Canada last summer, McDonald’s Canada is rolling out a new Fish & Chips meal at its restaurants throughout the country.

The fish used in the meals is Marine Stewardship Council-certified haddock, supplied by High Liner Foods in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada. McDonald’s restaurants expect to use around 260,000 pounds of Atlantic haddock for the Fish & Chips during the limited-time offer, McDonald’s Canada said in a press release.

The haddock is caught off of Nova Scotia and packed in Atlantic Canada.

The new limited-time meal includes two pieces of fish coated with a crunchy batter and served with French fries and tartar dipping sauce.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Clearwater changes lobster fishing practices, asks for early MSC audit

February 25, 2019 –Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based Clearwater Seafoods has changed its controversial lobster fishing practices, which resulted in a fine from the Canadian government and a downgrade in the Ocean Wise recommendation for its lobster fishery.

Clearwater, via CS ManPar, was convicted of repeatedly storing 3,800 lobster traps on the ocean floor more than the limit of 72 hours. The offenses took place in Lobster Fishing Area 41, which is a unique territory exclusively licensed to Clearwater. Area 41 runs 80 kilometers from the shore out to the 200-mile limit from Georges Bank to the Laurentian Channel.  Clearwater paid a CAD 30,000 (USD 22,770, EUR 20,075) fine in relation to its guilty plea.

On 15 February, the CBC reported the fishery was downgraded in the recommendations made by Ocean Wise for sustainable fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

A deadly year in Canadian commercial fisheries

November 6, 2018 — The deadliest year in over a decade for commercial fishermen has the Transportation Safety Board of Canada sounding the alarm over what it calls the industry’s “disturbing safety record.”

So far in 2018, 17 people have died aboard fishing vessels, the most since 2004.

Those deaths were largely the result of crew members not wearing personal flotation devices or deploying safety signals, the board said Monday as it released its annual Watchlist.

“The industry’s safety culture still has a long way to go before its members stop accepting more risk than is necessary,” the board’s chair, Kathy Fox, told a news conference in Gatineau, Quebec.

In addition to fishing safety, the independent agency’s yearly report also calls attention to railway sign safety and runway safety at Canadian airports.

While safety measures have been recommended and implemented over the years in commercial fisheries, the board said it’s disappointed with the lack of results.

The number of fishing vessel deaths continues to fluctuate year to year. For example, there were 17 deaths in 2004, eight in 2016, three in 2017 and 17 again so far this year.

Read the full story at CBC News

NOAA Memorandum on Whales Lays Basis for Much Stricter Regulation of Trap Fisheries

September 28, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A recent technical memorandum from NOAA on right whale recovery in 2018 could push the agency to require new limits on trap fishing technology.

In short, the memorandum says that the measures adopted to reduce the number of rope lines in the water have backfired.

Although the number of lines to individual buoys have been reduced, the remaining trawl strings have more traps and stronger rope.

The result is that whales are suffering more for entanglements than they were before the new rules were introduced.

The memorandum says that “stronger rope contributed to an increase in the severity of entanglements.”

“Knowlton et al.(2012) showed that nearly 85% of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once, 59% at least twice, and 26% of the regularly seen animals are entangled annually. These findings represent a continued increase in the percentage of whales encountering and entangling in gear, which grew from to 61.5% in 1995 (Hamilton et al. 1998), to 75.6% in 2002.”

“Rough estimates are that approximately 622,000 vertical lines are deployed from fishing gear in U.S. waters from Georgia to the Gulf of Maine. Notably until spring of 2018, very few protections for right whales were in place in Canadian waters. In comparison to recent decades, more right whales now spend significantly more time in more northern waters and swim through extensive pot fishery zones around Nova Scotia and into the Canadian Gulf of St. Lawrence (Daoust et al. 2018).

Taken together, these fisheries exceed an estimated 1 million vertical lines (100,000 km) deployed throughout right whale migratory routes, calving, and foraging areas.”

“Each vertical line out there has some potential to cause an entanglement. With a 26% annual entanglement rate in a population of just over 400 animals, this translates to about 100 entanglements per year.”

The problem is that sub-lethal entanglements can impact the reproductive success of the population.

“While serious injuries represent 1.2% of all entanglements, there are often sublethal costs to less severe entanglements. Should an entanglement occur but the female somehow disentangles and recovers, it still has the potential to reset the clock for this “capital” breeder. She now has to spend several years acquiring sufficient resources to get pregnant and carry a calf to term, the probability of a subsequent entanglement is fairly high, and this will create a negative feedback loop over time, where the interval between calving becomes longer. This is certainly a contributing factor in the longer calving interval for females, which has now grown from 4 to 10 years.

The implication of this technical report is that substantial reductions in entanglements will be necessary if the long term decline in the population is to be reversed, and under the endangered species act, NOAA will be required to evaluate any actions that increase harm or fail to mitigate harm to the right whale population.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

 

Unprecedented experiment with Canadian military provides new insights on right whales

September 27, 2018 — North Atlantic right whales began making headlines the summer of 2017 when a record number of the whales died after getting tangled in fishing gear or hit by ships.

Before the die-off and since, Dalhousie researchers have collaborated with a number of partners in Canada and the United States to gain as much insight as possible on the endangered species. After a significant number of the whales began deserting other habitats off the coast of Nova Scotia in favour of a location in the southern region of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, experts recognized the lack of scientific evidence required to best inform marine management measures in this newly identified habitat.

That’s why members of the Whale Habitat and Listening Experiment (WHaLE) team in Dalhousie’s Department of Oceanography have been working tirelessly to fill the knowledge gap. In one experiment this past summer, they helped bring together a number of federal agencies in an effort to collect the most multi-faceted dataset on the North Atlantic right whales yet.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

New Canadian marine protected areas not totally closed to fishing

April 5, 2018 — Canada’s government has initiated the designation process for three new marine conversation areas, according to a March announcement. This proposed action is part of a commitment to put 10 percent of Canadian marine and coastal areas under protected status by 2020.

The new areas of interest are the 2,000-square-kilometers encompassing the Eastern Shore Islands, a 7,100-square-kilometer portion of the Fundian Channel-Browns Bank, and the 36,000-square-kilometer Eastern Canyons section off Sable Island, all located off the coast of Nova Scotia.

According to Stephen Bornais, a communications advisor with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the protected status doesn’t mean that each marine protected area (MPA) is totally off-limits to fishing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

The Sea Is a Terrifying Place to Work

November 13, 2017 — Fishing remains one of the most dangerous jobs in Canada. We talked to captains about their most hazardous experiences.

In 2017, fishing remains one of most—if not the most—dangerous jobs in Canada. Between 1999 and August of 2015, 55 people died on Canadian fishing vessels simply because they fell overboard, according to the Transportation Safety Board. Overall, more than 200 fishermen have died in Canada since 1999. A recent Globe and Mail investigation showed that fishing vessel deckhands have a higher workplace fatality rate than roofers, farmers, pilots, and—by a wide margin—cops. In all, fishing has the highest fatality rate of any sector in Canada. Storms, equipment failures, and even stingrays are among the many hazards fishermen face. Then there’s the everyday work, including setting longlines with hundreds of sharp hooks, hauling heavy lobster traps, and gutting swordfish, sharks, and tuna. Yet for many fishermen, the potential pay outweighs the hazards. Statistics Canada says the average pay for a fisherman is about $1,000 a week. But fishermen will tell you that a crew member working year-round for a skilled captain can make $75,000 to $120,000—serious money in many of the economically depressed fishing towns on the East Coast of Canada. Even six months on a lobster boat can net a deckhand $50,000 to $90,000 depending on market prices. Fishing is a rarity in that you can make six figures without a high school diploma. Others simply love the thrill of fishing, or see it as their only job option. Regardless of what pulls a fisherman to sea, hazards are always lurking, so we talked to three East Coast captains about their most harrowing experiences at sea.

Richard Gillett has lost three fishing boats. Two sunk—one was a “total destructive loss.” The first sinking was the most harrowing, the 46-year-old says in an interview by phone, while mackerel fishing off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Gillett was 25 and aboard his 34-footer, Sea Breeze, with a crew of three. The men were off the coast of Labrador, Canada, with a load of seals aboard, caught in a fierce storm: hurricane-force winds of 80 miles per hour and 45-foot waves. Plus, chunks of ice—some as large as buildings and half city blocks—surrounded the boat. “We figured we could ride it out on the sheets of ice,” he recalls. “Unfortunately we couldn’t.”

Read the full story at VICE

 

Trump’s Trade Policy Is Lifting Exports. Of Canadian Lobster.

November 12, 2017 — CENTREVILLE, Nova Scotia — This lobster factory on a windswept bay in eastern Canada is so remote that its workers have to drive for miles just to get cellphone service. But Gidney Fisheries is truly global, with its lobsters landing on plates in Paris and Shanghai through trade agreements hammered out in far-off capitals.

Of late, these trade pacts have been shifting in the factory’s favor, giving it an advantage over its American competitors.

A new trade agreement between Canada and the European Union has slashed tariffs on imports of Canadian lobsters. That means more 747s filled with Christmas-red crustaceans will depart from Nova Scotia for European markets this winter — and more revenue will flow to Gidney Fisheries. The factory, which in the 1800s sent its lobsters to Boston by steamship, is flush with potential as it gains access to new markets and plans to increase its work force by roughly 50 percent, adding dozens of positions to its current payroll of around 85 workers.

“For us, free trade is a good thing,” said Robert MacDonald, the president of Gidney Fisheries, which processes 10,000 to 15,000 lobsters a day.

The Trump administration has adopted a skeptical view of trade deals, promising to scrap or renegotiate global agreements that it believes put American companies and workers at a disadvantage. Among them is the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the United States is trying to renegotiate. It will join its partners in the agreement, Canada and Mexico, for a fifth round of talks in Mexico City that officially begin on Friday.

Some trade experts, though, say America’s get-tough approach is dissuading foreign partners from jumping into talks. Other countries, like Canada, are forging ahead with their own trade deals as they balk at the tough terms the United States is demanding in its trade negotiations. Over the weekend, a group of 11 countries including Canada announced that they were committed to moving ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping multinational trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration.

Read the full story at the New York Times