Saving Seafood

Something’s ‘Fishy’ On The Blockchain, But Can This Tech Reduce Seafood Fraud?

August 6, 2018 –Whitebait or halibut? Now, are you sure that the expensive “Wild-caught” Atlantic salmon you had for dinner last night was in fact the gourmet fish you thought it was? Or, was it just a cheaper farm-grown salmon – or perhaps not even salmon at all? This is not the shipping news, but you’ll get the picture pretty soon.

Moreover, can you be 100% sure the tasty white tuna sushi your local sushi bar serves is actually made from tuna – and not from escolar – also known as oil fish?

What is the big deal, you might ask. Well, escolar is quite notorious for its delicious, cheap and oily meat. Meat that causes intense stomach problems, in other words, nasty uncontrollable diarrhoea.

Now, how likely is it for a sushi restaurant to serve its hungry customers fish with such severe side effects? Or for that matter how common is fraud in general in the seafood industry? The whole scene will probably surprise the average person, if they have not already delved into some research about the topic. So, let us get down to the nub of it.

From 2010 to 2012, Oceana, one of the largest organizations focusing on studying oceans founded by a group of leading foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, conducted a study exploring fraud in the seafood industry. According to the research as much as one-third of seafood products in the United States (U.S.) were mislabelled. Shocked?

Read the full story at Forbes

All shell, no shock: Lobster prices strong as season picks up

July 23, 2018 — New England’s lobster industry faces big new challenges in selling to Europe and China, but the trouble hasn’t caused prices to budge much for American consumers.

The business is in the midst of its busiest part of the year, when tourists flock to coastal states with a beachside lobster dinner in mind. Summer is also when prices tend to fall a bit because it’s when the majority of lobsters are caught.

But the prices haven’t fallen much. Retailers are selling live lobsters in the $7 to $12 per pound range in Maine, where the American lobster industry is based. That’s not too far behind recent summers.

“It’s starting to pick up, so of course the price is dropping. But that’s pretty normal,” said William Adler, a lobsterman out of Green Harbor, Massachusetts. “Now it’s starting to come alive, and prices are still good right now.”

Members of the industry are concerned about heavy new tariffs applied by China to U.S. seafood this month, because that country is a major lobster buyer. Canada also recently brokered a deal with the European Union to remove tariffs on Canadian lobster exports to Europe, while the U.S. has no such agreement.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

Oceana report claims Italy ignoring IUU

July 13, 2018 — Oceana released a report on 12 July that suggests multiple European governments, particularly Italy, are turning a blind eye to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Mediterranean Sea.

The report, which used data from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) tracking from Global Fishing Watch (GFW), found suspected cases of bottom trawlers operating in Fisheries Restricted Areas (FRA) and foreign vessels active in waters that potentially qualify as IUU. The biggest offender, Italy, was found to have more than 10,000 hours of illegal fishing activity from Italian-flagged bottom trawler-equipped vessels in the FRA established in the Strait of Sicily.

The area in the Strait of Sicily is designed to protect young hake populations where the stock is already overfished. Trawling in the area is prohibited.

The IUU vessels were discovered using GFW’s fishing detection algorithms. According to Oceana, the actual amount of IUU may be even higher, as some vessels could have either “lacked AIS equipment or have turned off AIS broadcasting.”

The findings were discussed at two governmental meetings of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean. According to Oceana, the countries “failed to provide clarification on whether any vessel has been fined or if any punishable action will be taken” during that meeting.

“While Mediterranean governments and their leaders are committing globally to fight pirate fishing under the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the very same governments are turning a blind eye to potential cases in their own Mediterranean Sea,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana Europe. “Information gathered by Oceana indicates that fishing vessels that can easily be identified are blatantly violating the law in fisheries-restricted areas. They’re doing nothing to uphold the law.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Dead & Company Raise More Than $1 Million at Backyard Benefit For Oceana

July 10, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story originally published in Billboard, covering a charity concert hosted by Dead & Company, a collaborative effort between remaining Grateful Dead members and John Mayer.

On Saturday night (July 7), Dead & Company played to 30,000 fans at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. Less than 24 hours later, they played to 200 equally passionate fans at a backyard benefit Sunday night (July 8) high in the Hollywood Hills for Oceana, an environmental organization dedicated to preserving the world’s oceans.

“Going from a stadium to a house party is a very interesting dynamic, but the point is a musician is privileged to be a musician and musicians should give back that privilege,” said drummer Mickey Hart immediately after Dead & Co.’s 65-minute show. “In general, you gotta defend the treasures. One of them is the oceans and you have to defend it however you can. You have to fight the evil that’s in the White House now with everything you have. So any night I can raise a million dollars is a good night.”

To be more precise, the evening, dubbed “Rock Under the Stars,” raised more than $1.1 million and drew more than 120 Deadheads from all over the world, who paid $5,000 each to see the former members of the Grateful Dead play their smallest gig in decades, as well as actors Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley Jr. and Dean Norris, actress Kelly Lynch, Academy Award-nominated composer Thomas Newman, film producer Roger Birnbaum, producer/screenwriter Mitch Glazer, and the band’s attorney Eric Greenspan, who promoted a Grateful Dead show when he was in college in the ‘70s.

“We get asked to do a million of these things,” Cahill said, adding that “Rock Under the Stars” was Dead & Co.’s first private charity event since forming in 2015. In addition to the Grateful Dead’s Hart, guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, Dead & Company includes guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. “They’ve very focused on the health of our oceans,” Cahill continued. “Bill lives in Hawaii, Bob lives on the water. Oceana really resonated with them.”

“We don’t do that many [benefits],” especially house parties. It seemed like the right thing to do at the right time. The oceans are really in need,” Hart said, adding that Dead & Co. have voter registration booths at every show and through that effort, the notoriously philanthropic band hopes to register thousands of people for the 2018 mid-term elections and beyond. “We’ve been registering people at every show for years,” he said. “The kids, everybody, just have to realize how important it is. You’ve got to get up off your asses and pull that lever.”

Read the full story at Billboard

UN warns the Mediterranean Sea is worlds’ most over-fished

July 10, 2018 — A health-check report on world fisheries and aquaculture by the United Nations (UN) has revealed that one-third of global marine fish stocks are now fished at unsustainable levels and have reached “over-fished” status.

NGO Oceana flags particular attention to the state of the Mediterranean — which according to the report published today, is the world’s most over-fished sea — as well as the Black Sea.

The 2018 State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) report, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN confirmed a global trend toward unsustainable fishing.

33% of global fish stocks are now overfished, a figure that is increasing year after year, Oceana claimed the report said.

“The new report from the FAO is discouraging: it shows that the world still has a long way to go toward responsible management of our oceans. The number of over-fished marine fisheries has risen over the last years. And, despite increasingly sophisticated and aggressive fishing techniques, global catch has continued to decline,” said Andrew Sharpless, Oceana CEO.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

IUU vessel tracker calls on more countries to share Indonesia’s lead, share data

June 22, 2018 — Indonesia is a model that other countries should follow, according to a leading campaigner advocating for the sharing of fishing data to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

By making its vessel monitoring system (VMS) data publicly available, the country has increased transparency, said Tony Long, CEO of Global Fishing Watch, who was speaking at the 2018 SeaWeb Seafood Summit. The Indonesian fisheries ministry, which has been battling illegal fishing in its waters, moved to share its VMS data in 2017.

Not enough countries exchange data, said Long, who wants countries to “bring data out into the open” so that vessels’ movements can be tracked and illegal fishing operators exposed. “Global Fishing Watch will take and share any tracking system,” he said.

More transparency is key to forcing vessel operators into more responsible behavior, argued Long.

“Why not reward the compliant operators when you can track them?” he said. “The worst actors will stand out by their lack of information and therefore appropriate punishments can be put in place.”

Global Fishing Watch leverages tracking systems like Oceana, Skytruth and Google as well as national systems to map global movement of vessels.

Long’s organization has also recently partnered with the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to track vessels using satellites the monitor lights at night. A screen grab from one such monitoring off the coast of Oman showed that AIS data is underreporting the number of vessels in the waters: The data based on the number of lights in the night sky suggested a far larger fleet at work.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Judge rules for Oceana in California anchovy dispute

June 20, 2018 — Just how many anchovies are there off the northern coast of California and are there enough to fish commercially?

Environmental activist group Oceana and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) have different answers to those questions, and a federal judge’s ruling recently favored Oceana’s view, reducing opportunities for California fishermen.

At issue is the science that NMFS relied on in reaching a 2016 decision to set the total allowable catch (TAC) for northern California anchovy at 25,000 metric tons. The agency set that limit — even though landings typically only total less than a third of that, 7,300t — judging the stock’s maximum sustainable yield to be 123,000t, and calculating an acceptable biological catch of 100,000t. The TAC was set, conservatively, the agency said, at a fourth of that level.

However, after the 2016 rule was adopted, Oceana sued NMFS in federal court arguing that the rule violated principles established in the the Magnuson-Stevens Act because the agency failed “to articulate the scientific basis for this catch limit”.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

The ‘dark fleet’: Global Fishing Watch shines a light on illegal catches

June 11, 2018 — New data is being used to expose fleets of previously unmonitored fishing vessels on the high seas, in what campaigners hope will lead to the eradication of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.

Global Fishing Watch (GFW) has turned low light imaging data collected by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) into the first publicly available real-time map showing the location and identity of thousands of vessels operating at night in waters that lie beyond national jurisdiction.

More than 85% of the “dark fleet” detections include smaller vessels that are not fitted with transponders and larger ones that have switched off their tracking systems to avoid detection, according to GFW, which launched the map on Friday to mark World Oceans Day.

The data, collected by the NOAA’s visible infrared imaging radiometer suite, is being used to track a fleet of about 200 mostly Chinese vessels at the edge of Peru’s economic exclusion zone.

The monitoring, conducted by GFW, a non-profit organisation campaigning for greater transparency in the fishing industry, and the conservation group Oceana, reveals that about 20% of the Chinese vessels are not broadcasting via automatic tracking systems, raising suspicions they are operating illegally.

The report on the high seas activity coincides with the launch by GFW of the first ever real-time view of transshipment, which enables fishing boats to transfer their catch to refrigerated cargo vessels and remain at sea for months, or even years, at a time but still get their catch to the market.

Read the full story at The Guardian

Oceana calls for IUU fishing to be made an environmental crime

June 5, 2018 — NGO Oceana has urged national governments to make illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing a punishable environmental crime.

The call for governments to establish measures to be able to take legal action against pirate fishing comes amid an international awareness campaign by the United Nations on June 5 – also World Environment Day – to tackle the magnitude of the problem.

“On World Environment Day and International Day for the Fight Against IUU Fishing, we’re sending out an SOS to call on governments around the world to make illegal fishing an environmental crime,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana in Europe.

“Countries need to recognize that large-scale illegal fishing is organized crime and should be dealt with as such. Pirates should be behind bars, not sailing free on the world’s oceans.”

Globally, IUU fishing is estimated to account for 20% of total fish catches, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Conservative evaluations of illegal and unreported fishing put the annual cost in loses to the global economy at between €9 billion and €20bn, which in terms of fish, is 11 million-26m metric tons.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

NGOs rail against EU’s confirmed North Sea fishing plan

May 30, 2018 — Multiple environmental NGOs have railed against the EU’s North Sea fishing plan, which it has now voted in, claiming it does not implement the common fisheries policy (CFP) and allows overfishing.

On May 29 the European Parliament adopted in its final vote the North Sea Multi-Annual Plan (NSMAP). The plan covers nearly one-third of all fish catches in EU waters, and includes demersal species, such as: cod, haddock, whiting, sole, plaice and Norway lobster. According to Oceana, the final deal is not acceptable, as it does not fully implement the objectives of the CFP and still allows for overfishing of certain stocks in the region.

“The EU lawmakers have completely failed to meet the legally binding requirements set by the CFP and the parliament missed an opportunity to defend its own position adopted at the plenary vote in September 2017. The parliament also ceded to the [EU] council’s pressure and low ambitions on the matter,” wrote Oceana.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News