Saving Seafood

NMFS Puts Councils on Notice for Three Species Subject to Overfishing or are Considered Overfished

September 28, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The National Marine Fisheries Service has notified regional fishery management councils that three species are subject to overfishing, approaching an overfished condition or are overfished.

South Atlantic red grouper, Gulf of Mexico greater amberjack and Northwestern Atlantic witch flounder are on the list and regional councils must take steps to end overfishing and/or rebuild those stocks.

South Atlantic red grouper, under the South Atlantic Fishery management Council’s purview, is subject to overfishing and also overfished, according to the stock assessment finalized this year using data through 2015, NMFS said in a Federal Register notice. This assessment supports a finding of subject to overfishing because the current estimate of fishing mortality is above the maximum fishing mortality threshold (MFMT), and overfished because the spawning stock biomass estimate is less than the minimum stock size threshold (MSST).

Gulf of Mexico greater amberjack is subject to overfishing, NMFS said, based on a stock assessment update finalized in 2016. That assessment also used data through 2015. This assessment supports a finding of subject to overfishing because the current estimate of fishing mortality is above the MFMT. Furthermore, greater amberjack remains overfished because the spawning stock biomass estimate is less than the MSST.

Northwestern Atlantic witch flounder is still overfished and the overfishing status is unknown, NMFS said in the notice. The assessment peer review panel for this stock rejected the most recent benchmark assessment, finalized in 2017, using data through 2015.

“However, this stock is at historical low levels and other signs of poor stock condition support this stock remaining listed as overfished,” the NMFS notice said. “Lack of similar reliable indicators for overfishing status support changing the overfishing status of this stock to unknown.”

Witch flounder is under the New England Fishery Management Council’s jurisdiction. NMFS said the NEFMC must implement conservation and management measures to rebuild it.

Similarly, the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fishery management councils must take action to end overfishing of red grouper and greater amberjack immediately and implement conservation and management measures to rebuild those stocks.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

A US ban on shark fins is a bad idea, say researchers

September 22, 2017 — Earlier this year, United States senators put forth S.793, a bill they’ve named the “Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act”. With the noble goal of protecting shark populations, which are in decline all over the globe, the document proposes a total ban on the buying or selling of shark fins in the US. Sounds like an unambiguously good thing, right? Well, the straightforward answer to a problem is not always the best one – and some shark researchers worry that this approach could do more harm than good.

In a recently published paper, shark researchers David Shiffman and Robert Hueter argue that banning trade in fins would not prevent many shark deaths at all – but it might hinder successful conservation practices, and sow confusion by misrepresenting the true threats to these animals. What they recommend instead is prioritising the continued sustainable management of shark fishing.

The finning issue

Let’s start with the broad problem: sharks are in trouble. And losing them is a threat not only for the ecosystems in which they serve important roles, but also for economies all over the globe that rely on them for food, including the United States. Worldwide, many populations are dwindling, their decline driven largely by overfishing, including hunting for meat, bycatch, as well as the lucrative fin trade, which supplies demand in some countries for a delicacy known as shark-fin soup.

This fin trade has led to a phenomenon called shark finning. As the bill describes, “Shark finning is the cruel practice in which the fins of a shark are cut off on board a fishing vessel at sea. The remainder of the animal is then thrown back into the water to drown, starve, or die a slow death.” This practice is not only cruel, but also wasteful – in contrast with conservative shark-fishing practices that make use of meat and parts from the entire body.

Shark finning has actually been banned in the US since the 1990s, but as long as the animal’s body is not discarded at sea, fishers are generally free to do what they will with the fins; indeed, these are typically harvested along with the meat. The new bill, however, presented by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, proposes a total ban on possessing, transporting, selling or purchasing shark fins, under threat of a fine of up to $100,000 or more.

Read the full story at Earth Touch News

Monica Goldberg: New red snapper proposals need safeguards from overfishing

September 21, 2017 — Lawmakers in the House and Senate recently introduced legislation aimed at the perpetually contentious Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery. Thanks to stronger conservation standards and accountability, red snapper numbers in the Gulf have tripled in the last decade and catch limits have doubled, leading to increased value for commercial fishermen and access for charter and for-hire vessels. Unfortunately, private anglers are stuck under a profoundly broken management system. Congressman Garret Graves, Senator Bill Cassidy and others on Capitol Hill propose to give the Gulf states the chance to manage this specific part of the red snapper fishery.

We share the desire to give private anglers more flexibility and certainty in their fishing opportunities, and states are already innovating under current law, such as the LA Creel program in Louisiana. The new bills (H.R. 3588 and S. 1686) have improved significantly from similar attempts last Congress. But without further safeguards, they threaten to take us back to the failures of the past, when the fishery was severely depleted and red snapper was hard to find for seafood consumers and anglers alike.

The current proposals would give the five Gulf States authority to manage the private angler portion of the red snapper fishery in both state and federal waters; commercial and charter/for-hire fishermen would remain under federal management. But because the bills lack provisions to ensure that the private angler sector stays within its quota (after exceeding it nine of the last 12 years), the bills would jeopardize the sustainability of the fishery and undermine the commercial and charter sectors.

Read the full opinion piece at the Environmental Defense Fund

Salty Girl Seafood: Stop the misinformation: the oceans will not run out of fish by 2048

September 21, 2017 — This last year has been a stark reminder that we must be vigilant about questioning the information that we receive from the media. That today, as we are constantly inundated with a steady stream of the latest news, it is ever more important to question our sources, reflect on the content, and apply a critical eye to everything we read.

Last month, an article published on Forbes.com attempted to educate consumers about the status of our world’s oceans and the fish in them by painting a familiar, but largely unsubstantiated picture that has been repeatedly touted by the media in the last decade: “the oceans may run out of fish by 2048, so you should stop eating them.”

For the 1 billion people who rely on seafood for protein (largely in undeveloped countries), not eating fish isn’t much of an option — and for the many more who use seafood as a nutritious, healthful source of protein as a component of their diets, adding to the misinformation about the status of our world’s fisheries makes the notion of sustainable seafood confusing, as well as potentially damaging for the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on fishing as a way of life.

The best available evidence shows that the oceans, in fact, will not run out of fish by 2048.

Read the full opinion piece at Medium

James G. Stavridis & Johan Bergenas: The fishing wars are coming

September 14, 2017 — Lawmakers are finally catching up to something that the Navy and Coast Guard have known for a long time: The escalating conflict over fishing could lead to a “global fish war.”

This week, as part of the pending National Defense Authorization Act, Congress asked the Navy to help fight illegal fishing. This is an important step. Greater military and diplomatic efforts must follow. Indeed, history is full of natural-resource wars, including over sugar, spices, textiles, minerals, opium and oil. Looking at current dynamics, fish scarcity could be the next catalyst.

The decline in nearly half of global fish stocks in recent decades is a growing and existential threat to roughly 1 billion people around the world who rely on seafood as their primary source of protein. No other country is more concerned about the increasingly empty oceans than China, whose people eat twice as much fish as the global average. Beijing is also the world’s largest exporter of fish, with 14 million fishers in a sector producing billions of dollars a year.

In order to keep its people fed and employed, the Chinese government provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies to its distant-water fishing fleet. And in the South China Sea, it is common for its ships to receive Chinese Coast Guard escorts when illegally entering other countries’ fishing waters. As such, the Chinese government is directly enabling and militarizing the worldwide robbing of ocean resources.

Read the full opinion piece at the Washington Post

Feds looking to trim golden tilefish quota for next 3 years

September 12, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Federal fishing regulators are planning to cut back the fishing quota for golden tilefish for the next three years.

Golden tilefish are prized as food and they are caught by longline and hook-and-line fishermen up and down the East Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says proposed quotas for 2018 to 2020 are 14 percent lower than the 2017 quota to prevent overfishing.

The fish are not currently experiencing overfishing, but fishery managers recommended reduction based on an evaluation of the fishery.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the San Francisco Chronicle

Tuna-fishing nations agree on plan to replenish severely depleted Pacific bluefin stocks

September 1, 2017 — TOKYO — The world’s Pacific bluefin tuna won something of a reprieve Friday, when tuna-fishing countries reached an agreement to gradually rebuild severely depleted stocks while still allowing nations such as Japan to catch and consume the delicacy.

Japan — by far the world’s biggest consumer of bluefin, eating about 80 percent of the global haul in the $42 billion tuna industry — had been resisting new rules, while conservationists have warned about the commercial extinction of bluefin in the Pacific Ocean.

Proponents of limits hailed the deal as a compromise that everyone could live with.

“It’s definitely a good first step towards the recovery of the species,” said James Gibbon, global tuna conservation officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “But it is only the first step. There are a lot of commitments that the countries agreed to, and we need to make sure they stick to them.”

At the week-long meeting in Busan, South Korea, the two bodies charged with shared management of Pacific bluefin — the northern committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission — hammered out a plan to try to put the fish back on a path to sustainability. Countries represented at the meeting included the United States, Canada, China, South Korea and Japan.

The Pacific bluefin population has been depleted by more than 97 percent from its historic high, because of overfishing.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Bristol, Mass. sheriff’s captain charged with smuggling in Carlos Rafael case

August 31, 2017 — BOSTON — A captain with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office was arrested and charged late Wednesday in connection with helping Carlos Rafael, the owner of one of the largest commercial fishing businesses in the U.S., smuggle the profits of his illegal overfishing scheme to Portugal, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

James Melo, 45, of North Dartmouth, was charged with one count each of bulk cash smuggling, structuring and conspiracy. He was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond following his appearance in federal court in Boston on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

In May 2015, federal agents began an undercover operation targeting Carlos Rafael, the owner of one of the largest commercial fishing businesses in the U.S. In the fall of 2015, undercover agents, posing as potential buyers of Rafael’s business, met with Rafael to negotiate buying his fishing business. Rafael told the agents that he hid the cash proceeds of his illegal fishing sales, in part, by smuggling the money to Portugal. Rafael said that he sometimes took the money himself, but also used the services of others, and referred to knowing several members of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, including Melo, whom he described as, “the captain at the prison,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement sent to news media.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishermen Express Concerns About Upcoming Stock Assessments And Fishing Limits

August 30, 2017 — Fishermen who attended a meeting Monday in Point Judith about upcoming groundfish stock assessments are unhappy with the data collection process for those assessments.

Federal regulators use data collected by fishermen and scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries to assess the health of fish species and set limits on how many fish can be taken from the sea. Those limits are intended to protect against overfishing.

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the research arm of NOAA Fisheries in the region, talked with commercial and recreational fishermen as a part of a series of port outreach meetings to hear fishermen’s concerns and to figure out how the science center could work to address them.

Patrick Duckworth, a commercial fisherman who attended the meeting, said regulators are using bad scientific methods to collect data and set fishing limits.

Read and listen to the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

Researchers and fishing companies form coalition for sustainable seas

August 16, 2017 — A new paper by Henrik Österblom, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Carl Folke and Johan Rockström describes how the authors engaged with large seafood producers to coproduce a global science–business initiative for ocean stewardship. They suggest that this initiative is improving the prospects for transformative change by providing novel links between science and business, between wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture, and across geographical space. They argue that scientists can play an important role in facilitating change by connecting knowledge to action among global actors, while recognizing risks associated with such engagement.

The authors argue that the methods developed through this case study contribute to identifying key competences in sustainability science and hold promises for other sectors as well.

The following is taken from the abstract of “Emergence of a global science-business initiative for ocean stewardship,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

The ocean represents a fundamental source of micronutrients and protein for a growing world population. Seafood is a highly traded and sought after commodity on international markets, and is critically dependent on healthy marine ecosystems. A global trend of wild stocks being overfished and in decline, as well as multiple sustainability challenges associated with a rapid growth of aquaculture, represent key concerns in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Existing efforts aimed to improve the sustainability of seafood production have generated important progress, primarily at the local and national levels, but have yet to effectively address the global challenges associated with the ocean.

This study highlights the importance of transnational corporations in enabling transformative change, and thereby contributes to advancing the limited understanding of large-scale private actors within the sustainability science literature.

Read the full paper here