Saving Seafood

Thai Union Commits to Tuna Fishing and Labor Reforms

July 11, 2017 — Thai Union Group PCL has committed to measures that will tackle illegal fishing and overfishing, as well as improve the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the company’s supply chains.

Thai Union’s new commitments build upon its sustainability strategy SeaChange, including efforts to support best practice fisheries, reduce illegal and unethical practices in its global supply chains and bring more responsibly-caught tuna to key markets.

Thai Union has agreed to a comprehensive package of reforms, including commitments to:

* Reduce the number of fish aggregating devices (FADs) used globally in its supply chains by an average of 50 percent by 2020, while doubling the amount of verifiable FAD-free fish available in markets globally in the same period. FADs are floating objects that create mini ecosystems and may result in the catch of marine species, including sharks, turtles, and juvenile tuna.
* Extend its current moratorium on at-sea transshipment across its entire global supply chain unless new strict conditions are met by suppliers. Transshipment at sea enables vessels to continue fishing for months or years at a time and has the potential to facilitate illegal activity.
* Ensure independent observers are present on all longline vessels transshipping at sea to inspect and report on potential labor abuse, and ensure 100 percent human or electronic observer coverage across all tuna longline vessels it sources from.
* Develop a comprehensive code of conduct for all vessels in its supply chains, to complement the existing and strengthened Business Ethics and Labor Code of Conduct, to help ensure workers at sea are being treated humanely and fairly, and third party independent audits with publicly accessible results and clear timelines to ensure its requirements are being met.
* Shift significant portions of longline caught tuna to pole and line or troll-caught tuna by 2020 and implement strong requirements in place to help reduce bycatch. Longline vessels present a risk for catching non-target species like seabirds, turtles, and sharks.
* Move to full digital traceability, allowing people to track their tuna back to the vessel it was caught on and identify the fishing method used.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

EU opens consultation on 2018 CFP, overfishing

July 7, 2017 — The EU has announced a consultation period on the way in which levels of fishing effort and quotas are set according to the new common fisheries policy (CFP), and on the basis of scientific advice.

The contributions received, as well as the outcome of the seminar on the state of the stocks and the economics of fishing fleets that will take place in September, will feed into the European Commission’s proposals on fishing opportunities for 2018.

The consultation will run July 6 to Sept 15, 2017.

The EU claimed in its consultation documents that “significant progress in implementing the 2013 CFP reform” has been made:

  • Meeting the maximum sustainable yield objective. According to the latest assessment from the scientific, technical and economic committee for fisheries, based on 2015 data, 39 of 66 stocks assessed in the North-East Atlantic were exploited within FMSY (equating to 59%, up from 52 % in the previous year).
  • Rebuilding stocks. Average stock biomass in the North-East Atlantic increased by 35% between 2003 and 2015.
  • Improving overall economic performance. The EU fleet registered record net profits of €770 million in 2014, a 50% increase over the 2013 figure of €500m.
  • Better balancing fishing capacity and fishing opportunities. In recent years, the balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities across the entire EU fleet has improved.

“Despite this progress, further efforts are needed in particular to bring down the high levels of overfishing in the Mediterranean, to reduce the number of individual stocks exploited above FMSY in the North-East Atlantic and to implement the landing obligation.”

NGO ClientEarth took issue with what it said was an overly optimistic viewpoint.

“A report released today by the European Commission paints a misleadingly positive impression of progress towards sustainable fishing, by glossing over the fact that progress has slowed or reversed in recent years,” it said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

A Staggering Amount of Fish Is Wasted Each Year

June 28, 2017 — New research shows that industrial fisheries are responsible for dumping nearly 10 million tons of perfectly good fish back into the ocean each year—enough to fill 4,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This news comes at a time when nearly 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are threatened by overfishing.

The research, published in the science journal Fish and Fisheries, shows that roughly 10 percent of the world’s annual catch is tossed back in the ocean. This waste happens for a number of reasons, including fishing practices that damage fish (making them unmarketable), throwing back fish that are too small or out of season, or because only part of the fish needs to be harvested (e.g. Alaska pollock roe). In some cases, fishers caught species they weren’t targeting (called bycatch), or they continue to catch fish even though they’ve caught enough, which they do in hopes of scooping up bigger fish (called high-grading).

“In the current era of increasing food insecurity and human nutritional health concerns, these findings are important,” noted Dirk Zeller, a researcher at the University of Western Australia, a senior research Partner with the Sea Around Us, and the lead author of the new study, in a statement. “The discarded fish could have been put to better use.”

For the study, the researchers examined the amount of fish that has been discarded over the past six decades. Estimates were made for all major fisheries around the world relying on, in the words of the authors, “a wide variety of data and information sources and on conservative assumptions to ensure comprehensive and complete time-series coverage.” Their analysis shows that five million tons of fish were discarded annually in the 1950s, a figure that skyrocketed to 18 tons annually by the late 1980s. This figure dropped to less than 10 million tons over the last decade.

Read the full story at Gizmodo

Ten million tonnes of fish wasted every year despite declining fish stocks

June 26, 2017 — Industrial fishing fleets dump nearly 10 million tonnes of good fish back into the ocean every year, according to new research.

The study by researchers with Sea Around Us, an initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the University of Western Australia, reveals that almost 10 per cent of the world’s total catch in the last decade was discarded due to poor fishing practices and inadequate management.  This is equivalent to throwing back enough fish to fill about 4,500 Olympic sized swimming pools every year.

“In the current era of increasing food insecurity and human nutritional health concerns, these findings are important,” said Dirk Zeller, lead author for the study who is now a professor at the University of Western Australia and senior research partner with the Sea Around Us. “The discarded fish could have been put to better use.”

Fishers discard a portion of their catch because fishing practices damage the fish and make them unmarketable, the fish are too small, the species is out of season, only part of the fish needs to be harvested—as with the Alaska pollock roe—or the fishers caught species that they were not targeting, something known as bycatch.

“Discards also happen because of a nasty practice known as high-grading where fishers continue fishing even after they’ve caught fish that they can sell,” said Zeller. “If they catch bigger fish, they throw away the smaller ones; they usually can’t keep both loads because they run out of freezer space or go over their quota.”

The study examined the amount of discarded fish over time. In the 1950s, about five million tonnes of fish were discarded every year, in the 1980s that figure grew to 18 million tonnes. It decreased to the current levels of nearly 10 million tonnes per year over the past decade.

The decline in discards in recent years could be attributed to improved fisheries management and new technology, but Zeller and his colleagues say it’s likely also an indicator of depleted fish stocks. A 2016 reconstruction of catch data from 1950 to 2010 by researchers with the Sea Around Us revealed that catches have been declining at a rate of 1.2 million tonnes of fish every year since the mid-1990s.

“Discards are now declining because we have already fished these species down so much that fishing operations are catching less and less each year, and therefore there’s less for them to throw away,” he said.

Read the full story at the University of British Columbia

NORTH CAROLINA: Fishermen organize a boat parade to highlight problem of fewer fish

June 20, 2017 — Saltwater fishermen pulled their boats around the Legislative Building in downtown Raleigh on Tuesday to draw attention to a stalled conservation bill.

House Bill 867 is aimed at ensuring protection for what recreational anglers say are declining numbers of fish on the North Carolina coast. It would set standards for conservation and fisheries management based on scientific data, while ensuring that a “reasonable” amount of fish can be caught each year and requiring state environmental regulators to assess whether overfishing has occurred.

The bipartisan bill hasn’t been heard in any committee since it was filed in April.

The anglers issued a statement saying that a recreational fisherman from Greenville organized the parade of about two dozen boats after his friends wanted to do something to move the bill forward.

“It is time for sportsmen to speak up and demand a vote on HB 867,” Joe Albea, the fisherman, said in the statement. “It’s time for the legislators to see that the people are tired of them spending our fish and saving none of it for the future.”

A coalition of conservationists, marine manufacturers and retailers have formed N.C. Sound Economy to push for science-based policy decisions on fisheries management, according to member Bert Owens of Beaufort.

Owens stressed that the campaign is not meant to pit recreational fishermen against commercial fishermen, although there has been a pitched battle between the two interests for years.

Read the full story at The News & Observer

Ray Hilborn: World fish stocks stable

June 12, 2017 — Speaking at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit on Wednesday, 7 June in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., University of Washington fisheries researcher Ray Hilborn said the perception that the world’s fish stocks are declining is incorrect, and that fishing could sustainably be stepped up in areas with good management.

Hilborn pointed to figures from the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database that indicate that fish stocks dipped through the last part of the 20th century, but have since recovered in many fisheries.

“There is a very broad perception that fish stocks around the world are declining. Many news coverages in the media will always begin with ‘fish stocks in the world are declining.’ And this simply isn’t true. They are increasing in many places and in fact, globally, the best assessments are that fish stocks are actually stable and probably increasing on average now,” Hilborn said.

The RAM Legacy Database collects information on all the stocks in the world that have been scientifically assessed, which is a little more than half of the world’s catch.

“What we don’t really know about is the big fisheries in Asia, in the sense that we don’t have scientific assessments of the trends in abundance,” Hilborn said.

He added that the general consensus is that the status of those stocks is poor, a result of, among other things, poor fisheries management, reinforcing surveys that have shown a direct correlation between high stock abundance and high intensity of management.

“For most of the developed world fisheries’ management is quite intense, and South and Southeast Asia stand out as really not having much in the way of fisheries’ management systems, particularly any form a enforcement of regulations, if regulations exists,” he said.

But in much of the developed world, Hilborn said fish stocks are robust, even when they sometimes get labeled as overfished.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Nine of world’s biggest fishing firms sign up to protect oceans

June 9, 2017 — Nine of the world’s biggest fishing companies have signed up to protect the world’s oceans, pledging to help stamp out illegal activities, including the use of slave labour, and prevent overfishing.

The initiative will be announced on Friday, as part of the UN Ocean Conference this week in New York, the first conference of its kind at which member states are discussing how to meet the sustainable development goal on ocean health.

Goal 14 of the roster requires countries to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources”. However, little has yet been done to set out concrete commitments on meeting this target. The UN is hoping countries, companies and organisations will set out voluntary plans this week to work on issues such as pollution, overfishing, the destruction of coastal habitats, and acidification.

The Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS) initiative, supported by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, marks the first time that companies from Asia, Europe and the US have come together aiming to end unsustainable practices. Although the fishing industry is highly fragmented at the local level, with millions of small boats and subsistence fishermen, about 11 to 16% of the global catch goes to just 13 companies, who are thought to control about 40% of the most valuable and biggest species.

Henrik Osterblöm, deputy science director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which brought the initiative together, said: “Sustainable marine ecosystems will be essential to feed a growing population, but the oceans are at risk. Seafood makes up 20% of the global intake of animal protein.”

Read the full story at The Guardian

NEW JERSEY: Measuring flounder a complex undertaking with a big impact

March 27, 2017 — It’s likely few people have written more about summer flounder than Mark Terceiro.

Terceiro has published a 44-page journal article about the science, politics and litigation surrounding the species from 1975 to 2000. A 32-page follow-up covered the period from 2001 to 2010, and another article regarding developments in recent years is in the works.

But it’s Terceiro’s summer flounder stock assessment update, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in December, that has him in the crosshairs of New Jersey politicians and recreational fishing leaders.

That’s because his report led federal regulatory agencies to reduce this year’s summer flounder catch by 30 percent.

Some say the move will cripple recreational flounder fishing, a multimillion-dollar industry in New Jersey that supports bait-and-tackle shops, boat dealerships and other businesses that cater to fishermen.

“It is based on a questionable, out-of-date stock assessment and a flawed modeling,” Bob Martin, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross last month.

But federal fisheries experts, including Terceiro, say they have confidence in the measurements, which show the flounder population has been “experiencing overfishing” since 2008.

“A stock assessment is one of our best ways to estimate the population and status of a resource we manage,” said Kirby Rootes-Murdy, senior fishery management plan coordinator for summer flounder at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, one of the agencies that regulate the species.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Whole Foods’ New Canned Tuna Policy: Only Pole-and-Line, Troll, or Handline Caught Tuna By 2018

March 20, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — By January 2018, all canned tuna sold at Whole Foods Market must come from fisheries using only pole-and-line, troll, or handline catch methods, all of which take fish one by one, preventing bycatch and creating more jobs in coastal communities.

Whole Foods Market is the first national retailer to create such stringent standards for canned tuna, which is among the three most consumed seafood items in the United States.

The policy’s aim is to reduce overfishing and bycatch, and support fishing communities. The new sourcing policy includes canned tuna items sold in the grocery aisle as well as the prepared foods department.

Whole Food’s new canned tuna policy requires that the fisheries be certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council or rated green or yellow by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and The Safina Center.

Every supplier must also use Trace Register, traceability software that tracks each lot of tuna at every point from vessel to can. The traceability data are continuously crosschecked to help verify sourcing and prevent illegally caught or unauthorized fish from entering the supply chain.

“We created this new policy for canned tuna because we want to lead by example in sourcing only the highest quality, sustainably caught tuna,” said Carrie Brownstein, global seafood quality standards coordinator for Whole Foods Market.

“Combined with better international fishery management, overfishing and bycatch can be greatly reduced when tuna is caught by these low-impact fishing methods. We are honored to be working with suppliers and partners who are driving positive change.”

Leading brands that already source canned tuna from one-by-one fisheries, including 365 Everyday Value®, American Tuna, Pole and Line, Henry and Lisa’s, and Wild Planet, are updating their operations to meet the policy’s traceability requirements. These measures will also help importers get ahead of the traceability provisions in NOAA’s Seafood Import Monitoring Program, which has a deadline for mandatory compliance by Jan. 1, 2018.

Over the coming months, remaining suppliers will shift their operations and fishing practices to use the approved one-by-one catch methods, which are more environmentally friendly and offer more employment opportunities for fishermen worldwide.

“Since America is the largest canned tuna market in the world, shifts toward greater sustainability in this category can create a meaningful, positive impact on our oceans and our global fishing communities,” said Adam Baske, director of policy and outreach for International Pole and Line Foundation. “In some cases, these one-by-one fisheries are one of very few sources of local employment. The boats also make relatively short trips, enabling crews to return home frequently, compared to large industrial tuna vessels that may spend multiple months or even years at sea.”

Whole Foods Market’s new canned tuna policy expands on the retailer’s existing sustainability standards for fresh and frozen seafood, which also require that all seafood must either be certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council or rated green or yellow by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and The Safina Center. Additionally, all of the retailer’s farmed seafood must meet its industry-leading aquaculture standards, which include third-party on-site audits.

In 2016, Whole Foods Market introduced the retailer’s first Fair Trade certified yellowfin tuna, a designation which ensures better wages and working conditions for fishermen, and provides additional funding to their communities for improvement projects and investments. Fair Trade certification also verifies full supply chain traceability.

These continual advancements in policies and sourcing are part of Whole Foods Market’s mission to create a model that moves the seafood industry toward greater sustainability.

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

Poll: 75% of UK Residents Say Brexit Will Not Stop Overfishing

March 8, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A poll carried out by YouGov for Oceana has revealed that 65% of the public are either “not confident” (46%) or “don’t know” (19%) when asked if they think the UK government will be better at stopping overfishing in the UK post-Brexit, compared to the existing guidance from the EU. Overfishing, or fishing too much, is one of the most critical issues facing our oceans. The fate of UK fisheries was a key feature of the Brexit debate with leading Brexit campaigners Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage frequently citing it as an example of EU mismanagement, even though the UK has always played an active role in setting catch limits.

“Brexit is an opportunity for the UK to revitalise its fishing industry, stabilise threatened ecosystems and create thousands of new jobs but this will only happen if overfishing is stopped. The UK government must fulfil the promises of the Brexit campaign that vowed British fisheries can thrive without EU guidance. This will only happen if overfishing is stopped,” explains Lasse Gustavsson, Executive Director, Oceana in Europe.

Interestingly, although 46% of respondents are not confident Brexit will be a positive influence on stopping overfishing, this figure rises to 60% in Scotland. The Scottish fishing industry contributes up to two thirds of the total fish caught in the UK and the country voted heavily to remain in the EU in last year’s referendum.

The poll also revealed a shocking lack of public knowledge about overfishing in Europe. A recent report commissioned by Oceana revealed that 64% of European fish stocks are currently overfished. However when asked, 83% of Brits either underestimated (31%) or said they didn’t know (52%) this figure.

Overfishing, or fishing too much, is reducing year after year the amount of fish available in the water and threatening marine ecosystems and fishers’ livelihoods. If overfishing was stopped and fish resources were managed sustainably, European fisheries could increase catches by almost 60% more fish in less than 10 years or 5 million tonnes. For this reason, Oceana has created a campaign that aims to mobilize European citizens in the fight against overfishing: #StopOverfishing.

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 7,203 adults from Italy, UK, Germany, Spain and Denmark, of which, of which 2085 were from the UK. Fieldwork was undertaken between 3rd – 6th February 2017. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative on a country-by-country basis and are representative of all adults (aged 18+) in the Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

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