Saving Seafood

Ocean activists, fishers and scientists differ on heavy anchovy declines

November 23, 2015 — A new, beautifully produced but troubling public service announcement from Oceana features “Glee” television actress and singer Jenna Ushkowitz diving with sea lions off Santa Barbara.

Fishing, she says, decimated Southern California’s historically booming stocks of Pacific sardine and Northern anchovy, a major food source for top ocean predators. Those stocks have dropped dramatically in the past decade, prompting reduced fishing quotas as starved sea lion pups and California brown pelican chicks die in record numbers.

“Sea lions rely on forage fish for survival. But years of overfishing have put this important food source in jeopardy,” Ushkowitz narrates while underwater footage shows her swimming through kelp. “Join Oceana and help protect forage fish in the Pacific. … We need to stop this and replenish.”

The West Coast’s leading fishery scientists, however, disagree. They believe the fish are most likely enduring natural population fluctuations and are on the cusp of making a big comeback.

Oceana, a nonprofit advocacy organization favored by celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, insists that fishing is the primary problem. The group lobbied aggressively to close the West Coast anchovy fishery, delivering nearly 40,000 letters from concerned citizens nationwide to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a 14-member body that sets fishing policy for California, Oregon and Washington, before its meeting last week.

Read the full story at Daily Breeze

NOAA: Haddock flourish, while cod stocks dwindle

November 21, 2015 — The groundfish stock updates released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reflect what the agency says is the continuing deterioration of the Gulf of Maine cod stock, while showing that other stocks such as haddock, pollock and redfish appear to be flourishing.

The operational assessment updates were performed on 20 Northeast groundfish stocks, with the results corresponding to the state of the individual stocks through 2014.

The news for cod, according to the update, is really no news at all.

“Based on this updated assessment, the Gulf of Maine Atlantic cod stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring,” the authors of the report wrote in their executive summary.

The results show the GOM cod spawning biomass to be hovering between 4 percent and 6 percent of what is necessary to sustain a well-managed stock despite three years of Draconian cuts to cod quotas and the more recent shuttering of the Gulf of Maine to all cod fishing.

While the update’s results continue the trend of NOAA data that show the GOM cod stock near total collapse, they also continue to fly in the face of the season-long insistence by Cape Ann fishermen — commercial, recreational, fin and lobster fishermen — that they have seen more cod this season than in many years past.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

EU fishing sector accuses Pew of knowingly publishing misinformation

November 19, 2015 — The following is an excerpt from a story originally published on November 18 by Undercurrent News:

European fisheries industry body Europeche has issued an open letter to Pew Charitable Trusts, warning that statements which are “demonstrably untrue and contrary to scientific opinion” can cause damage.

Javier Garat, Europeche president, pointed to the Pew report ‘Turning the Tide: Ending

Overfishing in North Western Europe’ as containing such misleading inofrmation.

The report makes the assertion that:

  • Fishing in recent decades, in pursuit of food and profit, off North West Europe has dramatically expanded
  • Calls by scientists and environmentalists to reduce fishing pressure have been ignored
  • Many fish stocks collapsed throughout the region
  • The reformed CFP should prove a successful first step in restoring and maintaining the health of the fisheries and fish stocks

The unambiguous view of the scientific community has been clearly stated, most recently at the State of the Stocks Seminar in Brussels, said Garat, quoting Eskild Kirkegaard, chair of the ICES advisory committee:

“Over the last ten to fifteen years, we have seen a general decline in fishing mortality in the Northeast Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. The stocks have reacted positively to the reduced exploitation and we’re observing growing trends in stock sizes for most of the commercially important stocks.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News 

Iran seeks revival of caviar industry in post-sanctions era

November 13, 2015 — GOLDASHT, Iran (AP) ” On the shores of the Caspian Sea, an ambitious project is underway to produce a pricey delicacy that could boost Iran’s economy as sanctions ease: caviar.

Iran, once the world’s biggest exporter of the luxury food, sold over 40 tons of sturgeon eggs in 2000. Exports plunged to just 1 ton last year due to dwindling fish stocks and economic sanctions imposed by world powers in response to Iran’s nuclear program.

After Tehran struck a landmark deal this summer to curb its nuclear ambitions in exchange for lifting sanctions ” including those on caviar ” some in Iran are now counting on a revival in exports of the exclusive eggs.

“We hope that as a result of the Iranian government’s interaction with the world, the path will be opened for us to export our products abroad and bring in foreign currency earnings. It does not make a difference where we export to, the United States or Europe,” said Ishaq Islami, manager of the private Ghareh Boron Caviar Fish Farm in the coastal village of Goldasht.

The farm and two nearby facilities are breeding half a million sturgeon fingerlings a year, filling its pools with water pumped in from the Caspian Sea.

Islami began the $100 million project in 2005 but it takes at least 12 years for sturgeon to mature and produce caviar. About 110,000 are beluga species that produce prized silver-gray eggs, the world’s most expensive caviar.

The fish farm aims to export 30 tons of salt-cured caviar and 2,000 tons of sturgeon meat in three years. Islami expects to earn $90 million a year based on an average price of $3,000 a kilogram (about $1,360 a pound) for caviar. The United States, Europe and Japan have traditionally been Iran’s biggest export markets.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

European fishing body takes aim at environmental group

November 14, 2015 — A European fishing body has accused an environmental pressure group of making “misleading and untrue” statements” about the industry in an attempt to influence policy-makers.

The open letter from Europeche – whose members include the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation – is addressed to the Pew Charitable Trusts, which earlier this year published a report called Turning the Tide: Ending Over-fishing in North Western Europe.

“That report contained a number of statements which are demonstrably untrue and contrary to scientific opinion,” Europeche president Javier Garat said yesterday.

He added: “The motives for Pew to publish misleading and untrue statements remain obscure, but this is not a matter of misinterpretation of data or different opinion.

Read the full story at The Press and Journal

 

Warm Waters Prevent Cod Stocks from Recovering

November 13, 2015 — Cod use to be the backbone of New England’s fisheries, but now stocks have nearly collapsed. While the decline was due primarily to overfishing, a new report led by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) reveals that stocks haven’t been able to recover because of the rapidly warming waters in the Gulf of Maine.

The Gulf of Maine is warming 99% faster than anywhere else in the world, which has led to changes in major currents and climate phenomena.

Noting the continued decline of cod stocks, fisheries managers severely restricted harvest rates in 2010, but that hasn’t made much of a difference. Stocks are hovering around three to four percent of sustainable levels.

Read the full story at Marine Science Today

JOHN SACKTON: Media’s Rampant ‘Fisheries Are Going Extinct’ Claim Finally has Serious Rebuttal from Scientists

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [The Editor’s View] by John Sackton — Nov 3, 2015 — The following headline came across our newsfeed this morning “Some South China Sea fish ‘close to extinction'”, courtesy of Agence France Presse.

The report was based on a quote from Rashid Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit of the University of British Columbia.

“The South China Sea is… under threat from various sources. We need to do something,” said Sumaila.

“The most scary thing is the level of decline we have seen over the years. Some species (are facing) technically extinction or depletion,” Sumaila, who headed the study, told a press conference in Hong Kong. 

Having not seen the paper, it is not possible to evaluate his statements. But they are readily taken up because they feed into a media narrative that has proved very hard to change: fisheries around the world are dying because of human greed and overfishing.  This narrative has been central to NGO campaigns focused on fisheries. 

For many years, there was no organized response, and especially no way for journalists to get accurate scientific information. If they were fed a quote, such as “90% of the worlds stocks were unsustainably harvested” as appeared in Newsweek this summer, or that fish is ‘aquatic bushmeat’ comparable to eating monkeys and rhinoceros, as was said by Sylvia Earle, they have no way to evaluate its truthfulness. No wonder that seafood seems so controversial.

A group of scientists has come together through Ray Hilborn and his colleagues at the University of Washington, that is finally providing real-time commentary and rebuttal – i.e. pointing out the basic science – which in many cases does not support these media stories. 

Our companion story today by Peggy Parker has more detail on Hilborn’s rebuttal to Newsweek, where he said one article ‘may set a record for factual errors’.

The idea is not to simply point out poor science and unsupported conclusions, but to encourage media to use their website cfooduw.org, as a resource whenever they see a scientific claim about fisheries.

For example, just in the past few days, scientists from around the world have posted comments on a range of global topics.

Hilborn pointed out, and the Newsweek editors accepted, a correction that not 90%, but 28.8% of fish stocks were estimated as overfished. Would they have run the story if they had not been pitched intitally that 90% of fish stocks have collapsed?

Steve Cadrin of the University of Massachusetts comments on recent articles about cod in both New England and Newfoundland.  He says “The lesson from both of these papers is that rebuilding the stocks to historical levels depends both on fisheries management … and on the return of favorable environmental conditions.” 

“Stock assessment models are simplifications of a much more complex reality. Stock assessments typically assume that components of productivity (survival from natural mortality, reproductive rates, growth) are relatively constant. These assumptions may be reasonable for relatively stable ecosystems. However, considering the extreme climate change experienced in the Gulf of Maine, such assumptions need to be re-considered.  Alternative approaches to science and management are needed to help preserve the fishing communities that rely on Gulf of Maine cod.” 

Two tuna scientists collaborate on a story in response to the charge by Greenpeace that John West is breaking its sustainable tuna pledge by buying fish caught with FADs.

FADs are a type of fishing gear (radio monitored fish aggregating devices) that have become very widely used for pelagic tuna. The two scientists, Laurent Dagorn and Gala Moreno, point out in a comment and a recent paper the important issues with FADs are 1) quantifying, with scientific data, how big that impact actually is, 2) determining if the impact is acceptable for the amount and diversity of fish caught, 3) comparing it with the impact of other fishing gears, and 4) implementing measures to reduce an impact if it is too high for the ecosystem, taking into account all fishing impacts. 

This provides a real road map for a discussion of FADs and how they should or should not be used, in contrast to the campaign claims that they are simply destructive types of fishing gear.  Dagorn and Moreno point out that all food production (including organic farming) involves making choices about modifying ecosystems, and tuna fishing should not be considered in isolation, but in how it meets the goal of providing food for global populations.

Aggregating and making this kind of fisheries science easily accessible is one of the most concrete actions that has been taken in years to counteract the misinformation that so many of us in the industry experience every day. 

It is an effort that deserves wholehearted support, including publicizing the resource to local writers and editors. Please visit their website at cfooduw.org.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

All for one and one for all? Grant will see if fishermen should band together

November 3, 2015 — In recent years, the Pacific Ocean’s fish and crab have been divvied out through quotas and permits — making it hard for new fishermen to start business.

Al Malchow, a fisherman based out of Ilwaco, said the papers needed aren’t only hard to find, they’re expensive.

“There was a time that all we had to do was unrope the boat, catch fish, and come back and sell it,” Malchow said.

Small-time boats could build their business by catching as much as possible each season. But the race was dangerous. Boats were on the water no matter the conditions and areas were sometimes overfished.

Quotas and permits designating how much each boat could catch made fishing safer. But now, a fishing operation has to have equipment, a boat and — for roughly the same price — the right paperwork.

The Port of Ilwaco is investigating a way to help local fishermen access quotas and permits at lower costs.

In September, the port received roughly $50,000 from the Fisheries Innovation Fund to see if the Ilwaco community would benefit from a community fishing association. The association would buy fishing permits and quotas to lease to residential boats.

Malchow said if an association were to come to Ilwaco, it could put that stack of paperwork within reach of people looking to start a business or expand.

He said the absence of local permits can drive local fishermen to offload in Oregon. Some boats have quotas that are too small, which cut them off at the beginning of the season leaving people out of work. Some quotas are too large compared to the boat’s equipment, which cuts earnings down and reduces what was available in local markets.

“If I weren’t fourth generation with a boat in the port, I couldn’t afford this job,” he said.

Read the full story at Chinook Observer

 

Will Maine lobster crash like cod? Only close ocean monitoring will tell

November 2, 2015 — There was a mix of news about the Gulf of Maine last week. First, there were dire warnings about the role of rising ocean temperatures in the demise of cod in the North Atlantic. Then came what sounded like good news — Maine has surpassed Massachusetts to become the state with the second most lucrative seafood landings in the country. Finally, on Friday, federal regulators announced they would close the Gulf of Maine herring fishery this month.

All of these stories are interrelated and point to the need for much more research to gain better understanding about what is happening in the Atlantic Ocean and why. With better knowledge about how changing ocean conditions affect different species, regulators can more effectively target rules to protect them and the fishermen who make a living catching them.

The virtual disappearance of cod from the waters off New England is not news. But a new report, published in the journal Science, concludes that rising ocean temperatures played a much larger role in the decline than initially thought. The study’s lead author, Andrew Pershing, is a scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.

In the simplest sense, regulators decide how many tons of a species can be taken from the ocean based on assessments of that species’ population. The problem with cod management, Pershing’s report concludes, is that regulators didn’t fully grasp the severity of the ocean temperature increase and what it meant for the legendary groundfish. As a result, regulators allowed fishermen to catch too many cod.

“Failure to recognize the impact of warming on cod contributed to overfishing,” the report said. “Recovery of this fishery depends on sound management, but the size of the stock depends on future temperature conditions. The experience in the Gulf of Maine highlights the need to incorporate environmental factors into resource management.”

This is especially true in the gulf, which is warming faster than 99.9 percent of the world’s oceans. Most troubling, beginning in 2004, the rate of warming in the Gulf of Maine increased more than seven-fold, the report says. Because of this rapid warming, regulatory limits on cod fishing didn’t work because cod did not reproduce and grow as expected.

This isn’t an academic problem. As the cod population declined, regulators imposed quotas that allowed fishermen to catch less. When the population didn’t rebound, regulators tightened the quotas, adding to the economic hardship for fishing communities.

Read the full editorial at Bangor Daily News

Scientists: Warming Ocean Factor in Collapse of Cod Fishery

October 29, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The rapid warming of waters off New England is a key factor in the collapse of the region’s cod fishery, and changes to the species’ management are needed to save one of America’s oldest industries, according to a report published Thursday in Science magazine.

Fishery managers say cod spawning in the Gulf of Maine — a key fishing area between Cape Cod and Canada that touches Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire — is only about 3 percent of sustainable levels, and participants in the fishery that dates to the Colonial era face dramatic quota cuts as a result.

The scientists behind the Science report say the warming of the Gulf of Maine, which accelerated from 2004 to 2013, reduced cod’s capacity to rebound from fishing pressure. The report gives credence to the idea — supported by advocacy groups, fishing managers and even some fishermen — that climate change has played a role in cod’s collapse.

The lead author of the study, Andrew Pershing of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, said the gulf is warming at a rate 99 percent faster than anywhere else in the world, and as a result, too many of the fish aren’t living past age 4 or 5. Cod can live to be older than 20.

“Every animal has a temperature range that they prefer. The Gulf of Maine, for cod, is really at the warm end of that,” Pershing said. “If you warm it, you push it somewhere that’s really uncomfortable.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times