Saving Seafood

MARYLAND: Can Maryland remain the “crab capital” if consumers can’t buy crabmeat?

June 1, 2026 — Maryland diners love to eat blue crabs, crustaceans native to the Chesapeake Bay that have been a culinary favorite in the region for centuries. But a federal effort to restrict imported crabmeat has sparked a legal fight that could disrupt supply, drive up prices and reshape the seafood industry.

The fight has also exposed a little-known fact to anyone outside of the seafood industry: Almost all “pasteurized” crabmeat purchased in grocery stores and consumed in restaurants in Maryland and beyond is imported from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Pasteurized crabmeat refers to crab that has been cooked to a specific temperature to extend its shelf life, allowing it to be shipped long distances and stored for longer periods. It’s typically sold in cans and used in products like crab cakes.

Read the full article at the Sentinel 

U.S. Fights for American Fishing in the Pacific, Leads Electronic Monitoring of International Fleets

December 12, 2025 — Tuna and technology took top priority—and top wins—for the United States at the 22nd Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting. It was held December 1–5, 2025, in the Philippines.

Led by Andrew Lawler, NOAA’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Fisheries, the U.S. delegation:

  • Protected American Samoa and U.S. troll interests in the South Pacific albacore fishery
  • Fought for the economic viability of Hawaiʻi’s long line fleet targeting bigeye tuna
  • Secured the lead to develop an electronic monitoring measure for adoption at next year’s meeting

“The U.S. delegation worked very hard together to achieve these wins and, quite frankly, knocked it out of the park,” Lawler said. “We ensured a robust opportunity for our commercial fishing interests while enhancing conservation of our shared fishing resources.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Trump announces trade deal with Japan and Philippines, unveils formal deal with Indonesia

July 23, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump announced the country reached a trade deal with Japan on 22 July, granting the country a reprieve from the potential 25 percent tariffs he was threatening just weeks earlier.

Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that Japan will now face a 15 percent “reciprocal” tariff in the U.S. and claimed Japan will invest USD 550 billion (EUR 469 billion) in the U.S., “which will receive 90 percent of the profits.” Trump later said that the country agreed to buy billions in military and other equipment.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Continued tensions between Philippines and China may contribute to IUU fishing

April 24, 2025 — China and the Philippines have again accused each other of acting dangerously in the South China Sea, where the two nations continue to dispute important fishing grounds.

On 14 April, a Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessel sped up to cut off Philippines Coast Guard vessel BRP Cabra, which was patrolling near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in waters within the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone. According to the Philippine government, China’s coast guard has been conducting illegal patrols in those waters to discourage Filipino fishers.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Another Challenge for Conservation Efforts: Gender Inequity

November 17, 2021 — When the fisherman leveled his spear gun and fired at her across the dark water, Evelyn Malicay held her ground in her kayak, gripping a stone to defend herself. This was her backyard, the marine sanctuary she had helped create and felt a duty to protect.

The spear missed. Ms. Malicay’s efforts to catch yet another late-night poacher did not. “What they do not know,” she said, recalling that night several years ago when she called the police on the man, “is that I am always on watch.”

Ms. Malicay, 53, a compact, vibrant Filipina mother who years ago lost her village council seat over her support for the Maite Marine Sanctuary, has since apprehended neighbors and relatives fishing inside it, recruited dozens of community members to back her and won numerous awards for her championship of marine conservation.

The sanctuary, just steps away from her home, is one of the most successful of the 22 marine protected areas on the island of Siquijor in the south-central Philippines, at the heart of the species-rich Coral Triangle. This no-fishing zone shares one uncommon asset with a variety of other unusually successful conservation projects around the globe: It’s run by women.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Overwhelmed by Chinese Fleets, Filipino Fishermen ‘Protest and Adapt’

July 12, 2021 — The fishermen along the western coast of Luzon Island, in the Philippines, have known for generations that the seas, the tides and the weather can determine their fortunes. More recently, they have added China to that list.

Scarborough Shoal, a nearby triangular chain of reefs and rocks in the South China Sea, was once the source of bountiful catches of large reef fish. But the fishermen are no longer allowed to go near it.

“The Chinese have already swallowed Karburo whole, but that area is really ours,” said Johnny Sonny Geruela, using the Filipino name for Scarborough. Mr. Geruela lives in Masinloc, a small fishing community just 124 nautical miles from the shoal.

China’s Coast Guard has had ships anchored near Scarborough for almost a decade. Five years ago this week, an international court ruled that the territory was well within Manila’s exclusive economic zone, and invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. Beijing has effectively ignored the ruling and expanded its presence in the region.

Filipino fishermen like Mr. Geruela now avoid the shoal, where they once sheltered during storms, exchanged greetings and cigarettes, and harvested the abundant reef fish. And the lessons of Scarborough are playing out elsewhere in the South China Sea, as China continues to flex its muscle on the water and pursue power through a campaign of steady provocation.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Philippines approves USD 10 million COVID-related stimulus for aquaculture sector

December 28, 2020 — The Philippines Department of Agriculture has allocated an additional budget of PHP 500 million (USD 10.4 million, EUR 8.5 million) to assist the country’s aquaculture sector in overcoming difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The stimulus package will support farming of certain fish and aquatic species such as glass eels, sea urchins, and seaweeds, as well as provide funds for construction of multi-species hatcheries in the country, according to a report from The Philippine Star.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Philippine fishermen stranded at sea by pandemic: ‘We think about jumping overboard’

September 11, 2020 — Anthony Medina’s daughter was 5 months old when he left the Philippines and set sail for the Indian Ocean in December 2018 on an odyssey where his livelihood collided with a pandemic that has kept him adrift at sea and exiled from home.

For more than a year, his days have been a monotonous blur of endless fishing on the Oceanstar 86, a 465-foot-long vessel with a crew of about three dozen. As long as there was seafood for their nets, including tuna, crab and squid, the crew members had to haul them in, clean and freeze them.

When their boat arrived in Singapore in March, Medina planned on catching a flight home. But he was shocked to learn that a virus outbreak had closed borders and shuttered ports, keeping him out of the Philippines and trapped on the fishing boat.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Why marine protected areas are often not where they should be

March 26, 2020 — There’s no denying the grandeur and allure of a nature reserve or marine protected area. The concept is easy to understand: limit human activity there and marine ecosystems will thrive.

But while the number of marine protected areas is increasing, so too is the number of threatened , and the health of  is in decline.

Why? Our research shows it’s because marine protected areas are often placed where there’s already low , rather than in places with high biodiversity that need it most.

Not where they should be

Many parts of the world’s protected areas, in both terrestrial and , are placed in locations with no form of manageable human activity or development occurring, such as fishing or infrastructure. These places are often remote, such as in the centres of oceans.

And where marine protected areas have been increasing, they’re placed where pressures cannot be managed, such as areas where there is increased ocean acidification or dispersed pollution.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Clashing views ahead of tuna fleet crisis meeting

November 13, 2019 — Tuna industry leaders have different views on the best way to solve the current market crisis.

Some of the world’s biggest tuna fishing fleets are set to meet “face-to-face” on Nov. 13 in Manila, Philippines, as record low prices are seen as unsustainable for most tuna fleets.

The World Tuna Purse Seine Organization (WTPO) should close the whole fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean for one month or one month and a half, according to the head of a European fishing company.

“They should stop all the vessels for a month or a month and a half from now until Chinese New Year to stop overproduction and stabilize the market,” he told Undercurrent News, adding that even the canneries would support such a measure, as it would provide market stability. In this way, skipjack prices would return to a minimum of $1,000 per-metric-ton, he also noted, adding that the fleets in the Western Pacific should be “responsible and take steps to stop the vessels, restarting the logistics chain”. At present, there is too much fish and the logistic chain is paralyzed, he noted.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News