Saving Seafood

Predators may be less affected by catch of small fish than previously thought, new study says

April 3, 2017 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities and IFFO: 

New research published today in the journal Fisheries Research finds that fishing of forage species likely has a lower impact on predators than previously thought, challenging previous studies that argued forage fish are more valuable left in the ocean.

A team of seven respected fisheries scientists, led by Prof. Ray Hilborn, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, found that predator populations are less dependent on specific forage fish species than assumed in previous studies, most prominently in a 2012 study commissioned by the Lenfest Ocean Program, which is managed by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force argued that forage fish are twice as valuable when left in the water to be eaten by predators, and recommended slashing forage fish catch rates by 50 to 80 percent.

 For fisheries management, such a precautionary approach would have a large impact on the productivity of forage fisheries. As groups such as IFFO (The Marine Ingredients Organisation) have noted, these stocks contribute strongly to global food security, as well as local and regional social and economic sustainability.

 However, the new research found multiple omissions in the methodology of the Lenfest study. “When you review the actual models that were used [by Lenfest], there are a few key elements on the biology of these animals that were not represented,” said Dr. Ricardo Amoroso, one of the study’s co-authors. He added that one of the authors’ approaches was to “look for empirical evidence of what is actually happening in the field.” Previous studies relied on models which took for granted that there should be a strong link between predators and prey.

 Specifically, the Lenfest study and another study using ecosystem models ignored the natural variability of forage fish, which often fluctuate greatly in abundance from year to year. It also failed to account for the fact that predators tend to eat smaller forage fish that are largely untouched by fishermen. Because of these oversights, the new study concluded that the Lenfest recommendations were overly broad, and that fisheries managers should consider forage species on a case-by-case basis to ensure sound management.

 “It is vital that we manage our fisheries to balance the needs of the ecosystem, human nutrition and coastal communities,” said Andrew Mallison, IFFO Director General. “These findings give fishery managers guidance based on science, and update some of the inaccurate conclusions of previous reports.”

 The Lenfest findings were largely based on a model called EcoSim, developed by Dr. Carl J. Walters, one of the co-authors of the new paper. Dr. Walters found that the EcoSim models used in earlier studies had omitted important factors, including natural variability, recruitment limitations and efficient foraging of predators.

Dr. Walters noted that there were “very specific” issues with previous uses of the EcoSim model. “It was predicting much higher sensitivity of creatures at the top of the food webs to fishing down at the bottom than we could see in historical data,” he said.

This is not the first time ecosystem models used in earlier studies have been questioned. One year after the Lenfest study was completed, two of its authors, Dr. Tim Essington and Dr. Éva Plagányi, published a paper in the ICES Journal of Marine Science where they said, “We find that the depth and breadth with which predator species are represented are commonly insufficient for evaluating sensitivities of predator populations to forage fish depletion.” The new study reaffirmed this finding, noting “several reasons to concur with the conclusion that the models used in previous analysis were insufficient.”

In addition to its critiques of previous research, the researchers found further evidence of the lack of fishing impact on forage fish. Their research indicated that environmental factors are often much more important drivers of forage fish abundance. They also found that the distribution of forage fish has a greater impact on predators than simply the raw abundance of forage fish. 

The authors concluded by noting the importance of forage fish as a part of human food supply chains, praising their high nutritional value, both through direct human consumption and as food in aquaculture, as well as the low environmental impact of forage fishing. Cutting forage fishing, as recommended by the Lenfest group, would force people to look elsewhere for the healthy protein and micronutrients provided by forage fish – likely at much greater environmental cost, the authors wrote.

“Forage fish provide some of the lowest environmental cost food in the world – low carbon footprint, no water use,” Dr. Hilborn said. “[There are] lots of reasons that forage fish are a really environmentally friendly form of food.”

It is also well-established that forage fisheries provide substantial health benefits to human populations through the supply of long chain omega-3 fatty acids, both directly through consumption in the form of fish oil capsules, and indirectly through animal feed for farmed fish and land animals. 

The paper was authored by Dr. Ray Hilborn, Dr. Ricardo O. Amoroso, and Dr. Eugenia Bogazzi from the University of Washington; Dr. Olaf P. Jensen from Rutgers University; Dr. Ana M. Parma from Center for the Study of Marine Systems -CONICET, Argentina; Dr. Cody Szuwalski from the University of California Santa Barbara; and Dr. Carl J. Walters from the University of British Columbia.

Read the full study here

Watch a video about the study here

Read an infographic about the study here

About the NCFC

The National Coalition for Fishing Communities provides a national voice and a consistent, reliable presence for fisheries in the nation’s capital and in national media. Comprised of fishing organizations, associations, and businesses from around the country, the NCFC helps ensure sound fisheries policies by integrating community needs with conservation values, leading with the best science, and connecting coalition members to issues and events of importance. For more, visit www.fisheriescoalition.org.

About IFFO

IFFO represents the marine ingredients industry worldwide. IFFO’s members reside in more than 50 countries, account for over 50% of world production and 75% of the fishmeal and fish oil traded worldwide. Approximately 5 million tonnes of fishmeal are produced each year globally, together with 1 million tonnes of fish oil. IFFO’s headquarters are located in London in the United Kingdom and it also has offices in Lima, Peru, and in Beijing, China. IFFO is an accredited Observer to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). To find out more, visit www.iffo.net.

PRESS CONTACT

Robert Vanasse

National Coalition for Fishing Communities

Washington

+1 (202) 333-2628

bob@savingseafood.org

Georgie Harris

IFFO, The Marine Ingredients Organisation

London

+44 (0) 2030 539 195

gharris@iffo.net

Western Pacific Council Director Says MPAs Must Be Targeted and Scientifically Supported

January 31, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Targeted and scientifically established Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in Pacific waters would have a better chance of attaining specific environmental goals according to Kitty Simonds, the Executive Director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

Simonds comments explaining this position were published last week on Professor Ray Hilborn’s Cfood blog.

They were in response to three specific questions CFOOD posed to fishery scientists about the US government’s use of MPAs.

The questions were:

What is the utility of setting MPA targets?
Do MPAs need to be No Take Zones (NTZs)?
What is the utility and wisdom of creating large ocean MPAs?

Following are Simond’s complete responses to each question.

1: The utility of targets — specifically 30%, but also the creation of appropriate targets for MPAs:

In the Western Pacific, 53% of the collective EEZ or 26% of the total US EEZ has been made through Presidential authority intono take MPAs, as blue legacies for Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. The issue of targets for us in the Western Pacific has thus become moot. These areas were established with little scientific evidence, and with promises of jobs and tourist dollars, all of which have failed to materialize.

Further, most of the vulnerable habitats in the Western Pacific have been protected for a long time by smaller MPAs that were part of the management of coral reef and associated ecosystems by State, Federal and Territorial Governments. Thus the target percentage becomesmeaningless, unless expressed as percent of a given habitat type, and the objectives of the closure.

2: The need for MPAs to be “No Take Zones” (NTZs):

Current MPA theory indicates that NTZs will typically accumulate biomass but from a fisheries management standpoint there should be a payoff from spillover and recruitment enhancement. Unfortunately, recent research using a number of different techniques shows that the Main Hawaiian Islands are isolated in terms of resource management and will not receivesubstantial subsidy from the large MPA in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The MHI must stand alone in management of marine resources.

This nicely illustrates the need for a much more intensive process to implement MPAs, with clearly defined goals, realistic expectations of benefits, review schedules and mechanisms to modify the MPA. Most of the large MPAs in the Western Pacific are isolated by distance and remote from most of the population. Only foreign fishing vessels, government vessels, or expensive well-equipped ocean going private vessels have the ability to reach these areas, so increased tourist traffic is highly unlikely.

3: The utility and overall wisdom of large ocean MPAs:

Largeopen ocean MPAs have been tried in the Western Pacific, when two large high seas pockets were closed, by the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission but fishing mortality for tunas did not fall as the effort did not decline but moved into neighboring EEZs. Further, highly migratory species by virtue of their life history will move through large ocean MPAs and thus become vulnerable to fishing.

Moreover, with climate change, the static nature of MPAs, large and small, may be called into question if they have no mechanism to be modified or relocated if species distributions change. Establishing an MPA is often seen as the target gain, with no real consideration apart from vaguely defined benefits, nor with the dynamic aspects of ecosystems in mind.

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

Skepticism About Marine Protected Areas

October 24th, 2016 — When looking at proposals for marine protected areas (MPAs) – such as the Biscayne National Park marine reserve and Our Florida Reefs proposals – it’s important to analyze all of the threats to our fisheries. MPAs can be an important tool in fisheries management, but they do nothing to address temperature rise, ocean acidification, pollution or invasive species. In a recent video by University of Washington Professor Ray Hilborn, he discusses why he is an MPA skeptic:

“The only threat that marine protected areas protect the ocean from is legal, regulated fishing, and we have a whole range of ways of regulating fisheries that are much more effective than marine protected areas.”

Unfortunately, the plans for the Biscayne marine reserve and Our Florida Reefs are based on an over-generalized assumption that MPAs will work in every situation – but that’s simply not the case. That’s why we must continue to stand up for sound, science-based fisheries management and voice our opposition to fishing closures that lack scientific evidence.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire 

Fight Over Papahanaumokuakea Expansion Isn’t Over

October 20, 2016 — Hawaii’s commercial fishing industry leaders are not finished fighting the fourfold expansion of a U.S. marine monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

President Barack Obama signed a proclamation in August to make Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument the world’s largest protected natural area after several months of intense lobbying for and against the proposal.

Now the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which actively opposed the expansion, wants the government to study the potential effects and find ways to alleviate them.

Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council Chair Edwin Ebisui, left, and Executive Director Kitty Simonds, at Wespac’s meeting last week.

“The impacts to the Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities as a result of monument expansion are considerable,” Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. said in a statement Friday. “The Council will write to the President about these and request the Department of Commerce to mitigate them.”

Wespac sets fisheries management policies for a 1.5-million-square-mile area and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to minimize bycatch, protect habitat and prevent overfishing.

The latest wave of opposition to the monument rolled in earlier this month at the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee meeting in Honolulu. 

New committee member Ray Hilborn, a prominent marine biologist from the University of Washington, railed against large marine protected areas.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

RAY HILBORN: Obama’s new ocean preserves are bad for the environment and for people

October 6th, 2016 — Who wants to save the oceans? Short answer: everyone, especially politicians. A less frequently asked question is whether their high-profile efforts always work.

Right now, world leaders seem to want to see who can declare the biggest marine protected areas, or MPAs, in their territory. MPAs are kinds of national parks for sea life that extends from ocean surface to ocean floor. Commercial fishing and other undersea ventures are banned in them.

They are popping up everywhere. In August, President Obama announced one in the western Pacific Ocean that is 50 per cent bigger than Texas. In September he created another, more modest one off the coast of New England.

Britain announced yet another MPA in September around St. Helena Island in the south Pacific. It is half the size of the Lone Star State.

In fact, the MPA movement has become a religion with accepted articles of faith that more and bigger are better.  This current obsession is bad for the oceans, bad for the global environment, and bad for people.

Consider what the imposition of an MPA can do to the economy and livelihood of local fishers, who are unable to easily pick up and move elsewhere. Some fishermen in New England are warning that they could go out of business as a result of the new Atlantic marine preserve.

Large MPAs are also bad for people because reducing ocean fish production by itself will mean less high quality, nutritious food available for the poorest people in the world and less employment for fishing-dependent communities

Political leaders argue they are protecting the oceans with MPAs, but mostly they aren’t. The major threats to ocean health and biodiversity, including global warming, ocean acidification, oil spills, floating masses of plastics, pollutant run-off from land, and illegal fishing–all are not addressed by this conservation measure.

Read the full opinion piece at Fox News 

Quit crabbing: Obama creates major no-go zone for fishermen in the Atlantic

September 16, 2016 — President Barack Obama has created a 4,900 square mile no-go zone for commercial fishing and other activity off the coast of New England as the first-ever Atlantic marine monument, a move loudly hailed by many environmentalists, but drawing strong protests from the fishing industry as well as causing discomfort among some prominent Democratic politicians whose constituents  are affected.

According to the White House, the newly protected zone, which focuses on a section of the lip of the continental shelf near the fishing grounds of Georges Bank, “includes three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and four underwater mountains known as ‘seamounts’ that are biodiversity hotspots and home to many rare and endangered species.”

But the area now known as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is also the site of  rich lobster and crab fisheries and other commercial fishing activities that are overseen by regional fisheries management councils and are considered to be well-managed, sustainable activities. Some of the fisheries have self-imposed  restrictions that are tougher than those laid out by the regulators—and also fish at sea levels far above the ocean bottoms that the marine preserve claims to protect.

Under the monument designation, commercial fishermen have 60 days to depart from the area. Lobster and crab fishermen have been given a seven-year phase-out  provision. Recreational fishing will continue to be allowed.

As he did last month in creating a new Pacific marine preserve that is now the largest marine set-aside in the world, Obama used the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows creation of the protected area by decree  rather than the normal legislative process—a procedure that has drawn as much criticism from fishing communities as the creation of the preserve itself.

In a press release, the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association declared that “We find it deplorable that the government is kicking the domestic fishing fleet out of an area where they sustainably harvest healthy fish stocks.  Declaring a monument via Presidential fiat under unilateral authority of the Antiquities Act stands contrary to the principles of open government and transparency espoused by this President.”

Ray Hilborn, a fisheries scientist who is an expert on global fishing stocks, concurs. He told Fox News, “There is simply no need for arbitrary declaration of Marine Monuments.  We have a legal framework that can protect habitats, and rebuild fish stocks that relies on scientific analysis and consultation.  If there is a real threat these areas can be closed by the fisheries management councils.  Bypassing science and consultation is a very dangerous trend.”

Read the full story at Fox News

Closing parts of the ocean to fishing not enough to protect marine ecosystems

July 18, 2016 — A University of Washington fisheries professor argues that saving biodiversity in the world’s oceans requires more than banning fishing with marine protected areas, or oceanic wilderness areas. In a three-page editorial published in the journal Nature, he argues that this increasingly popular conservation strategy is not as effective as properly managing recreational and commercial fisheries. “There’s this idea that the only way you can protect the ocean is by permanently closing parts of the ocean to fishing, with no-take areas,” said Ray Hilborn, a professor in the UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “You protect biodiversity better by regulating fisheries over the country’s entire economic zone.”

Marine protected areas have grown in popularity since the early 2000s. Recent examples include an area twice the size of Texas in the central Pacific established in 2014 by President Barack Obama, and a proposal to close 25 percent of the Seychelles’ exclusive economic zone, an island nation off Africa’s east coast.

Several environmental organizations have set a longer-term goal of making 30 percent of the world’s oceans into no-take marine protected areas by the year 2030. But Hilborn believes this is not the best way to protect global marine ecosystems.

“If the problem is overfishing or bycatch, then fisheries management is much more effective than establishing MPAs because you regulate the catch over the entire economic zone,” Hilborn said. “I don’t see how anyone can defend MPAs as a better method than fisheries management, except in places where you just can’t do management.”

In countries with functioning fisheries management systems, Hilborn believes, conservationists and the fishing industry should work together on large-scale protection of marine biodiversity and sensitive marine habitats.

Read the full story at Science Daily

Exclusive: Q&A with Ray Hilborn regarding conflict of interest accusations

July 16, 2016 — In response to accusations of conflicts of interest made against him by Greenpeace, renowned global fisheries expert Ray Hilborn compiled documents defending his work from leading academic journals in which he published his research, as well as from an official at the University of Washington who helped lead an official review of his work at the university (The documents can be found at the bottom of this story). Hilborn also answered questions posed by SeafoodSource regarding Greenpeace’s claims via email.

SeafoodSource: Do you feel like you’ve adequately disclosed your funding sources and any potential conflicts of interest in your publications and public statements?

Hilborn: As UW, PNAS and Science concluded, I complied with the regulations required by the University and journals. I will now be much more explicit in the future since this has been raised and Science has changed its policies since 2009.

SeafoodSource: Can you explain how industry co-funding of research contributes to better fisheries management?

Hilborn: It would take pages to document all the ways that I know of that industry co-funding has contributed to management. I chaired a National Research Council report on this subject – National Research Council. 2003, Cooperative research in the National Marine Fisheries Service. National Research Council Press, Washington D.C.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

Ray Hilborn fights back against Greenpeace accusations

July 15, 2016 — Global fisheries expert and University of Washington Professor Ray Hilborn is fighting back against accusations made in May by the environmental activist group Greenpeace alleging he did not appropriately disclose funding he received from the seafood industry.

In an email to SeafoodSource, Hilborn denied any conflict of interest in his work and attached copies of emails sent from representatives of the academic journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Science backing the integrity of his contributions to both publications. Hilborn also attached a copy of an email from Mary Lidstrom, the vice provost for research at the University of Washington, showing that a university review of Hilborn’s actions did not reveal any violations of the university’s policies or procedures governing conflicts of interest or outside consulting.

“As UW, PNAS and Science concluded, I complied with the regulations required by the University and journals,” Hilborn told SeafoodSource. (See the full interview here).

In her email, which was sent to PNAS Deputy Executive Editor Daniel Salsbury, Lidstrom said the university reviewed Hilborn’s funding types and sources, publication history and disclosures, as well as approvals for outside consulting and checked them against UW policies.

“We have not identified any actions or lack thereof, engaged in by Dr. Hilborn which violate University policies or procedures governing conflicts of interest or outside consulting,” Lidstrom wrote.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ray Hilborn receives international fisheries science prize

May 26, 2016 — Ray Hilborn, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, this week will receive the 2016 International Fisheries Science Prize at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea.

The award is given to Hilborn by the World Council of Fisheries Societies’ International Fisheries Science Prize Committee in recognition of his 40-year career of “highly diversified research and publication in support of global fisheries science and conservation,” according to a news release.

For Hilborn, who has received numerous awards for his research — including the Volvo Environment Prizeand the Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award — this recognition is particularly significant because it comes from other experts in fisheries science.

“It’s very gratifying in that it is experts in fisheries that are doing the evaluation and selection for this award,” Hilborn said.

Read the full story at the University of Washington