Saving Seafood

US tuna fishing company fined USD 1.6 million for illegal waste dumping

November 3, 2016 — U.S.-based tuna fishing company Pacific Breeze Fisheries, LLC, has been accuised by the U.S. Department of Justice of discharging oily waste into South Pacific waters near American Samoa and of maintaining false records of the events, leaving the company on the hook to pay a USD 1.6 million (EUR 1.44 million) fine, according to a report from Ship and Bunker.

The tuna company admitted that on two separate occasions, one in 2014 and the other in 2015, its engineers released oily bilge water into American Samoan waters, and then failed to properly document the acts. Pacific Breeze also admitted that its senior engineers did not properly document instances of oil waste disposal in the ship’s Oil Record Book from the period between October 2014 and July 2015, according to court documents.

Pacific Breeze will pay USD 400,000 (EUR 360,644) to the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa, in addition to the USD 1.6 million (EUR 1.44 million) fine. While the company does not currently manage any active fishing vessels, it has vowed to implement “an ‘extensive’ environmental compliance plan should it resume operations,” reported Ship and Bunker.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

FLORIDA: Men sentenced for poaching spiny lobsters in Miami-Dade waters

April 5, 2016 — MIAMI — Two South Florida men have been sentenced for illegally poaching spiny lobsters in Miami-Dade County.

On Tuesday, 54-year-old Donny Caridad Gonzalez and 77-year-old Nemesio Garcia Gonzalez appeared in court to be sentenced for the crime that occurred on May 9, 2015.

According to officials, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation officers observed a suspicious lobster shell inside a crab trap, even though the boat owner claimed no lobsters were on the boat. As officials investigated the boat, an officer found a total of 87 wrung lobster tails, 66 of which were undersized.

The lobsters were illegally collected outside of regular lobster season, which is Aug. 6 through March 31.

Read the full story at WSVN

US expands tougher ‘dolphin-safe’ rules around the world

March 22, 2016 — WASHINGTON(AP) — The United States, facing sanctions for discriminating against Mexican tuna imports, is expanding tougher rules for labeling tuna ‘”dolphin-safe” on the rest of the world instead of easing up on Mexico.

Last fall, the World Trade Organization ruled that the United States was unfairly using stricter tracking and verification standards on tuna fishing in the waters from San Diego to Peru, where Mexican fleets operate, than it was imposing on fleets elsewhere. In retaliation, Mexico has been preparing to slap $472 million in tariffs against imports of high fructose corn syrup from the United States.

The U.S. decided against loosening the rules on Mexico, choosing instead a plan that “elevates requirements for tuna product from every other region of the world,” U.S. Trade Rep. Michael Froman said in a statement.

The dolphin-safe labels are supposed to ensure that canned, dried and frozen tuna has been caught without endangering dolphins. Schools of tuna tend to gather and swim with some species of dolphins.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Gloucester Daily Times

In Mexico, Fish Poachers Push Endangered Porpoises to Brink

March 1, 2016 — In 2013, Song Shen Zhen, a 75-year-old resident of Calexico, California, was attempting to re-enter the United States from Mexico when border patrol noticed a strange lump beneath the floor mats of his Dodge Attitude. The plastic bags beneath the mats contained not cocaine, but another valuable product: 27 swim bladders from the totoaba, a critically endangered fish whose air bladders, a Chinese delicacy with alleged medicinal value, fetch up to $20,000 apiece. Agents tracked Zhen to his house, where they discovered a makeshift factory containing another 214 bladders. Altogether, Zhen’s contraband was worth an estimated $3.6 million.

The robust black market is grim news for totoaba — but it’s an even greater catastrophe for vaquita, a diminutive porpoise that dwells solely in the northernmost reaches of the Gulf of California, the narrow body of water that extends between the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico. Since 1997, around 80 percent of the world’s vaquitas have perished as bycatch, many in gill nets operated by illegal totoaba fishermen.

Today, fewer than 100 vaquitas remain, earning it the dubious title of world’s most endangered marine mammal. Scientists fear the porpoise could vanish by 2018. “The possible extinction of the vaquita is the most important issue facing the marine mammal community right now,” says Barbara Taylor, a conservation biologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

The vaquita — “little cow” in Spanish — is a creature of superlatives. Not only is it the most imperiled cetacean, it is also the smallest, at less than five feet long from snout to tail, and the most geographically restricted: Its entire range could fit four times within Los Angeles’ city limits. Prominent black patches ring its eyes and trace its lips, giving Phocoena sinus a charming, panda-like appearance. The porpoise, which typically travels in pairs or small groups and communicates using rapid clicks, is famously cryptic; conservationists recently went two years without documenting a single sighting. Some Mexican fishermen insist the vaquita is already extinct, photographic evidence notwithstanding.

Read the full story at Yale Environment 360

House Natural Resources Committee to Hold Hearing on International Fisheries Treaties, March 1, 2016

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — February 29, 2016 — The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans will hold a meeting on March 1, 2016 at 2:00pm to discuss a bill that implements U.S. participation in two international fisheries treaties that the country helped negotiate: the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources in the North Pacific Ocean, and the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources in the South Pacific Ocean.

Bill Summary:

H.R. 4576 implements U.S. participation in two international fishery management agreements to which the United States helped negotiate: the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources in the North Pacific Ocean and the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources in the South Pacific Ocean.

The bill also amends the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention Implementation Act (P.L. 109-479) to help ensure that U.S. Commissioners to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention (Convention) advocate positions that minimize disadvantages to U.S. fishermen in relation to other foreign entities party to the Convention.

 

Witnesses (listed in alphabetical order):

Ambassador David Balton

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries

U.S. Department of State Washington, D.C.

 

Mr. Brian Hallman

Executive Director

American Tunaboat Association San Diego, California

 

Mr. Dan Hull

Chairman

North Pacific Fishery Management Council Anchorage, Alaska

 

Ms. Kitty Simonds

Executive Director

West Pacific Fishery Management Council Honolulu, Hawaii

 

Mr. Russell Smith

Deputy Assistant

Secretary for International Fisheries National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Washington, D. C.

 

Cosponsors: Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

 

View a PDF of the Hearing Notice

View a PDF of the Hearing Memo

 

Rep. Duncan Hunter to Kerry: Help save US tuna jobs

January 5, 2016 — U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter wants the U.S. State Department to step in to assist American tuna boats — many with ties to San Diego — that are shut out of a large area of the Pacific Ocean for the first time in nearly 30 years.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, given to The San Diego Union-Tribune on Monday, Hunter writes that the U.S. government must act fast to help the tuna fleet.

Last week, administrators of the South Pacific Tuna Treaty — a 27-year-old accord among 17 nations governing waters in the western Pacific — refused to issue 2016 licenses on Jan. 1. It said American boats must pay millions of dollars in fees, they agreed to in August, to fish international waters.

Some of the tuna boat operators in the 37-boat fleet say a bad 2015 fishing season has left them unable to pay the first quarterly payment of $17 million.

“An extended prohibition against the U.S.-flag tuna fleet fishing in the treaty area may well bankrupt the fleet and jeopardize the thousands of American jobs it supports,” wrote Hunter, R-Alpine.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

Could invasive lionfish end up in Chesapeake Bay?

December 29, 2015 — Few fish are as lovely as the lionfish. Few are as venomous.

A frilly, colorful native of the clear tropical waters and reefs of the South Pacific and Indian oceans, the lionfish has been a favorite of aquarium hobbyists for years.

In the Atlantic, however, it was unknown.

Then in the 1980s genetic researchers believe a handful of hobbyists in Florida, perhaps thinking it a kindness, released their aquarium pets into the wild ocean.

At that point, the lionfish proved they aren’t just lovely and venomous — they also breed like rabbits on Viagra. Ravenous eaters, they gobble up any smaller fish they spot and easily displace native species. And because nothing in this part of the Atlantic recognizes them as prey, their population has exploded into a serious and unfortunate marine invasion.

“It’s gotten really bad,” said Richard Brill, fishery biologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point.

“There’ve been some efforts in Florida and some parts of the Caribbean to get people to eat them. And there’s been some efforts — and this is pretty crazy — but groups of recreational spear fishermen have been spearing them and then feeding what they catch to sharks, trying to convince the local shark population to eat these things.”

The hardy little invaders have established year-round populations from the Gulf of Mexico to the Outer Banks. They’ve been spotted in warmer months as far north as Massachusetts, although they can’t survive the northern winters.

Read the full story at the Hampton Roads Daily Press