Saving Seafood

Stimson Center calls for SIMP expansion beyond current NOAA proposal

April 5, 2023 — The Stimson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington, D.C., U.S.A.-based think-tank, is calling on NOAA to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) beyond the current proposal offered by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

SIMP was created six years ago to block the import of select seafood products that had been mislabeled or harvested through illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The program currently targets 11 species groups, but NOAA Fisheries announced a plan in January 2023 to expand the program and more than double the number of species it targets.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US Sanctions on Russia’s Seafood Have a Big Loophole: China Processors

April 15, 2022 — A U.S. ban on seafood imports from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine was supposed to sap billions of dollars from Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

But shortcomings in import regulations mean that Russian-caught pollock, salmon and crab are likely to enter the U.S. anyway, by way of the country vital to seafood supply chains across the world: China.

Like the U.S. seafood industry, Russian companies rely heavily on China to process their catch. Once there, the seafood can be re-exported to the U.S. as a “product of China” because country of origin labelling isn’t required.

The result is that nearly a third of the wild-caught fish imported from China is estimated to have been caught in Russian waters, according to an International Trade Commission study of 2019 data. For pollock and sockeye salmon, the rate is even higher — 50% to 75%.

“China doesn’t catch cod. They don’t catch pollock. But yet, they’re one of the largest exporters of these whitefish in the world,” said Sally Yozell, a former policy director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who now is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington. “Having it labeled as a Chinese product is really not fair to the consumers and to restaurants.”

Read the full story at NBC New York

Stimson Center’s Sally Yozell: RFMOs, China must do more to fight IUU

February 6, 2020 — Some of the key global instruments to fight illegal fishing are under-resourced and underperforming, according to Sally Yozell, director of the environmental security program at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C., U.S.A.-based think-tank. Previously a senior adviser to former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Yozell was instrumental in starting the Our Ocean Conference. In her role at the Stimson Center, Yozell focuses on ocean security, climate security, and wildlife protection. Her recommendations on reducing global illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing included in the drafting of the Maritime Security and Enforcement Act, which entered into U.S. law in December.

Through her recent work in co-authoring the Stimson Center report, “Shining a Light,” Yozell took a close look at illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Chinese fleet. In an interview, she answered questions from SeafoodSource on how the fight against IUU can be better resourced and how Chinese authorities and the insurance industry can play a bigger role in that fight.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Five countries account for 90 percent of distant-water fleet effort

November 15, 2019 — The global distant-water fishing industry benefits just a handful of fishing countries, while capturing the bounty of coastal nations that often have poor governance and limited resources.

A new report published by the Stimson Center identifies the top distant-water fishing fleets in the world, where they operate, and their connection to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The report argues that the current distant-water fishing industry is unsustainable, and makes concrete recommendations for how to increase transparency and accountability.

Read the full story at Seafood Source