Saving Seafood

Maine man tackles commercial fishing – without a net

January 30, 2017 — Chef Benjamin Hasty, owner of Thistle Pig in South Berwick, was having a beer with a co-worker at 7th Settlement, a brewpub in Dover, New Hampshire, when he saw Tim Rider walk by, carrying fresh fish to the pub’s kitchen.

“We kept seeing someone schlepping these big totes of fish going by us,” Hasty recalled. “I said, ‘I need to introduce myself because I need to get some of that.’ ”

Hasty invited Rider, owner of New England Fishmongers, to join him for a cup of coffee. Rider told him he is one of the few New England commercial fishermen who still catches groundfish the old-fashioned way, with a rod and reel; experts believe he is the only one in Maine, and perhaps all of New England, who is doing so full time.

Read more at the Portland Press Herald

Tiny Island Chain Wants To Create The World’s Largest Ocean Sanctuary

April 5, 2016 — In an effort to protect fisheries and preserve one of the planet’s healthiest marine ecosystems, communities in a remote archipelago south of Tahiti are working to establish the largest fully protected marine reserve on the planet.

The proposal, which municipalities in the Austral Islands presented to the French Polynesian government on Monday, would ban fishing in more than 385,000 square miles of ocean surrounding the island chain and establish sustainable coastal fishing areas around each of its five inhabited islands.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, which helped the communities draft their proposal, said in an announcement on Tuesday that islanders hope the reserve will “help maintain healthy fish stocks to feed their families and support local fishermen while maintaining Polynesian customs that date back hundreds of years.”

The reserve, if approved, would be roughly the size of California, Nevada and Arizona combined.

Jérôme Petit, director of Pew’s Global Ocean Legacy campaign in French Polynesia, told The Huffington Post that the 6,000-plus residents of Rimatara, Rurutu, Tubuai, Raivavae and Rapa are concerned about the environmental damage affecting the world’s fisheries.

“They say, ‘We fish now in one day what we could fish 20 years ago in one hour,’” Petit said.

The reserve would extend roughly 200 nautical miles around each island, with the exception of the islands’ northern coasts. Sustainable coastal fishing areas extending 20 miles from each island would allow local anglers to fish from boats that are less than 25 feet long, according to the proposal.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post

International Seafood Sustainability Foundation to Hold its First China Skipper Workshop

April 5, 2016 — WASHINGTON — On April 6, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) will expand its global series of skipper workshops to China for the first time since the Foundation began the unique platform for knowledge exchange in 2009. The Shanghai workshop is the result of a collaboration between ISSF and the China Overseas Fisheries Association (COFA) and will engage tuna purse seine fishers, crew members and fleet managers in an event that seeks to share best practices for sustainable tuna fishing and mitigate fishing’s impact on the marine ecosystem.

“ISSF skipper workshops have reached more than 900 skippers to date, covering nine fleets in 2015 alone,” said Dr. Victor Restrepo, Vice President of Science at ISSF and chair of its Scientific Advisory Committee. “With roughly 790 large scale purse seine vessels operating today, we know we are engaging a substantial portion of the purse seine capacity on a global basis. Expanding these workshops to the Chinese fleet is an imperative next step as we work toward the global development and adoption of best practices for bycatch reduction and more in the world’s tuna fisheries.”

“We are pleased to welcome ISSF to Shanghai to help us continue to make improvements to ensure that bycatch is mitigated, that there is better compliance by Chinese tuna fishing fleet on bycatch measures adopted by t-RFMOs, and that tuna stocks remain healthy,” said Zhao Gang of COFA.

Dr. Jefferson Murua, with the Marine Research Division of Azti-Tecnalia, will lead the workshop in Shanghai. For seven years, ISSF has commissioned scientist presenters to traverse the world in an effort to share best practices with tuna fishers in every port. The outreach focuses on purse seine fisheries, where the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) is often employed, and emphasizes the importance of maximizing the survival of species. Particular attention is paid to species like sharks and rays, and reducing waste from small tuna and other fish species. The workshops are also an important opportunity for scientists to dialogue with fishers about what techniques and tools may be most successfully implemented given the variable dynamics of the world’s tuna fisheries. These interactions, in turn, help inform ISSF’s bycatch research priorities as ISSF continues to identify and advance sustainable fishing practices. Previous skipper workshops have been held in Panama, Ecuador, Mexico, Spain, Ghana, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, USA, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, American Samoa and more. Additional workshops in 2016 will target the fleets of Indonesia, China, Spain, Ecuador, Ghana, USA and Venezuela.

In addition, all ISSF participating companies – tuna processors and marketers that represent around 75% of the world’s tuna processing capacity – are required to purchase tuna from vessels whose skippers have reviewed these best practices, either by attending a workshop in person or taking advantage of ISSF’s additional skipper outreach materials, specifically ISSF skipper workshop videos or skippers guidebooks, both of which are available in multiple languages. Participating companies are audited against this commitment annually, the results of which are shared in the aggregate in an annual compliance report as part of ISSF’s annual report.

This multi-faceted effort – from on-the-ground workshops to company commitment and compliance auditing and reporting – are part of ISSF’s holistic work to help tuna fisheries make continuous improvements as they edge closer to becoming more robustly sustainable and capable of meeting the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification standard without conditions.

Good Management can Lead to a More Sustainable Future

March 30, 2016 — A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that there is a triple bottom line, that abundance, catch and profit can all be increased by reforming fisheries management in places where it has not been reformed. It provides the most comprehensive estimates of the status of global fisheries and shows that the large fish stocks of the world that provide 95% of global catch on average are at about the abundance that would produce long term maximum yield, and fishing pressure on average is below traditional targets. Less than 20% of fish stocks appear to be overfished by U.S. standards.

Comment by Ray Hilborn, University of Washington, @hilbornr:

The paper by Costello and others (including myself) Global fishery prospects under contrasting management regimes that appeared March 28 in PNAS, provides the most comprehensive assessment of the status and potential of global fisheries. Its key finding is that when stocks are overfished, most can recover within 10 years if the appropriate management measures are taken. This means that globally we could have more catch, more fish in the ocean and more profit. Most of the potential for this “triple bottom line” comes from Asia where fisheries are both large, and at present, mostly unmanaged. We must distinguish between fisheries that are reformed and those that are poorly regulated and remain in a race to fish.

Diving deeper into the estimated current status of fish stocks, we find it depends greatly on the size of the stock. Although the paper examined the status of 4,324 individual stocks, just 719 of them provide 96% of the catch. From the perspective of catch, profitability, and fish in the ocean, it is the 719 that are critical and feed us.

Read the full story at CFood

New DNA results answer consumers’ demand for trust in seafood

March 15, 2016 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

Two-thirds (67 percent) of U.S. seafood consumers say they want to know that their fish can be traced back to a known and trusted source, with 58 percent saying they look to ecolabels as a trusted source of information. Globally, 55 percent doubt that the seafood they consume is what it says on the package. These findings are from the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) latest survey of more than 16,000 seafood consumers across 21 countries.

Today, the MSC also released results from DNA tests showing that over 99 percent* of MSC ecolabeled products are correctly labeled. In 2015, the MSC commissioned the Wildlife DNA Forensics unit at Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) to conduct DNA tests on a random sample of 257 MSC ecolabeled seafood products from 16 countries. The test verifies that the species described on the packaging is the same as that in the product. By comparison, Oceana’s nationwide survey in 2013 found one-third (33 percent) of U.S. seafood samples genetically analyzed were mislabeled. 

Commenting on the results, Brian Perkins, MSC Regional Director – Americas, said, “The MSC’s DNA results prove you can trust that seafood sold with the blue MSC ecolabel really is what the package says it is and can be traced from ocean to plate. Last month, the U.S. government announced proposed rules that would require tracking to combat illegal fishing and fraud. Many businesses are left wondering whether they’re selling seafood that was produced legally and sustainably. MSC certification means consumers and businesses can be confident that MSC ecolabeled fish has been caught legally and can be traced back to a sustainable source.”

The latest round of DNA testing is the fifth to be commissioned by the MSC. Previous results also showed very little mislabeling of MSC ecolabeled seafood. The MSC’s DNA testing program and results are captured in a new report, Ocean to plate: How DNA testing helps to ensure traceable sustainable seafood.

MSC ecolabeled fish is sold and processed by certified organizations operating in more than 38,000 sites in over 100 countries. Fishers, processors, retailers and chefs handling MSC certified seafood must follow strict requirements to ensure that seafood is traceable and correctly labeled. The MSC Chain of Custody Standard is used by leading brands in driving awareness and consumer education on sustainable seafood such as Whole Foods, McDonald’s, and IKEA to ensure the integrity of the products they sell.

Susan Forsell, Vice President, Sustainability, McDonald’s USA said: “We know our customers care about where their food comes from, which is why McDonald’s USA is proud to only serve fish sourced from a Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified sustainable fishery. This means that our customers can confidently know that the wild-caught, Alaska Pollock they enjoy on our Filet-O-Fish sandwich can be traced back to sustainably managed fisheries, direct from the pristine waters of Alaska.”

Over-regulation threatens fishing industry

December 30, 2015 — HAMPTON, N.H. — New Hampshire fishermen locked horns with a federal agency this year over fishing regulations and mandatory costs they said would put them out of business for good.

The fight ultimately led to a federal lawsuit filed in December against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the nation’s fisheries. The suit challenged the legality of NOAA’s intent to make fishermen pay for observers to monitor their compliance with federal regulations. Fishermen said it was unfair they would be forced to pay for their own policing.

Fishermen were already struggling with regulations in the start of 2015. In August 2014, NOAA’s scientific arm reported that Gulf of Maine cod was down 97 percent from historic sustainable levels. That led NOAA to cut fishing allocations for commercial fishermen in 2015 by roughly 70 percent from last year. NOAA also prohibited recreational fishermen from catching any cod and limited haddock this year.

Half of the commercial groundfishing fleet went inactive this year as a result, leaving only nine. Many recreational fishermen have picked up land jobs for supplemental income and anticipate leaving the fishing business eventually for good.

Read the full story at the Portsmouth Herald

 

 

Can the net transform the world’s fishing industries?

November 30, 2015 — Local fishing communities in Indonesia are beset by a multitude of connected challenges, from illegal fishing to declining fish populations to their own personal safety in the country’s turbulent seas.

But a New York based telecoms company called Tone believes mobile network technology can solve these problems by getting fishermen in remote communities connected to the Internet through an initiative called mFish. Scaled up, they believe their model could address the problem of unsustainable and illegal fishing globally, as well as being applied in many other contexts.

“What we’re trying to do is bridge the digital divide,” says Tone’s Chief Marketing Officer Roald Van Wyk. “People assume technology equals connectivity, but a smartphone is no use if you can’t afford the data.” According to Tone, mobile broadband penetration in the developing world is still just 21%, indicating a huge untapped market which they’re hoping to help bring online.

Tone’s business model is to work with local partners to deliver a range of affordable data plans in countries where far fewer people are locked into long term contracts with mobile carriers – what’s known as ‘unbundling.’ The idea is that consumers get access to various content packages via channels on the Tone platform, some of which are co-branded with local companies to make them affordable. Tone will reinvest 20% of profits into social and environmental initiatives through its foundation.

Read the full story at The Guardian

 

To catch a fishing thief, SkyTruth uses data from the air, land and sea

November 24, 2015 — No one knows how much illegal fishing goes on in the oceans. They’re too vast to patrol. But a small nonprofit is helping governments track down seafood pirates by using powerful software, digital maps and publicly available data.

That nonprofit, SkyTruth, is led by a 52-year-old geologist named John Amos. It has fewer than a dozen employees and operates out of rural Shepherdstown, West Virginia – population: 2,140. Yet last spring, SkyTruth used its data to help the government of the Pacific island nation Palau track down a Taiwanese fishing ship whose holds were filled with illegally caught tuna and shark fins.

“Busting the bad guys is sexy,” says Amos, but he has bigger things in mind. In partnership with Google and Oceana, an international conservation and advocacy group, SkyTruth is building Global Fishing Watch, a website that allows the public to track fishing activities and outlaws and enable seafood purveyors to assure that the fish they are buying comes from sustainable fisheries. It also plans to provide data to researchers.

Meantime, SkyTruth does pathbreaking work around oil spills, mountaintop coal mining and hydraulic fracturing – for example, tracking pollution from unconventional oil and gas drilling, and using crowdsourcing to track the growth of fracking.

SkyTruth was among the nonprofits and companies showcased 18 November at Wired in the Wild: Can technology save the planet?, a daylong conference in Washington DC organized by World Wildlife Fund to highlight ways in which technology can support conservation. Participants heard about deploying drones to survey wildlife, attaching sensors to rhinos to help identify poachers and using submersibles to take marine biologists deep below the surface of the oceans to study coral.

Read the full story at The Guardian

 

Voices of Alaska: Unified effort in Congress protects Alaska’s seafood powerhouse

November 20, 2015 — Alaska is our nation’s seafood powerhouse. With nine of our country’s top twenty fishing ports by volume, we understand the vital role our seafood industry has played in our communities in the past, how important it is now, and how central the industry will be in the future. Protecting and enhancing Alaska’s fisheries is one of the top priorities of our delegation.

That’s why we were particularly pleased to have passed bipartisan legislation to help protect and enhance our fishing industry. H.R. 477, the Illegal, Unregulated and Underreported (IUU) Fishing Enforcement Act of 2015, increases enforcement capabilities for U.S. authorities to combat illegal fishing and protect fisheries off the coast of Alaska, and around the world. It was signed into law on November 5, 2015.

At issue is how illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, or “pirate” fishing, is hurting our economy, our fishing communities, our healthy seafood stocks, and our sustainable oceans.

Our country’s fishermen have long been subject to sustainable management-based rules and regulations to ensure the long-term vitality of our species; pirate fishermen are not. These rogue vessels raid our oceans wherever, whenever, and however they please. Globally, legal fishing operations lose an estimated $10 to $23 billion a year to pirate fishing. Here at home, the Alaska King Crab fishery alone is estimated to have lost more than $550 million in the past 14 years.

Read the full opinion piece at Peninsula Clarion

 

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