Saving Seafood

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

New Free App Helps Fishermen Manage Catch Data

November 9, 2015 — The Catch App, launched by SuccorfishM2M, is a revolutionary new fisheries management app that is being seen as a real solution to a growing need for much improved data evidence within global commercial fisheries.

Designed by SuccorfishM2M and developed in conjunction with Blue Marine Foundation, it provides the industry with a complete, up-to-date, online digital diary that gives users access to their own fishing data as well as the ability to share it with whom they choose.

Catch App integrates seamlessly with the SuccorfishM2M SC2-iVMS system to provide a highly detailed, real time picture of vessel location and activities.

Taking less than two minutes to complete, it digitally stores and submits catch entries that are typically recorded on paper and allows fishermen to compare gear, bait and season performance as well as calculate catch per unit effort in a bid to encourage efficient practices and fisheries sustainability.

The app promotes total traceability by allowing instant catch reporting prior to landing. It can manage quotas through efficient, real-time reporting, allows fishermen to configure the system according to local parameters and fully supports the need for documented fisheries.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

NEFMC: Response to Study on Rising Water Temps in the Gulf of Maine

October 29, 2015  — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The Gulf of Maine, located off northern New England and Canada, has hosted important commercial and recreational marine fisheries for centuries. In addition to existing threats from land-based pollution, marine discharges, energy development, and disturbances to habitat, a more recent problem, temperature rise, has emerged. The just-published paper in Science —Slow Adaptation in the Face of Rapid Warming Leads to the Collapse of Atlantic Cod in the Gulf of Maine — adds to the increasing body of work on this topic.

As an organization responsible for the management of fisheries in federal waters that encompass the Gulf of Maine, the New England Fishery Management Council (Council), along with partners, NOAA Fisheries and the New England states, offers comments on this paper.

  • Most importantly, climate change is a very real issue that affects fisheries in ways we are just beginning to understand and is one the Council and others must confront.
  • This particular paper presents interesting research, but as is generally the case, it is rare that any one scientific study provides “The Answer.” This one will almost certainly generate more discussion and further consideration of how fisheries management bodies might respond.
  • NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center is actively investigating climate change that could help develop possible responses. The Science paper will likely become part of the larger discussion on how to adapt and respond to climate change. During that process, it will be the subject of careful review, including testing of its assumptions and conclusions. Should they stand up to this scrutiny, the work may influence future quota-setting
  • Work is underway by the Council to look more broadly at fisheries through ecosystem-based fisheries management; those efforts may illuminate the way in which we consider this pressing threat to the productivity of fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and elsewhere.
  • More critically, the Science paper appears to presume that the Council should have anticipated the unusual temperature rise in 2012, without any explanation of how that could have been done. The current quota for Gulf of Maine cod is the lowest on record, and will almost certainly remain so in the foreseeable future. The goal at this time is to allow sustainable levels of fishing on healthy stocks, such as haddock, redfish, and pollock to continue, while creating the opportunity for cod to recover.

After reviewing the paper, Council Executive Director Tom Nies summarized his reaction to the challenges raised in the Science paper. “Fishery managers will need to adapt to the host of significant changes caused by the rapid rise in water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine; specifically, the New England Council will continue its close partnership with the scientific community in order to mount an effective response to this circumstance.”

View a PDF of the release here

Celebrating 15 years of sustainable seafood: MSC’s Annual Report 2014-15

October 13, 2015 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has today released its annual report, marking 15 years since the launch of the transformational program rewarding and incentivising sustainable fishing.

The 2014-15 Annual Report, Celebrating 15 years of certified sustainable seafood, showcases industry leaders working to safeguard seafood supplies for the future. Fisheries which meet the MSC’s high standard of sustainability now catch close to nine million metric tonnes of seafood, representing almost 10% of the total global wild-caught seafood supply. This includes nearly half (45.9%) of the global whitefish catch. Seafood retailers and restaurants now sell over 17,000 products with the MSC ecolabel and more than 34,000 business locations are part of the MSC Chain of Custody, ensuring a traceable global supply chain.

“This growth and momentum, through the leadership of our partners, is driving lasting change in the way our oceans are fished, rewarding good practice and catalysing improvements where needed to meet the growing global demand for certified sustainable seafood” says MSC CEO, Rupert Howes.

This year, the MSC updated its Fisheries Standard to ensure it reflects the latest science and best management practices widely adopted by the world’s leading fisheries. A growing evidence base, captured in the MSC’s 2015 Global Impacts Report, also shows that MSC certified fisheries are maintaining healthy fish populations and effectively managing their impacts on habitats and ecosystems.

“The MSC is a learning organisation and we’ve invested heavily in strengthening the rigour of our program and building our evidence base on how our partners are delivering positive outcomes for our oceans” adds Mr Howes.

On the market side, the report acknowledges the bold global commitment by IKEA to only sell and serve certified sustainable seafood throughout its more than 370 stores, and the Iglo Group’s 100% sustainable fish commitment. This year also marked the MSC’s arrival in a new market with MSC certified products on sale in South Korea thanks to seafood processor Hansung and Lotte Mart, the country’s largest retailer.

“Market demand for sustainable seafood is helping to drive positive change in how our oceans are fished and managed. As more retailers and processors choose MSC certified seafood, other fisheries are encouraged into MSC assessment to meet the opportunities that higher demand for sustainable seafood can deliver” adds Mr Howes.

In 2014-15, 40 new fisheries achieved MSC certification and over 70 entered full assessment. These fisheries included artisanal fishing communities alongside large scale commercial fishing operations. The report highlights two pioneers, the first certified fisheries in India and China – the Ashtamudi clam and Zoneco scallop fisheries. Around 1,000 people depend on the Kerala-based clam fishery for their livelihoods, while the Chinese scallop fishery employs more than 20,000 fishers through a cooperative, and covers more than half a million hectares of the North Yellow Sea.

Two decades on from the collapse of the Grand Banks cod fishery in Newfoundland, the report highlights the commitments of fisheries in the Northern Hemisphere which are helping ensure the ongoing productivity of northern waters: 97% Canadian Atlantic lobster is now MSC certified; 87% of Alaska’s fisheries, by volume, are MSC certified; and the Iceland Sustainable Fisheries group is seeking MSC certification for all its commercial fisheries.

Consumers in close to 100 countries can now choose from more than 100 different certified seafood species, with an estimated US$4.5 billion spent globally by consumers on MSC labelled products in 2014-15.

View a PDF of the full annual report

Marine populations unchanged for almost 30 years| Fishing News International

September 24, 2105 — “The report states that 61% of commercial fish stocks are fully exploited misleadingly implying that these stocks are overfished and not sustainably exploited,” said Europêche Managing Director Kathryn Stack. “In fact, if we look at the FAO report in question, it clearly states that over 70% of global fish stocks are within biologically sustainable levels (below or at MSY levels i.e. full exploitation, which incidentally is the objective of the CFP and many RFMOs by 2020)**. It is unacceptable that an organisation such as WWF can be allowed to distort information which has a huge impact on the fishing sector’s reputation.”

The report has also been widely criticised for its inaccuracies with Australian Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture Richard Colbeck labelling it as ‘one of a string of misleading campaigns aimed at scaring people into making donations, rather than educating the public.’

The statistics used change spectacularly when the changes are unweighted.

“It has been previously pointed out this week that the apparent huge declines are in fact linked to other species,” Kathryn Stack explained. “So the combination of a huge drop in one particular species of bird and a healthy fish population would result in a huge drop in both species, which is not necessarily the case.”

 

Read a PDF of the full report

Read the full report at Fishing News International

 

Industry Looks to Future on Final Day of World Seafood Congress

September 10, 2015 — On its final day, the congress’ program focused on the future, with keynote speaker Chris Grieve, executive director at Meridian Prime, opening the session by looking closely at the opportunities and challenges facing the industry in the 21st century. Chris also examined the need for skills and training to help ensure sustainable practices are implemented as the industry moves forward.

This forward-looking theme was continued throughout the day, with a number of sessions on sustainability, future product opportunities and the developments taking place among international fisheries.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

 

ICES: POSITIVE STATE OF FISH STOCKS PRESENTED TO EUROPEAN COMMISSION

July 14, 2015 — COPENHAGEN, Den. —The following was released by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES):

Today, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) delivered an overview of the status of a host of fish and shellfish stocks across the Northeast Atlantic for which the organization has provided advice on this year.

The Chair of ICES Advisory Committee, Eskild Kirkegaard, presented the information at a seminar in Brussels organized by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). Encompassing around 150 stocks, the general picture is of a reduction in the exploitation level in accordance with the advice provided by ICES and in line with management objectives for sustainable fisheries.

“Over the last ten to fifteen years, we have seen a general decline in fishing mortality in the Northeast Atlantic and the Baltic Sea,” explained Kirkegaard. “The stocks have reacted positively to the reduced exploitation and we’re observing growing trends in stock sizes for most of the commercially important stocks.”

For the majority of stocks, it has been observed that fishing mortality has decreased to a level consistent with Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) – meaning levels that are not only sustainable but will also deliver high long term yields.

An example of this trend is reflected in the status of North Sea cod for which advice was recently issued, where a downturn in fishing mortality and an upturn in Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) was noted. North Sea plaice, which is now at record high levels is a comparable example.

The current stock and exploitation status of all ICES stocks can be viewed on the ICES website.

VIDEO: A RETAIL PERSPECTIVE ON SEAFOOD SUSTAINABILITY

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by Michael Ramsingh — July 13, 2015 –In our ongoing video series about seafood sustainability, Resiliensea CEO Phil Gibson discusses some of the pitfalls retailers have encountered in trying to navigate the alphabet soup of certification standards available to them.

According Gibson, a former group director for Safeway’s seafood department, both retail seafood buyers and general consumers are confused about the unique benefits each certifying body brings to the table.

Gibson adds that a program agreeing to one set of guidelines would be good for the industry to develop a singular voice when it comes to educating retailers and consumers about what it means to certify a seafood product as sustainably fished resource.

Watch the video from SeafoodNews on YouTube here 

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.