Saving Seafood

GSSI AND IDH launch Seafood MAP program to accelerate sustainable seafood

March 30, 2020 — The following was released by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative & The Sustainable Trade Initiative :

On March 30 2020, at a SeafoodSource webinar, the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) and IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, launched Seafood MAP – a new market and investment program, supported by leading seafood companies, to accelerate sustainable seafood worldwide.

Seafood MAP – Measuring and Accelerating Performance of global seafood supply – responds to an urgent need to drive more responsible practices across the sector. It provides global guidance and incentives to seafood producers that are not yet certified to become more sustainable and profitable. This will create investment opportunities for financiers to support the supply of sustainable seafood to fast growing consumer markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In 2020, Seafood MAP will develop a responsible roadmap and framework, based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and FAO Guidelines. The first pilots are due to go live in mid-2020 in regions worldwide, following the latest assessments in light of the global pandemic.

Read the full release here

More FIPs impacting sustainable fisheries for the better, new report finds

March 25, 2020 — The seafood industry continues to show its commitment to improving the sustainability of fisheries worldwide, as evidenced by a new report from environmental research and advisory firm CEA Consulting.

In 2019, 136 fishery improvement projects (FIPs) existed worldwide, a 64 percent increase over 2014’s tally of 83, according to CEA Consulting’s “2020 Global Landscape Review of FIPs” report. What’s more, seafood businesses are now increasingly leading the charge where FIPs are concerned, filling the spots that NGOs once did. Currently, seafood businesses are guiding the implementation of 70 FIPS, up from 49 in 2015, while NGOs are assuming more technical support and advisory roles in the space, the report found.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Tesco: We need harder, faster progress from aquaculture

March 12, 2020 — If seafood is to realize its full potential as a global food security solution – providing healthy, sustainable, and affordable protein and meeting shifting consumer expectations, then the aquaculture sector must accelerate its progress hard and fast. That’s the message from one of the U.K.’s leading retailers, delivered at the North Atlantic Seafood Forum (NASF) 2020 by Tesco Responsible Sourcing Director Giles Bolton.

Addressing delegates at the business conference in Bergen, Norway, Bolton said the food industry has to change, as too much of it is unsustainable.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ISSF Awards Grand Prize in Seafood Sustainability Contest

March 10, 2020 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:

Doctoral student Melissa Cronin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Grand Prize winner in ISSF’s International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Seafood Sustainability Contest. She receives a $45,000 prize from ISSF for her contest entry, “Incentivizing Collaborative Release to Reduce Elasmobranch Bycatch Mortality,” which proposes handling-and-release methods that purse-seine vessel skippers and crew can use to reduce the mortality of manta rays and devil rays incidentally caught during tuna fishing.

Her winning proposal calls for cooperative workshops with purse-seine skippers and observers, offering financial rewards for the design, testing, and onboard implementation of feasible, scalable techniques for safely removing rays from vessel decks.

It also includes training observers in tagging rays to track their post-release survival. Rays, in addition to sharks, are the species groups most vulnerable in the purse-seine fishery. In the Indian Ocean, for example, rays comprise the majority of bycatch in tuna fishers’ free-school sets: bycatch overall on such sets represents 0.9% of the total catch, and 34% of that is rays.

Ms. Cronin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Action Lab at UC Santa Cruz studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Learn more about her research experiences and winning idea in her ISSF blog post and video.

In addition to the $40,000 Grand Prize, the award includes a trip, with an estimated $5,000 value, to a tuna event. ISSF will arrange for Ms. Cronin to present her proposal at a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) event this year.

Read the full release here

A new all-in-one website for Aquaculture Improvement Projects

March 9, 2020 — The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership:

The AIP Directory (www.aipdirectory.org) is a new website that serves as an independent, online platform to showcase active aquaculture improvement projects (AIPs). It was developed by Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) as an open platform for information sharing for anyone active or interested in AIPs.

Although less established than the more familiar fishery improvement projects (FIPs), AIPs are increasingly important as a mechanism for the supply chain to support better sustainability practices in aquaculture industries. Until now, there was no online resource to allow those actively involved or interested in AIPs to learn where and how these improvements were taking place or what progress was being made on specific projects. The launch of the AIP Directory will meet these needs.

“AIPs are an important tool to drive sustainability – whether participating farms have certified responsible management practices in place or not. It is important for ensuring impact and credibility that projects have a clear set of goals and a defined workplan, and that they are publicly reporting on progress,” Seafresh Group Director of Sustainability Dominique Gautier said. “The AIP Directory gives project managers a mechanism to tell the world about their progress, and buyers and funders greater insight into what improvement projects are underway and how they can get involved.”

The AIP Directory currently lists five active AIPs that cover three countries (China, Indonesia, and Thailand) and two species (shrimp and tilapia). Other active AIPs are invited to register on the website for free. The website also includes a range of resources and tools to support those looking to start new projects.

“The AIP Directory really is a one-stop shop for all stakeholders in the supply chain,” SFP’s Aquaculture Director Anton Immink said. “As a buyer, you can find active projects; as an AIP implementer, you can showcase your project and report progress. If you can’t find a project that fits your needs, there are tools and resources on how to start a new AIP.”

AIPs are multi-stakeholder efforts that aim to utilize the power of the private sector to promote positive changes toward sustainability, seek to make those changes endure through policy change, and improve performance at the farm and zonal scale. The characteristics of an AIP mirror the core attributes of a FIP: public supply chain commitments, published needs assessments, workplans with time-bound objectives, and regular reporting of progress.

What the History of Salmon Can Tell Us About the Future of the Planet

March 5, 2020 — Mark Kurlansky has been telling the story of how humans eat, one food at a time over the last 20 years. He has published popular books including Cod, Salt, and Milk, but his 33rd book is written with a new sense of urgency.

“Of all the things that I’ve looked at over the years, I’ve never run across anything that I found scarier than the fact that the oceans are losing their carrying capacity, that the ocean is losing its ability to feed fish. That’s another way of saying that the planet is losing its ability to sustain itself,” he said. “Salmon is one avenue to talk about that.

Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate, released this week, includes a fascinating account of how these unique creatures live, sometimes navigating hundreds of miles back to their place of birth to spawn while leaping waterfalls and actively changing the color of their bodies.

“It’s just one of the most incredible animals in the animal kingdom. It’s extremely beautiful and has this incredible lifecycle that sounds like it was written by a Greek tragedy writer,” he said.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Can You Eat Fish and Still Care About the Planet? We Talked to an Expert to Find Out.

February 20, 2020 — As someone who works on environmental policy issues for a living, I’m often asked by my friends and family what they can do that’s “better” for the planet. Drive an electric vehicle? Buy a reusable coffee mug? Bike to work? Eat veggie burgers? Recycle?

Most of the time, I don’t have a satisfactory answer; the answers I have aren’t always that straightforward, helpful, or even desired. If you care about climate change, eating more plants is great, but we also need a comprehensive and aggressive federal climate policy. If you care about plastic pollution, reusable mugs can cut down on single-use plastic, but they need to be used for a long time (several years) to make up for the energy used to make them.

One area that I have no reservations about, however, is seafood. It’s delicious; it’s a great source of micronutrients and omega-3s; and if you know how to shop for it, it can indeed be an environmentally responsible choice for dinner.

Make no mistake: The ocean is in dire need of protection. Overfishing, climate change, and pollution are major threats to the ocean and its ability to sustain human life.

The good news is that there are organizations working to turn those threats around — and you can help by voting with your dollars and choosing sustainable seafood at the grocery store. For example, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international nonprofit organization that has developed a science-based standard for environmentally sustainable fishing. If a wild-capture fishery meets those standards, its seafood products can be packaged with the MSC blue fish label.

Read the full story at Kitchn

New film aims to counter bias against farmed seafood

February 18, 2020 — Dongo Films, a Brussels, Belgium-based collective of independent documentary filmmakers, are hoping to raise more than EUR 325,000 (USD 355,700) on public fundraising platform Kickstarter to make a film promoting sustainable aquaculture. Their goal is to reach the ambitious target by 22 March, 2020, which will allow filming to start this summer.

The film, AquaPioneers, is the brainchild of filmmakers Marjolijn Prins and Mathias Ruelle, working with production manager Heleen Bolle. They are being advised by Marjolijn’s brother, sustainable aquaculture expert Tom Prins, a dealflow manager with venture capital firm Aqua-Spark, based in the Netherlands.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NGOs support MSC plan to close compartmentalization loophole

February 14, 2020 — A Marine Stewardship Council decision to remove the possibility for vessels to harvest both certified and non-certified catch using different gear practices at the same time, known as compartmentalization, has been lauded by NGOs who pushed for the change.

The decision came about through the MSC’s fisheries standards review, a review of the organizations standards that occurs every five years. The current review started in 2018. Compartmentalization has been criticized by NGOs and environmental groups, and an earlier attempt to propose a policy reform prohibiting the practice failed to pass in 2018.

Read the full story at Seafood Source