Saving Seafood

Fish And Power Shifts: How The Marshall Islands Became A Fishery Superpower

October 19, 2021 — Just how did a small nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean become a major player in the fishing world?

Giff Johnson, editor of The Marshall Islands Journal, seeks an answer in his new book “Our Ocean’s Promise: From Aspirations to Inspirations.” It tracks the country’s fishery from its time under Japanese and American rule to now, as a nation with one of the busiest tuna transshipment ports in the world.

Johnson researched and wrote the book — which was formally launched on Oct. 8 — over the course of five months, parsing documents spanning almost a century.

The result tells a history of an ever-evolving power dynamic, from more powerful nations dividing and ruling the fisheries to successful regional cooperation through the Parties to the Nauru Agreement starting in 1982. That milestone agreement showed Pacific nations’ collective power and regional camaraderie.

“I think that’s the big story … how the islands have taken charge of the fishery that was historically controlled, totally controlled, by distant water fishing nations,” Johnson said.

The project was conceived by Glen Joseph, director of the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority, to look at history and forecast the future.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Monument fishing ban will hurt New Bedford businesses

October 13, 2021 — Just over 30 days ago, the fishing vessel Eagle Eye left federal waters more than 130 miles southeast of Massachusetts to make the 15- to 20-hour trip home to New Bedford Harbor. Its sister vessel, Eagle Eye 2, returned even more recently, with each carrying thousands of pounds of fresh tuna and a bit of swordfish.

John Cafiero, captain of one of the Fairhaven-based vessels, said he and his crew sometimes take multiple trips in the summer to fish in waters that in 2016 were established as a national marine monument. Tuna and swordfish are highly migratory species so sometimes “you don’t want to be in there,” he said, but for the past few years, it has been “really good.”

Cafiero said he didn’t know it then, but that trip might have been his last in the area.

On Oct. 8, President Joe Biden issued a presidential proclamation under the Antiquities Act of 1906 prohibiting commercial fishing in an area of water the size of Connecticut.

The administration cited conservation efforts needed to preserve the “vulnerable” deep marine ecosystems and endangered marine species that inhabit or migrate through the waters. The proclamation restores the commercial fishing restrictions first established by former President Barack Obama in 2016, when he declared two areas of water from surface to seabed as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Environmental groups lauded the decision. But local fishermen, business owners and industry advocates said the closure deals yet another blow to a highly regulated industry and is unfair as recreational fishing in the monument may continue.

“These boats are more like your uncle’s pizza shop or your dad’s gas station,” said Mike Machado, lead buyer at Boston Sword & Tuna and a former New Bedford fisherman. “They’re small individual companies. They’re not like this big, evil fishing juggernaut.”

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

 

32 countries dinged for failure to advance Cape Town Agreement

October 14, 2021 — Two tuna-conservation organizations have accused 32 countries of hindering the fight against illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUU).

The Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) and Tuna Protection Alliance (TUPA) have, in two joint letters, said the failure by 32 governments to ratify the 2012 Cape Town Agreement (CTA) is complicating efforts to battle illegal fishing. At least 18 nations have yet to sign the agreement, and another 14 have signed but have yet to complete its ratification and implement standards mandated by the agreement, they said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Judge tosses Subway “fake tuna” lawsuit

October 8, 2021 — A federal judge has dismissed a class-action lawsuit claiming Subway Restaurants’ tuna sandwiches and wraps did not contain any actual tuna.

The lawsuit was filed on 21 January, and subsequently gained national media attention when a New York Times report claimed its lab testing didn’t find evidence of tuna DNA in the company’s sandwiches. At the time, the company defended its tuna products, and DNA testing experts contacted by SeafoodSource confirmed that the tests used by The New York Times wouldn’t have been adequate to detect tuna DNA.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Walmart chooses Pacific Island Tuna for its in-house brand

October 6, 2021 — A partnership between the Republic of the Marshall Islands and The Nature Conservancy will supply canned tuna to Walmart stores for the store’s Great Value brand across the United States.

The new joint venture, dubbed Pacific Island Tuna (PIT), is “designed to transform the global canned tuna supply chain,” according to a Nature Conservancy announcement. The new business model is intended to give Pacific islanders the ability to benefit from their tuna resources by directing 100 percent of long-term net profits back to them while utilizing a sustainable model of fishing and production.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Maine lobster fishers donate 600-pound tuna to soup kitchen

September 30 , 2021 — A Belfast soup kitchen had a tuna weighing 600 pounds (270 kilograms) donated for its meals last week by a lobster fishing crew that netted the fish.

The crewmembers from J & J Lobster were catching bait near the coast when the massive bluefin tuna hit their net, the Bangor Daily News reported.

“It was an adrenaline rush to say the least,” the owner of J & J Lobster, Jamie Steeves, told New England Cable News.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

 

Some sharks are more likely to die after ‘catch and release,’ study finds. Here’s why

September 24, 2021 — Longlining, a commercial fishing technique that drags a main line with baited hooks through the water, is convenient when catching massive amounts of swordfish and tuna, but it also traps what experts call “bycatch” — unintended victims that may face dark fates after release back into the ocean.

Sharks are often attracted to and caught on these baited longlines; it’s one of the many culprits behind declining shark populations. Certain rules called “no-take regulations” require fishermen to release some species when accidentally hooked, but a new study of over 300 sharks found that some are much more likely to die after “catch and release” than others. The study was published Sept. 15 in the journal PLOS One.

“The assumption behind no-take regulations is that the shark will swim away and live out its normal life after it’s released, but we know that for some sharks, that’s not true,” study lead author Dr. Nick Whitney, senior scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life in Massachusetts, said in a news release.

After five years of longline fishing that targeted five of the seven most commonly caught species in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Keys, the researchers learned as many as 42% to 71% of blacktip and spinner sharks will die after being caught and released alive. Others, such as sandbar and tiger sharks, were more resilient; only 3% or fewer died after release. Bull sharks were also one of the more hardy species. The animals were caught near Madeira Beach, Key West and Naples, Florida.

The team learned 90% of the post-release deaths occurred within five hours of returning to the water, and 59% occurred within just two hours. Blood samples and tracking data revealed the stress of the capture process, or injuries acquired during it, leads to the unnecessary and disproportionate demise of some sharks.

Read the full story at the Miami Herald

Pacific Scientists Support Streamer Lines to Reduce Albatross Interactions with Tuna Fishery

September 15, 2021 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council strongly supported a study that found tori lines are far more effective than blue-dyed fish bait for seabird bycatch mitigation.

The tori line study was conducted from February to June 2021 under an experimental fishing permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Tori lines (also known as bird scaring lines or streamer lines) have shown promise in reducing incidental interactions with seabirds in the Hawai‘i deep-set longline fishery. The permit allowed tori lines to be tested without the use of blue-dyed bait, which is an existing seabird mitigation requirement in the fishery that has been shown to be less effective than other required measures over time.

The project is a collaboration between the Council, NMFS and the Hawaii Longline Association. The field experiment comprised 87 sets deployed during seven trips from three Hawai‘i-based commercial longline vessels. Participating vessels alternated sets between the two methods each day and carried a video-based system that electronically monitored seabird behavior.

Results showed that Laysan and black-footed albatross were 1.5 times less likely to attempt to attack, and 4 times less likely to contact baited hooks when tori lines are set versus when fishermen use blue-dyed bait. Ultimately, this leads to the seabirds being 14 times less likely to be hooked.

Study author and SSC member Milani Chaloupka noted that “tori lines are economical, fishermen like them and the improved design has reduced entanglement with fishing gear.”

A report from an earlier tori line project in 2019-2020 is available here: https://tinyurl.com/torilinesreport.

The SSC meeting continues through Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021. Instructions on connecting to the web conference, agenda and briefing documents are posted at www.wpcouncil.org/event/141st-scientific-and-statistical-committee-virtual-meeting.

 

Scientists call for moratorium on ocean mining, fearing impact on Pacific tuna fishery

September 9, 2021 — Around 500 scientists from 44 countries have signed a letter urging a moratorium on ocean mining, an activity that researchers say could be adversely affect fisheries, in particular deep-sea catches like tuna.

Scientists made the plea recently after an ocean-mining company and its host country, the Pacific island nation of Nauru, touched off a two-year rule with the International Seabed Authority (ISA), headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica. The two-year rule – triggered by Nauru on behalf of Vancouver, Canada-based Nauru Natural Ocean Resources Inc. – means that time is short for the ISA to set a code on the specifics of seafloor mining.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

IATTC meeting defers decision on proposed bluefin harvest increase

September 8, 2021 — The regional fishery management organization that sets tuna harvest-limits in the Eastern Pacific Ocean once again deferred a decision on the Pacific bluefin harvest after failing to reach consensus on the details of a proposed increase.

At the 23 to 27 August meeting of the full commission of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) a proposal by the United States reflecting the recommendations of the online 27 to 29 July Sixth Joint Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission Northern Committee Working Group Meeting was taken up, but the parties didn’t reach a consensus agreement on specific details in the new language. As a result, the IATTC gave itself more time to negotiate the details before another full commission meeting in October 2021.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource