Saving Seafood

What’s driving ahi costs up? And when will they go back down?

September 17, 2020 — Yellowfin tuna, or ahi, is harder to find right now, and when you do catch it at the market or your favorite poke shop, it is going to cost more– at least for another month or so. There are a number of reasons for the current ahi shortage.

Whether you like it sashimi style, blackened or with shoyu and onions in your poke, ahi is a local favorite. But according to United Fishing Agency Auction Fishing Manager Mike Goto, “Supply is not meeting the demand.”

“Today’s auction was still a little bit light on volume comparatively to a normal time, pre-COVID. And that’s kind of been the trend lately over the past two or three weeks,” Goto said.

Several factors come into play. The first is that catch rates are typically lower this time of year as ahi move closer to the West Coast–driving up the cost for fishing vessels.

Mike Lee, VP of Sales and Operations of Garden and Valley Isle Seafood, said the added costs of vessels having to travel farther for fish make fishermen think twice about going out.

Read the full story at KHON

Population of prized tuna species decline as protections ease in the Gulf of Mexico

September 14, 2020 — The recent easing of tuna protections in the Gulf of Mexico and fishing restrictions elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean may be contributing to rapid and widespread declines for one of the most highly prized but critically threatened tuna populations.

A new report by an international tuna conservation commission indicates the stock of Atlantic bluefin tuna has plummeted to just 13% of its levels 70 years ago. The fish, one of the most valuable seafoods in the world, had shown signs of recovery in recent years, thanks partly to robust protections the U.S. enacted five years ago in the Gulf – the only major spawning area for western Atlantic bluefin. Those protections were eased this year by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“These are big concerns,” said Grantly Galland, a marine biologist with Pew Charitable Trusts. “We had early signals of recovery but raising the fishing quota and now getting rid of the protections in the Gulf of Mexico means the western population of bluefin is under threat again.”

Read the full story at NOLA.com

Pacific Ocean Aquafarms launching offshore yellowtail farm project in California

September 9, 2020 — Long Beach, California, U.S.A.-based Pacific6 has filed a permit application to build an offshore yellowtail farm four miles off the coast of California.

Pacific6 is the same group that purchased the assets of Catalina Sea Ranch, the only permitted aquaculture facility in U.S. federal waters, in May 2020. It has since formed a collaborative group with Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute (HSWRI), a San Diego, California-based nonprofit research institute that works in cooperation with, but is independent of, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Electronic Reporting Project Bringing More Timely Data to Hawai’i Longline Fisheries

August 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

With 145 vessels completing more than 1,600 trips annually, the Hawaiʻi longline fisheries set more than 20,000 fishing lines each year. Data collected from all of these trips provide critical information for monitoring fishing quotas and fish populations. For each set, captains complete a paper logsheet and staff at our Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center process it—this takes a lot of time. A pilot electronic reporting project demonstrates that the new technology is showing promise in streamlining and shortening this process.

Most vessels target tuna on deep-set trips, with some targeting swordfish on shallow-set trips. Once a vessel returns to the dock, the captain has 72 hours to submit the logsheets. Then, our staff perform checks and validations before entering the data, a process that takes about 3 weeks. This lag can make monitoring less efficient.

We conducted a project in collaboration with the Fisheries Information System program using electronic reporting technologies. It showed that these technologies can improve the quality and timeliness of the data for scientists, managers, and industry.

The electronic reporting initiative had its beginnings in 2007 when the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries allowed longline permit holders the option to submit their logsheets electronically. In 2016, the Fisheries Information System program provided funding to the science center to develop electronic reporting applications and provide tablet computers to the Hawaiʻi fisheries. FIS is a state-regional-federal collaboration with the mission of improving access to comprehensive, high-quality, timely fisheries information.

Read the full release here

Summary of Proposed Action Items for the 183rd Meeting of the WPRFMC

August 31, 2020 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

  1. Specification of Annual Catch Limit and Accountability Measures for the Main Hawaiian Islands Uku Fishery for Fishing Year 2022-2025
  2. Mandatory Electronic Reporting in the Longline Fisheries
  3. Reasonable and Prudent Measures and/or Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives for the Deep-Set and American Samoa Longline Fisheries
  4. Modifications to Pacific Remote Island Area (PRIA) Objectives and Projects in the PRIA Marine Conservation Plan
  5. Options for Mandatory Permitting and Reporting for Hawai’i’s Small-Boat Fishery

The 183rd meeting of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council will convene Sept. 15-17, 2020, by web conference (WebEx). The WebEx link is https://tinyurl.com/183CouncilMtg and the password is: CM183mtg. Host sites will be available at the following locations (subject to local and federal safety and health guidelines regarding COVID-19; please check Council website for updates):

  • Cliff Pointe, 304W. O’Brien Dr., Hagatna, Guam;
  • Hyatt Regency Saipan, Royal Palm Ave., Micro Beach Rd., Saipan, CNMI; and
  • Department of Port Administration, Airport Conference Room, Pago Pago Int’l Airport, Tafuna Village, American Samoa.

The Council will consider and may take action on the issues summarized below (click here for copy), including any public comments on them. Written public comments on final action items should be received by the Council’s executive director by 5 p.m. (Hawai’i time), Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, by postal mail, fax or email as indicated below.

Instructions for connecting to the WebEx and providing oral public comments during the meeting will be posted on the Council website at www.wpcouncil.org/event/183rd-council-meeting.

As the world’s population grows, researchers say the ocean and seafood have big roles to play

August 27, 2020 — Seafood production could see as much as a 75 percent leap over the next three decades if certain policy reforms and technological improvements are put in place, according to research conducted by Oregon State University (OSU) in collaboration with a bevy of international scientists.

By 2050, the earth’s human population is expected to reach 9.8 billion, an increase of two billion people over the current global tally. Researchers, who published their latest findings in Nature, believe that seafood has the potential to feed the growing world over the next 30 years sustainably – if certain conditions are applied.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Study finds evidence of dolphin meat in Mexican canned tuna

August 26, 2020 — A study by a food engineering student at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) has discovered evidence of tuna cans produced in Mexico containing dolphin meat.

The study, performed by food engineering student Karla Vanessa Hernández Herbert, with advice from UNAM’s Secretary General José Francisco Montiel Sosa, examined 15 cans of tuna bought nearby the university. Of those 15 cans, three were found to contain traces of dolphin DNA, confirming the presence of dolphin meat.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Tuna-Tagging Expedition Sets Sail Despite COVID-19 Challenges

August 24, 2020 — Scientists across the world continue to pursue essential research to the best of current abilities, even as they must also navigate the new COVID-19 landscape. I am part of one of those research efforts: a tuna-tagging cruise that departed from Hawaii last weekend with a track through Kiribati waters.

We left port after overcoming a mountain of logistical odds, under the driving belief that the work of promoting sustainable fisheries and ocean health is worth taking on the seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Half of the world’s tuna catch comes from the Western and Central Pacific, providing a critical source of protein and export revenue for Pacific island nations and others.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

How America’s Canned Tuna Industry Went Belly Up

August 18, 2020 — This story is about the canned tuna business and the three big companies that dominate it. It’s a story about price fixing, and it’s a saga so dark and disruptive those companies are still reeling from it, facing bankruptcy, legal action, even prison time. It’s a story that upended a century-old industry—but if you ask Cliff White, executive editor of the news website SeafoodSource, he’ll tell you there’s way more at stake than just business: “Price fixing is absolutely wrong, especially for a product that people depend on. That’s the difference between them eating dinner and not eating dinner. That’s canned tuna. We’re not talking about bluefin toro that’s served at Nobu.”

Tuna has been eaten all over the world for thousands of years. In the United States, it was at one time a food mostly associated with immigrant communities—Japanese Americans who fished it in the waters off California, or Italian Americans who’d grown up eating bluefin from the Mediterranean. What turned it into a universal staple was a new technology: canning.

Anna Zeide, founding director of the food studies program at Virginia Tech, explains: “Right around the turn of the 20th century is where you start to see a really focused effort on the part of early tuna canners to build an industry. Canned tuna has this really meteoric rise from being a very marginal food that very few people ate in the early 20th century to being an embodiment of canned food and American processed food by the 1950s and ’60s.”

Read the full story at Slate