Saving Seafood

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

U.S. Adopts Safety Improvements for Observers in Pacific Tuna Fisheries

August 18, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries this week made effective new regulations to implement measures that will promote the safety of fisheries observers on tuna-fishing vessels. These measures reflect stronger international standards developed through years of U.S.-led negotiations to improve the safety of observers at sea.

For example, the measures require countries and vessel operators to take emergency actions to help observers if an observer is threatened, harassed, assaulted, missing, presumed fallen overboard, injured, or suffering from a serious illness. Also, observers aboard purse seine vessels will now receive emergency communication devices and personal locator beacons before leaving port.

Fisheries observers collect data essential to the international organizations managing tuna fishing in the eastern Pacific Ocean: the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) and Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program (AIDCP). IATTC staff use the information collected by observers in fish stock assessments and to evaluate the compliance of member nations’ fishing fleets with international conservation measures.

Fisheries observers often face hazardous situations at sea. Rough waters churned up by storms, as well as busy decks with crews pulling in their catch, create dangerous conditions. Observers can also encounter difficult situations on board a vessel with fishing crews who can view them as intrusive.

Read the full release here

American Sword and Tuna Harvesters Call For Department of State to Help Imprisoned Captain Michael Foy

August 17, 2020 — American longline fishing boat captain Michael Foy has been imprisoned in the British Virgin Islands since June 8.  It’s now been months since his arrest, and now the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters are calling for the all relevant agencies of the United States Government to step in.

For those that haven’t been following the story of Foy, the captain, who lives in Puerto Rico, left on May 29 for a fishing expedition. He was detained in the British Virgin Islands on June 8 for reportedly traveling into BVI waters during the coronavirus border closures. Officials not only arrested Foy, but held his foreign crew without charge, and confiscated 8,000 pounds of tuna and swordfish worth more than $60,000.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Four-year forecasts possible for Hawaii bigeye tuna fishery

August 14, 2020 — Measuring the extent of microscopic ocean plant life around Hawaii could reliably predict bigeye tuna catch rates four years out for Hawaii’s deep-set longline fleet, according to a new study by researchers at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

“Bigeye tuna are the primary target species of Hawaii’s most valuable commercial fishery, a longline fishery with landings that are valued at over $100 million and that account for nearly half the United States tuna landings,” NMFS scientists Phoebe A. Woodworth-Jefcoats and Johanna L. K. Wren wrote in their study, published July 22 in the journal Fisheries Oceanography.

“A reliable predictor of targeted species catch rates could help the fishery time fishing activity and plan capital improvements. It could also potentially inform adaptive management and facilitate ecosystem‐based fisheries management.”

Using routine oceanographic measurements including satellite data for sea surface chlorophyll and temperature, the researchers calculated the median size of microscopic plants, called phytoplankton, over the calendar year and the extent of the fishery area around the Hawaiian Islands.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New reports detail threat to Pacific tuna observers, including from COVID-19

July 27, 2020 — The non-governmental organization Human Rights At Sea earlier this month published a report with numerous recommendations to better protect fisheries observers who monitor fish catches by tuna vessels in the Pacific.

The report, Fisheries Observer Deaths at Sea, Human Rights and the Role and Responsibilities of Fisheries Organisations, highlights “the often challenging and solitary working conditions for observers who are away at sea without any immediate physical support,” according to the group – a registered charity in England and Wales that promotes the development and enforcement of human rights at sea.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Report indicates Pacific tuna fisheries weathering COVID-19 well

July 20, 2020 — The fishing effort in the tuna-rich waters of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) does not appear to have been significantly impeded by the COVID-19 crisis, according to a report prepared by Brisbane, Australia-based resources consultancy MRAG Asia Pacific.

The report, which was completed in April, stated that travel restrictions as a result of the pandemic “has not resulted in a widespread decline in fishing effort.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: Despite increased supply, South Shore fishermen are finding demand for Atlantic bluefin tuna is way down

July 20, 2020 — The population of Atlantic bluefin tuna is rebounding off the eastern seaboard, which should mean a banner year for fisherman but the normally high-priced fish is not in demand as its main markets are closed or doing little business during the pandemic.

“It’s all about supply and demand and there’s no demand for them, so the dealers don’t want to keep buying them if they’re not able to keep selling them,” fisherman Greg Ares, based out of Green Harbor in Marshfield, said. “Maybe within the next week or two, restaurants will be opened up in the U.S., sushi restaurants, and they will purchase our bluefin tuna. Even if I get $6 a pound, that’s good enough to keep going.”

There are two types of bluefin tuna fishermen — those who use a harpoon and those who use a rod and reel, the latter making up the vast majority of commercial licenses.

Read the full story at Wicked Local