Saving Seafood

Exclusive: Chris Lischewski offers a warning to seafood CEOs

July 1, 2020 — Chris Lischewski is the former president and CEO of Bumble Bee Foods. Earlier this month, Lischewski was sentenced to 40 months in prison and given a USD 100,000 (EUR 88,000) fine after a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to fix the prices of canned tuna sold in the United States from 2011 to 2013.

SeafoodSource: Unless your testimony was misunderstood, you swore under oath that you were not part of any conspiracy to fix the prices of canned tuna while you led Bumble Bee. Do you stand by that statement? And if so, is that an indictment of the numerous individuals who swore under oath that you had been a leader in the purported conspiracy?

Lischewski: I did swear under oath that I would tell the truth, which is exactly what I did. Only two witnesses – [Walter Scott] Cameron and [Ken] Worsham – testified that I was a leader in the purported conspiracy. That testimony – given in return for a favorable sentencing recommendation by the government – was false. Shue Wing Chan of Chicken of the Sea testified that he had an unspoken “understanding” with me not to promote aggressively. But he admitted that the “understanding” existed only in his own mind and that I never told him that I shared it. As I testified at trial, whatever may have been in Chan’s mind, I had no price-fixing “understanding” with him of any kind.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Call for data and information – EFH Review for Pacific Coast Highly Migratory Species

July 1, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and the NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center have initiated a review of essential fish habitat (EFH) provisions in the Pacific Coast Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP).  This call for data and information is intended to support the review.

The HMS FMP, its EFH provisions, and maps can be found on the Council’s HMS webpage, under “Key Documents”.  The HMS FMP includes the following species:

  • Sharks: common thresher, shortfin mako, blue
  • Tunas: albacore, bigeye, Pacific bluefin, skipjack, yellowfin
  • Striped marlin
  • Broadbill swordfish
  • Dorado

Fishery management plans are required to identify and describe EFH for each life stage and species, identify and minimize impacts from fishing and non-fishing activities, and identify research needs, among other requirements.  A complete description of EFH provisions to be included in FMPs can be found in the EFH regulatory guidance at 50 CFR§600.815(a).  Information and data should be relevant to:

  • The habitat needs, associations and distribution FMP species listed above
  • Major prey items of species listed above
  • Adverse impacts on EFH from fishing activities and potential minimization measures
  • Adverse impacts on EFH from non-fishing activities and potential minimization measures
  • Research and information needs

Information and data sources can include published scientific literature, unpublished scientific reports, information from interested parties, and previously unavailable or inaccessible data.

Information relevant to the HMS EFH review should be submitted to Nicole Nasby-Lucas (nicole.nasby-lucas@noaa.gov) no later than Monday July 13th, 2020.  For further information, please contact Kerry Griffin (kerry.griffin@noaa.gov).

Assessors must reconsider parts of potential bluefin MSC certification

June 29, 2020 — An independent adjudicator, analyzing formal objections to the potential Marine Stewardship Council certification of the Usufuku Honten East Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery, has upheld one of the four objections presented.

The objections were presented by the World Wildlife Fund and The Pew Charitable Trusts in January, after the assessment body, Control Union Pesca Ltd., recommended that the fishery be certified in December 2019. Of the four objections, the independent adjudicator upheld objections to the evidence used to conclude how long bluefin tuna take to grow and reproduce, according to a release from MSC.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Upcoming minimum wage hike may doom tuna-canning operations in American Samoa

June 18, 2020 — American Samoa continues to depend on the tuna-canning industry as a key pillar of its economy, according to a new United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week, but the government of American Samoa is worried that a planned minimum wage increase for 2021 will have a negative impact to the economy.

The report is the fifth iteration in a series of U.S. Government Accountability Office reviews to examine economic trends, including changes in employment and earnings since the minimum wage increases in American Samoa began in 2007. The reports also look into the status of the tuna canning industry and report on stakeholder views on the minimum wage increases.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ICCAT cancels annual meeting, SCRS plenary due to COVID-19

June 18, 2020 — This year’s International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) annual meeting, as well as the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics (SCRS) plenary meeting, have been canceled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a letter from the organization’s commission chairman, Raul Delgado.

The SCRS meeting was to be held from September to October, and the annual meeting was to be held in November.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

In a rare outcome, former Bumble Bee CEO will be sent to prison for price-fixing

June 17, 2020 — The former chief executive officer and president of Bumble Bee Foods, LLC, one of the world’s largest producers of canned tuna and other seafood products, has been sentenced to 40 months in jail for his leadership role in a three-year antitrust conspiracy to fix the prices of canned tuna. Christopher Lischewski’s sentence, which also includes a $100,000 criminal fine, comes after a San Francisco jury found him guilty in December of helping to orchestrate the scheme, which also involved the StarKist and Chicken of the Sea companies.

“The conduct was deliberate, it was planned, it was sustained, over a three-year period,” said Judge Edward M. Chen, according to reporting from Seafood Source. “This was not a rash act of having to commit a crime under distress, under episodic circumstances as we see sometimes, this was a contemplated and deliberate plan.”

Moreover, he said, the scheme targeted poor people.

Read the full story at The Counter

ISSF Report Estimates at Least 1,721 Purse Seine Vessels Authorized to Fish for Tuna Worldwide Today, a Slight Decrease Since 2019 Analysis

June 17, 2020 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:

The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) has updated its Large-Scale Tuna Purse Seine Fishing Fleets report as of June 2020. The total number of purse seine vessels, calculated based on data from the five tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), has decreased from 1,843 in 2019 to 1,721 today.

Having an accurate estimate of active vessels is critical for managing tuna fishing capacity regionally as well as globally. Although purse seine vessels account for approximately 66 percent of the 4.9-million-tonne global tuna catch, multiple databases must be searched to compile a count of all authorized purse seine vessels. To provide an annual best estimate — and to track capacity changes from year to year — ISSF analyzes and aggregates information from the five tuna RFMOs and other sources. As the report explains, these figures still may underestimate the total fleet, because many small-scale purse seiners or purse seiners operating in only one exclusive economic zone (EEZ) do not have to be listed on RFMOs’ records of authorized fishing vessels.

The ISSF report shows approximately 696 vessels (up 1.5 percent from last year) defined as large-scale purse seine (LSPS) vessels targeting tropical tuna species (skipjack, yellowfin, and bigeye), with a combined fish hold capacity of over 874,000 m3 (cubic meters).

Other report findings about the large-scale purse seine vessels targeting tropical tuna include:

  • About 17 percent of these 696 large-scale vessels are authorized to fish in more than one RFMO, which should be taken into account in any efforts to manage fishing capacity at a regional level.
  • Among the RFMOs, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) still has the highest number of LSPS registrations (349), which represents around half of the global fleet.
  • The majority of large-scale vessels (517) are registered on the ISSF ProActive Vessel Register (PVR); PVR-registered LSPS represent 74 percent in number and 83 percent in fish hold volume (FHV).

The report also covers purse-seine vessel construction, distribution, and FHV by national flag. It offers recommendations for vessel owners on the use of IMO numbers as unique vessel identifiers and for RFMOs on vessel-data collection and management. View the updated report here. View a related infographic here.

Measuring Atlantic Bluefin Tuna with a Drone

June 10, 2020 — This novel use of drones is a promising way to remotely monitor these hard-to-see fish

Researchers have used an unmanned aerial system (or drone) to gather data on schooling juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Maine.

This pilot study tested whether a drone could keep up with the tuna while also taking photographs that captured physical details of this fast-moving fish. The drone was equipped with a high-resolution digital still image camera. Results show that drones can capture images of both individual fish and schools. They may be a useful tool for remotely monitoring behavior and body conditions of the elusive fish.

Individual fish lengths and widths, and the distance between fish near the sea surface, were measured to less than a centimeter of precision. We used an APH-22, a battery-powered, six-rotor drone. The pilot study was conducted in the Atlantic bluefin tuna’s foraging grounds northeast of Cape Cod in the southern Gulf of Maine.

“Multi-rotor unmanned aerial systems won’t replace shipboard surveys or the reliance on manned aircraft to cover a large area,” said Mike Jech, an acoustics researcher at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and lead author of the study. “They have a limited flight range due to battery power and can only collect data in bursts. Despite some limitations, they will be invaluable for collecting remote high-resolution images that can provide data at the accuracy and precision needed by managers for growth and ecosystem models of Atlantic bluefin tuna.”

Read the full story at Environment Coastal & Offshore

MSC faces NGO criticism in Atlantic bluefin hearing, new report

June 2, 2020 — In a hearing taking place 1 and 2 June, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is questioning the merits of the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) certification of the first Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery, citing a “questionable evaluation process that has repeatedly ignored the fragile status of the stock.”

According to WWF, MSC’s current certification of the bluefin tuna fishery has dismissed “the best available science and therefore produced a evaluation of the fishery that does not reflect the reality at sea.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source