August 15, 2019 — Mercury levels in seafood can shift as fish seek new sources of prey and as water temperatures warm due to climate change, according to a recent study.
The new study, published in Nature, illustrates that even as global human-driven mercury emissions are declining, warming oceans and shifting predator-prey relationships caused by human fishing practices could still be major drivers of mercury in seafood.
August 8, 2019 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) has issued an updated “snapshot” of Large-Scale Tuna Purse Seine Fishing Fleets report as of June 2019. The total number of purse seinevessels, calculated based on data from the five tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), has decreased from 1,871 in 2018 to 1,843 today, mainly due to the removal from RFMO lists of vessels under 24m that are now inactive.
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 65 percent of the 4.9-million-tonne global tuna catch, multiple databases must be searched to count 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 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.
Through its research, ISSF found that in the tropical tuna large-scale purse seine (LSPS) fleet, fish hold volume (FHV) grew by 1 percent since 2018. The report shows approximately 686 vessels (up 2 percent, from 673 last year) defined as large-scale purse seine (LSPS) vessels targeting tropical tuna species (skipjack, yellowfin, and bigeye), with a combined fishing capacity of over 860,000 m3. The increase is not all due to new vessel constructions, but also to the addition to RFMO lists of older vessels that were not listed in the past. These vessels may have been inactive for some time or participating in a different fishery, but this type of information is not readily available.
August 7, 2019 — Bumble Bee Foods is considering filing for bankruptcy to alleviate it of increasingly dire financial situation.
The San Diego, California, U.S.A.-based firm, which claims it is the largest seller of packaged seafood in North America, exceeded the leverage ratio it is allowed under the terms of its senior debt, according to Bloomberg. That sent the firm into technical default on its principal operating loan, a USD 650 million (EUR 550 million) facility with Brookfield Principal Credit as the administrative agent. However, its lenders have agreed to a forbearance period, allowing the company to continue its efforts to restructure itself to regain its profitability, according to the Wall Street Journal.
August 7, 2019 — The American Tunaboat Association, a trade group representing owners and operators of the U.S. tuna fleet, has lost a lawsuit that it filed after being denied “applicant” status by the National Marine Fisheries Service in Endangered Species Act consultations.
In December 2018, the ATA received a notification of rejection from the NMFS in its attempt to be given applicant status under the agency’s rules for participating with full rights and status in consultations on the NMFS’ decisions regarding how to apply the Endangered Species Act in the U.S. purse-seine tuna fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. The ATA’s appeal of the decision was rejected in January 2019 by senior officials in the NMFS and U.S. Department of Commerce. In response, the ATA sued in April 2019.
August 1, 2019 — Many recreational anglers are enticed by the thrill of catching a giant tuna that can weigh up to 1,000 pounds, with the challenge to land it sometimes going on for hours.
A greater challenge is managing tuna fisheries, a task NOAA’s Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division is responsible for.
“There are approximately 20,000 recreational HMS permitted vessels, 3,500 commercial, and 3,500 for-hire permits issued annually,” says Jennie Lyons, NOAA public affairs deputy director. “Although recreational vessels may have less impact on a marine resource as an individual, sheer numbers of vessel can have an immense impact.”
Recently five recreational boats tuna fishing near Oregon Inlet off North Carolina found out just how seriously the NOAA HMS division takes the permitting process.
The crew of the Coast Guard cutter Rollin Fritch found the five recreational vessels fishing for highly migratory species without federal fisheries permits. The violations were discovered during the routine boarding process, according to information from the Coast Guard, which did not release the names of the boats or operators.
August 1, 2019 — Obscured by the size and impact of the mega-deal announced earlier this month that placed American seafood giant Tri Marine under the control the even-larger conglomerate Bolton Group International was an intriguing footnote: Tri Marine owner Renato Curto would retain ownership of the company’s U.S. fleet.
Brie Adderley, a spokesperson for Curto, acknowledged the challenge Curto took on by retaining the fleet, in comments to SeafoodSource. She said Curto kept the fleet “In spite of the fact that the fishing business is increasingly costly and challenging, especially for fleets focused on quality and compliance, and with the ever-increasing number of regulations and restrictions.”
July 25, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Revenue from tuna caught within the Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs) of Pacific Island Countries is expected to decline by 2050, according to Johann Bell, senior director of Pacific tuna fisheries at Conservation International.
He told PACNEWS climate change will affect revenue generated from the industry.
“What we’ve done with the recent modelling is actually look at how the biomass of tuna might change within the EEZ of Pacific Island countries and territories and how it might change in the high seas areas.
“And the modelling that we have now is indicating that by 2050 there is likely to be a 15 percent movement of the amount of tuna in the EEZ onto the high seas. So yes that will affect the revenue of several countries because if you make the assumption that the revenue is proportional to how much tuna we have in our waters, then that is likely to change and countries will get less revenue,” Bell told PACNEWS in Noumea at the end of the Pacific Community workshop for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030.
Bell said climate change will continue to increase the surface temperature of the ocean and this will cause skipjack and yellowfin tuna species to shift significantly to the East.
He told PACNEWS regional governments will receive less revenue because foreign fishing fleets will take more of their tuna catch from the high seas where they do not have to pay fishing license fees.
“There are some countries further to the East where the amount of tuna in their EEZ is likely to increase and they might expect to get greater catches.
“So if you look at the numbers at the moment, in 2016 license fees revenue for all the Pacific Island Countries and Territories was about US$465 million with 15 percent of the biomass of tuna moving from the EEZ onto the high seas. So we could be looking at a change in license revenue of about US$60 million, a loss of license revenue collectively across the region by 2050,” said Bell.
He said a promising way to cushion Pacific island economies against a loss of license revenue would be to explore how best to add value to tuna.
Bell said they are also exploring how best to help the region retain the rights to the tuna resources that currently occur within their EEZs, regardless of displacement of the fish by climate change.
This would mean that although some tuna would no longer physically be in the EEZs of a Pacific island nation, these tuna would still belong economically to that country, said Bell.
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
July 23, 2019 — A decline in Hawaii’s deep-set longline bigeye tuna fishery may be “inevitable” with climate change, according to a study by researchers in Hawaii and Australia.
Changes to bigeye tuna’s food supply, via changes to the plankton community, and temperature, will reduce yields because it will affect tuna’s fitness. This will impact tuna’s aerobic scope and ability to successfully forage, researchers from Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, and the Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania said.
Proactive fisheries management could be an effective tool for mitigating climate change, either by balancing or outweighing climate effects. “However, modeling these [climatic] stressors jointly shows that even large management changes cannot completely offset climate effects.”
July 22, 2019 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) released its position statement in for the 94th Meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) in Bilbao, Spain, from July 22-26, 2019.
“The Commission took some important steps last year, including the adoption of a technical definition for non-entangling FAD designs, a binding measure on safety at sea for human observers and to require International Maritime Organization (IMO) numbers on all fishing vessels greater than 12m,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson. “However there were many important issues left unresolved and these must be urgently addressed this year.”
As top priorities, ISSF urges IATTC to:
Access the full position statement to review detailed ISSF recommendations.
July 18, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Managing bigeye tuna in the Pacific is already challenging, and now a new study shows that climate change may affect our supply of this fish, used to make the deliciously popular ʻahi poke. The study projects the decline of catch in Hawai‘i’s bigeye tuna fishery as climate change continues to unfold. However, alternate scenarios could bolster ecosystem resilience and limit fishery declines.
Scientists from the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, the University of Hawai‘i, and the University of Tasmania teamed up to model the ecosystem in which Hawai‘i’s bigeye tuna fishery operates. Their model projected how increasing ocean temperatures and declining plankton would affect specific fish species. (Temperature and plankton values were from a suite of climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.) The model also predicted how different scenarios, such as decreased fishing effort, could change those effects.
The scientists found that climate change led to a decline in catch regardless of whether fishing effort increased, decreased, or remained the same. A decline in bigeye tuna catch means less ‘ahi poke at your local market. However, the study also revealed fishing scenarios that may allow the ecosystem to remain resilient in the face of climate change.
“Rather than seeing the results as a doom-and-gloom future for Hawai‘i’s fishery, I see them as encouraging. They show that local choices matter, that we can decide which future scenario we want to pursue,” says lead author Phoebe Woodworth-Jefcoats. She points to two future scenarios in particular: In one, the fishery persisted with today’s fishing effort. In another, the fishery slowly reduced its effort to half. Both scenarios showed similar declines in bigeye tuna catch, but in the second scenario, the ecosystem was resilient despite the effects of climate change, and the biomass of each fish species increased.