Saving Seafood

StarKist pleads guilty to role in canned tuna price-fixing

October 19, 2018 — StarKist pleaded guilty on Thursday, 18 October to fixing the prices of the canned tuna it sold in the United States between 2011 and 2013.

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company pleaded guilty to one felony count of price-fixing, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

StarKist faces a fine of up to USD 100 million (EUR 87.1 million), a probationary term of between one and five years, and must pay restitution as a result of its plea. The exact amount of StarKist’s fine will be determined at a sentencing hearing and the plea agreement is subject to court approval. As part of its plea, StarKist has agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

StarKist became the second company to plead guilty in the case, following Bumble Bee’s guilty plea in May 2017. Bumble Bee faced a fine of up to USD 272.4 million (EUR 234 million), but eventually the Department of Justice agreed to a lower fine of USD 25 million (EUR 22.8 million) to protect the company from potential insolvency.

Former Bumble Bee executives Walter Scott Cameron and Ken Worsham and StarKist executive Stephen Hodge also each pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy as part of the investigation, and former Bumble Bee CEO Christopher Lischewski was indicted in May 2017 on price-fixing charges but has pleaded not guilty. Lischewski’s case is ongoing.

In a press release, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division said the guilty plea brings to a close investigation into the industry pricing practices, which it initiated in 2015. The investigation began after a failed bid by Thai Union, which owns U.S. canned tuna firm Chicken of the Sea, to buy Bumble Bee in 2015. In September 2017, Thai Union acknowledged Chicken of the Sea was the whistleblower in the case and received conditional leniency as a result.

The investigation was conducted by the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division – specifically by its San Francisco office – and by the FBI’s San Francisco field office. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett, who helped lead the investigation, and Makan Delrahim, the assistant attorney general leading the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, issued statements after StarKist’s plea was entered.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Big bluefin tuna make comeback after 80-year hiatus off California coast

October 18, 2018 — Large Pacific bluefin tuna not seen in California waters for decades have reappeared, to the delight of fishing enthusiasts and scientists, as global conservation efforts have proven effective for one of the ocean’s priciest and most sought-after fish.

Overfishing of bluefin tuna spurred by a growing global appetite for sushi resulted in a critical decline in stocks over decades. But measures by the United States, Japan, Mexico and others to limit their take have led to population growth, though tuna populations are still below historic levels.

Gerard DiNardo, director of the Fisheries Resources Division at Southwest Fisheries Science Center, a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in La Jolla, California, said there has been an increase in population as well as size of the bluefin because of those efforts.

“This is management and effective management and it actually is working'” said DiNardo.

The Center for Biological Diversity said in August 2017 that the Pacific bluefin had been overfished to less than 3 percent of its historic population. The National Marine Fisheries Service announced in October 2016 that it was considering listing the Pacific bluefin, but it subsequently concluded that protections were not warranted.

Read the full story from Reuters at MSN

Mandatory reporting in Hawaiian longline fishery on table at science meeting

October 16, 2018 — Mandatory electronic reporting for the Hawaii longline fishery is on the agenda when the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) starts its two-day meeting Monday in Hilo, Hawaii.

The SSC is also expected to discuss acceptable biological catch limits for Hawaiian gray snapper, deep-water shrimp and Kona crab as well as the management of loggerhead and leatherback sea turtle interactions in the shallow-set longline fishery.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Micronesia’s longline yellowfin tuna fishery achieves MSC certification

October 15, 2018 — The longline yellowfin tuna fishery in the exclusive economic zone of the Federated States of Micronesia has achieved Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification.

Three Chinese companies pursued the certification and own and operate the vessels in the fishery: Liancheng Overseas Fishery (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd (SZLC), China Southern Fishery Shenzhen Co. Ltd (CSFC) and Liancheng Overseas Fishery (FSM) Co. Ltd. (FZLC). The fishery produced 745 metric tons of yellowfin tuna in 2016.

“We are extremely proud to achieve this very significant achievement and to be a part of the MSC program,” Overseas Fishery (FSM) President Samuel Chou said in a press release. “We believe that, along with our other MSC certifications, Liancheng now has more MSC longline certifications than any other tuna fleet, and we remain dedicated to continuing our efforts to upgrade all our fisheries currently in fishery improvement projects to MSC status.”

The Federated States of Micronesia is composed of more than 600 islands in the Western Pacific Ocean, and fish and seafood products represent 95 percent of the country’s total exports. Eugene Pangelinan, director of Micronesia’s National Oceanic Resource Management Authority, which manages the country’s marine resources, said the certification represents a step forward in maintaining the country’s fishing effort as sustainable.

“Achieving MSC certification demonstrates our commitment to a sustainable fishery,” Pangelinan said. “We congratulate Liancheng for their achievement and we hope that this certification will generate more interest in joining our efforts to develop our longline fishery for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

Worldwide, more than one million metric tons of tuna caught per year is MSC certified, representing around 25 percent of the global tuna catch, according to MSC Oceania Program Director Anne Gabriel.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAFMC to Host Workshop Addressing Law-Enforcement Issues in For-Hire Fisheries

October 11, 2018 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will host a workshop November 13-14 (Law Enforcement/ For-Hire Workshop) to identify issues related to law enforcement in for-hire fisheries and sale by recreational anglers of tilefish and tuna and to develop potential solutions. Specifically, the workshop will address:

  1. Operator versus angler (client) responsibility for fisheries violations that occur on for-hire vessels and law enforcement options for addressing these.
  2. Issues related to the sale of fish by private recreational anglers (particularly golden tilefish and tunas) focusing on the need for vessels selling fish to comply with U.S. Coast Guard requirements and/or Federal permits that allow for the sale of fish.

Recommendations coming from this workshop will be presented during the Council’s December meeting for formal discussion. Operators of for-hire vessels and private vessels fishing for tuna or tilefish along the Atlantic who may have encountered these issues may want to participate. State and federal fisheries law enforcement, as well as operators of for-hire vessels and private vessels fishing for tuna or tilefish along the Atlantic who may have encountered these issues, may want to participate.

The workshop is open to the public and free to attend but pre-registration is requested to ensure adequate meeting facilities. For more information and to register, visit http://www.mafmc.org/workshop/law-enforcement-for-hire-workshop.

Questions? Contact Andrew Loftus, (410) 295-5997, aloftus@andrewloftus.com.

Local Catch hosts discussion on supply chain issues in wake of Sea to Table expose

October 9, 2018 — Local Catch, a community-of-practice made up of fishermen, organizers, researchers, and consumers, had its first webinar in a series exploring the implications of the Associated Press story on Sea to Table.

That story, which was published in June, accused the company of falsifying the origins of its seafood and potentially being linked to slave labor in Indonesia. Given the overlap in mission between Sea to Table and a number of other fishing organizations and nonprofits, Local Catch’s first webinar – titled “Slow Fish 201: Good, clean, fair seafood supply chains” – was focused on discussing what other suppliers can do counteract any negative publicity, and how they can ensure they avoid similar pitfalls.

“What is the overall impact of the Sea to Table Story?” said Colles Stowell, moderator of the discussion and the founder of One Fish Foundation.

Coordinator of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance Brett Tolley said that the accusations levied against Sea to Table, and the adoption of similar policies by many organizations, are an inevitable symptom of the rising interest by consumers in the sustainability and origins of their seafood. The Slow Fish movement, at its core, developed as a way to connect people to harvesters and smaller fishing communities.

“The popularity of this model is giving rise to co-optation,” Tolley said. He pointed to the Fulton Fish Market, which re-branded itself with the moniker “community supported fishery,” which Tolley said is at odds with the smaller, local seafood driven model of Slow Fish.

Challenges in supplying sustainable fish with a known origin story are also not new to  TwoXSea co-founder Innokenty Belov. Belov – who first got into the sustainable seafood business with his San Francisco, California-based restaurant “Fish. Restaurant” – has witnessed firsthand how supply chains can be muddied and difficult to navigate.

“We would have local fishermen bringing us seafood, and we would be able to tell the story of those men and women and what they did every day to bring that bounty into our kitchen,” Belov said of the early days of the restaurant. “There was not nearly enough fish being caught in our local area, being caught in the way we wanted it to be caught.”

That meant going to wholesalers. Belov recounted one wholesaler that provided him with yellowfin tuna for fish tacos, which was reportedly from a boat out of the Marshall Islands.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Australian fisheries declared free from overfishing

October 1, 2018 — Commonwealth fisheries in Australia, the Southern Ocean and the south Pacific managed by Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) have been assessed as not subject to overfishing.

It is the fifth year in a row the fisheries, which include fisheries for southern bluefin tuna, toothfish, skipjack tuna, billfish, scale fish, squid and shark, have been been declared free from overfishing.

The assessments reported by Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) in its status reports 2018, assessed 95 species that are either solely or jointly managed by AFMA.

AFMA’s CEO, James Findlay, said the result is a credit to the Australian seafood industry, scientists and fisheries managers.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Fisheries nations to decide fate of declining bigeye tuna

October 1, 2018 — PARIS — Dozens of nations with commercial fisheries in the Atlantic Ocean will grapple next week with a new finding that bigeye tuna, the backbone of a billion dollar business, is severely depleted and overfished.

Unless catch levels are sharply reduced, scientists warned, stocks of the fatty, fast-swimming predator could crash within a decade or two.

Less iconic than Atlantic bluefin but more valuable as an industry, bigeye (Thunnus obesus) — one of several so-called tropical tunas — is prized for sashimi in Japan and canned for supermarket sales worldwide. It is not farmed.

An internal report by 40-odd scientists working under the inter-governmental International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), finalized last week, shows that populations have fallen to less than 20 percent of their historic levels.

Even more critical, the stock is barely half the size needed to support a “maximum sustainable yield” — the largest catch that can be taken without compromising long-term stability of the species.

Current harvests, overwhelmingly legal, are also more than 60 percent above levels that would give bigeye at least a fighting chance of recovering its numbers, the report said.

Read the full story at Yahoo

Bumble Bee: Trump’s tuna tariffs ‘devastating’ for firm

September 21, 2018 — US tuna canning company Bumble Bee Foods warned the US Trade Representative (USTR) in a letter that the now-confirmed tariffs against imports of Chinese tuna would be “devastating” for the firm.

The tariffs — which will come into play on Sept. 24 at 10%, and then go to 25% on Jan. 1, 2019 — will hit US imports of yellowfin, skipjack, and albacore tuna loins, all of which are required by Bumble Bee’s Santa Fe Springs, California factory, wrote CEO Jan Tharp.

The tariffs, which were initially proposed by USTR on July 10, will hike the cost of raw materials, which in turn will “certainly lead to higher prices for US consumers”, Bumble Bee’s leader said.

“We are very concerned with the proposed tariff on tuna loins and the impact that these tariffs will have on our supply chain, global competitiveness, and US operations,” Tharp said. “The proposed tariff on tuna loins will have a devastating effect on Bumble Bee given that our business model is to import tuna loins for further processing and canning in the US by American workers.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Farm Bill provision would tilt school pollock, tuna purchases back to US

September 19, 2018 — US pollock and tuna harvesters don’t normally care much about the so-called Farm Bill, the massive, every-five-year legislation that helps to, among other things, preserve crop subsidies for American corn and soybean growers and nutrition programs for the unemployed. But they do this time.

That’s because Alaska Republican senator Dan Sullivan has placed a provision in one of the two bills now being worked out in a congressional conference committee that would force the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to more aggressively enforce the “buy American” rules required for schools to receive federal reimbursement for the meals they serve to children, including fish.

The US pollock industry maintains that strapped-for-cash school systems aren’t following those rules, resulting in some 60% of the pollock they serve to be what they claim is less expensive and inferior, twice-frozen fillets sourced originally from Russia. They support Sullivan’s change.

“We are mindful of the need to maximize the use of federal dollars in procuring fish products for school meal programs and for school districts to maximize available school lunch foods,” said the At-sea Processors Association (APA), a group that represents six seafood companies that maintain interests in or operate 16 US-flag, high-tech trawl catcher/processor vessels in the Alaska pollock fishery, in a recent statement.

“However, it is similarly important to maximize the nutritional value of school lunch meals for children and to ensure that students’ early exposure to fish products is positive in order to promote incorporating more seafood meals into diets consistent with federal dietary guidelines.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News