Saving Seafood

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

 

Japanese proposal for bluefin catch increase rejected

September 14, 2018 — Japan’s proposal for increasing the catch quota of Pacific bluefin tuna by about 15 percent from 2019 has been rejected.

Japan made its request at the committee meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Fukuoka, Japan, which took place 3 to 7 September. Japan pushed for the quota increase after scientific data showed a recovery in the stock.

The WCPFC has set a mid-term target of increasing stocks of adult Pacific bluefin tuna (those weighing 30 kilograms or more) from the latest estimate of the current 21,000 metric tons (MT) to 43,000 MT in 2024. The scientific committee of the commission announced in mid-July that the probability of achieving the target would be 74 percent if the total catch, including both fish weighing less than 30 kilograms and those over, were to increase by 15 percent from 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Hawaiian Longline Operators Accept $475,000 MARPOL Fine

September 12, 2018 — The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Coast Guard have reached a consent decree with Hawaii-based operator Asure Fishery over the discharge of oily waste from a commercial longliner. It is the fourth MARPOL enforcement action that the USCG has brought against a Hawaiian longline fishing firm this year.

In a federal complaint filed last Friday, federal prosecutors alleged that the tuna longliner Jaxon T was not equipped for the treatment or storage of oily bilge waste under way, and she often discharged these wastes at sea. The complaint alleges that company managers Khang Quang Dang and Hanh Thi Nguyen had reason to know that the vessel lacked proper equipment for handling oily waste, but still allowed it to sail.

According to the complaint, the bulkhead separating the Jaxon T’s engine room from the fish hold had penetrations that allowed “free flow of fluids” between the two compartments. Apart from the potential safety implications of this arrangement, “substantial” amounts of water from melted ice would flow into the engine room, where it would raise the level of the water in the bilge. To address this problem, the crew would allegedly pump the bilge water directly over the side using a portable electric water pump, “one or more times per day.”

Read the full story at the Maritime Executive