Saving Seafood

Blue Fin Tuna, Once Bountiful, Now in Peril, Scientists Say

January 22, 2016 — NEW YORK — When you mention tuna, most minds probably swim to the ubiquitous cans of the fish, or maybe a delectable piece of sashimi decked out with roe and wasabi.

But when Stanford biology professor Barbara Block contemplates tuna, her mind goes to images of bluefin tuna — the massive, speedy fish that regularly traverse oceans in a single year.

“Over a lifetime they might travel tens of thousands of miles,” Block said, flanked by California’s Monterey Bay.

Block is warning that the bluefin, once thought to be incredibly bountiful, is now facing peril because of decades of overfishing.

Read the full story at NBC New York

U.S. to pull out of Pacific tuna treaty

January 19, 2016 — The U.S. State Department has announced its intention to pull out of a nearly 30-year treaty that allowed American boats to fish tuna in a vast area of the Pacific Ocean.

Prompted by some U.S. boats saying they could not pay fees to a cluster of Pacific island nations, the 37-boat fleet — many with ties to San Diego — were not issued licenses at the start of 2016.

The department gave formal notice this week to island nations in the South Pacific Tuna Treaty that it planned to pull out of the world’s biggest tuna fishery.

Pressure on the island nations will likely build as Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, plans to introduce legislation in Congress at the end of this week to cut $21 million in foreign aid to 15 of the countries in the treaty.

Brian Hallman, executive director of the San Diego-based American Tunaboat Association, said the treaty has one year to expire and he was hopeful a new deal could be worked out.

“During that year, I believe there will be efforts and negotiations to try to get a restructured treaty,” Hallman said Tuesday, “and we support that.”

He said it was hard to say how many American jobs would be lost because many local fishing captains can transfer to boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean. However, he said the U.S. territory of American Samoa employs thousands who work in canneries and other jobs related to the U.S. fleet.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

Fishing treaty fee dispute is keeping vessels out of Pacific

January 17, 2016 — Two San Diego-based fishing concerns say they are no longer able to uphold their intention to provide the market with sustainable, free-school tuna harvested in the Western and Central Pacific Oceans (WCPO). South Pacific Tuna Corporation (SoPac) and its affiliate, The Global Companies (Ocean Global, LLC, Sea Global, LLC, and Pacific Global LLC), made the announcement on Sunday.

According to their press release, this is a result of halted U.S. Tuna Fleet operations as directed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which advised last month that all U.S. vessels are prohibited from fishing in the Western Pacific Ocean (WPO) until licenses from the Pacific Island Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) are issued for 2016.

The companies committed to establishing a Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified tuna program in January 2015, and spent the following nine months establishing chain of custody programs to meet and exceed the requirements. MSC standards are considered the most stringent of the current managed sustainability programs.

Read the full story Samoa News

 

Tuna-Fishing Deal Dispute Keeps U.S. Boats Out of Pacific Waters

January 12, 2016 — U.S. boats are set to be locked out of the world’s best tuna-fishing waters after reneging on a deal with 17 Pacific states, amid a slump in prices for the fish sold in cans in supermarkets all over the country.

The standoff means U.S. boats cannot access seas where around half of the world’s skipjack tuna are caught each year. It is also endangering a vital revenue stream for some of the world’s poorest nations.

A group of Pacific island states—which includes small islands and atolls such as Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Marshall Islands—along with New Zealand and Australia are refusing to issue fishing licenses to around 36 U.S. vessels to trawl in their waters after their owners, typically tuna-supply companies or individuals, refused to meet payments agreed in August last year.

“These are the most attractive fisheries in the world and there are boats dying to fish in these waters right now but they can’t go and fish,” said Transform Aqorau, chief executive officer of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, a grouping of eight of the islands which control most of the regions’ best fishing grounds.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

 

‘Wicked Tuna’ star agrees to plea deal

January 12, 2016 — “Wicked Tuna” cast member Paul Hebert, facing federal charges in Vermont that he illegally collected more than $44,000 in Social Security, disability and Medicaid payments for two years, is looking to make a deal that could keep him out of jail.

The Gloucester fisherman and one of the long-running cast members on the popular fishing reality show on the National Geographic Network, has agreed to a plea deal that recommends probation in return for Hebert pleading guilty to two of the original counts and paying $53,561 in restitution, according to the plea agreement on file in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont.

The other two counts originally contained in the indictment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ophardt said Monday, will be dismissed if the agreement is accepted by the court and Hebert meets all conditions.

Hebert originally pleaded not guilty to all counts at his arraignment. 

“Paul Hebert agrees to plead guilty because he is, in fact, guilty of the above crimes,” said the plea agreement, filed Jan. 7 in U.S. District Court in Burlington.

The proposed plea agreement between Hebert and the U.S. Attorney’s office will be presented to the trial judge in Burlington on Jan. 20 and, if accepted, will result in sentencing in about 90 days, Ophardt said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

First-Ever Federal Rules for Offshore Fish Farming Issued

January 11, 2016 — The first-ever federal regulations for large-scale fish farming in the ocean were issued Monday, opening a new frontier in the harvesting of popular seafood species such as red drum, tuna and red snapper.

The new rules allow the farming of fish in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The rules — in the making for years — were announced in New Orleans by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said the Gulf rules could spur similar rules in other U.S. waters. She said it was time for the United States to open up this new market, which she said could help the U.S. meet its seafood demands.

Fish farming is contentious, with fishermen and environmentalists warning it could harm the marine environment and put fishermen out of work.

Typically, offshore farming is done by breeding fish in large semi-submersible pens moored to the seafloor. The practice is common in many parts of the world, and Sullivan said the United States has fallen behind. About 90 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported and more than half of that is farmed, she noted.

She said expanding fish farming has numerous benefits.

“It’s good for the balance of trade, it’s good for the food security of the country,” she said. She said it could create jobs, too.

The new rules allow up to 20 fish farms to open in the Gulf and produce 64 million pounds of fish a year. The farms can start applying for 10-year permits starting in February, she said.

Read the full story at ABC News

State Department: Amid impasse, US could withdraw from Pacific tuna treaty

January 7, 2016 — Though there appears to be no immediate end in sight to a dispute over unpaid fees for fishing access that has seen the US tuna fleet grounded in the Pacific, one thing is clear: the parties involved agree that the existing treaty should be renegotiated in favor of a more flexible, permanent solution.

In statements to Undercurrent News, US State Department and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), which manages access to the tuna fishery, both said they see serious issues with the existing system and would like to see reforms to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty.

“Longer-term, we are increasingly concerned about whether the treaty can remain operationally viable and believe a new approach is required,” a State Department spokeswoman wrote in a statement to Undercurrent.

She added that the US has told the PNA that it is weighing a pull out from the existing arrangement.

“The United States previously informed Pacific island parties that it was considering the possibility of withdrawal from the treaty as the terms offered in negotiations continued to deteriorate and commercial differences threatened to negatively affect our positive cooperation with the region,” the spokeswoman said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Trader Joe’s tuna fish cans are underfilled: lawsuit

January 5, 2016 — Fish lovers have slapped Trader Joe’s with a class-action lawsuit accusing the grocery store of “cheating” customers by not filling their 5-ounce cans of tuna all the way.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, says tests by a US government lab found that the cans of various Trader Joe’s tuna brands actually contain less than 3 ounces of the fish and that “every lot tested, and nearly every single can, was underfilled in violation of the federally mandated minimum standard of fill.”

One test found that 24 cans of Trader Joe’s Albacore Tuna in Water Half Salt contained, on average, just 2.43 ounces of pressed cake tuna — 24.8 percent below 3.23 ounces, the federally mandated minimum standard of fill.

Read the full story at the New York Post

 

Rep. Duncan Hunter to Kerry: Help save US tuna jobs

January 5, 2016 — U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter wants the U.S. State Department to step in to assist American tuna boats — many with ties to San Diego — that are shut out of a large area of the Pacific Ocean for the first time in nearly 30 years.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, given to The San Diego Union-Tribune on Monday, Hunter writes that the U.S. government must act fast to help the tuna fleet.

Last week, administrators of the South Pacific Tuna Treaty — a 27-year-old accord among 17 nations governing waters in the western Pacific — refused to issue 2016 licenses on Jan. 1. It said American boats must pay millions of dollars in fees, they agreed to in August, to fish international waters.

Some of the tuna boat operators in the 37-boat fleet say a bad 2015 fishing season has left them unable to pay the first quarterly payment of $17 million.

“An extended prohibition against the U.S.-flag tuna fleet fishing in the treaty area may well bankrupt the fleet and jeopardize the thousands of American jobs it supports,” wrote Hunter, R-Alpine.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

End of an era as Tokyo has last New Year tuna auction before historic fish market closes

January 5, 2015 (AP) — TOKYO — It’s among the biggest of Japan’s many New Year holiday rituals: Early on Tuesday, a huge, glistening tuna was auctioned for about $118,000 at Tokyo’s 80-year-old Tsukiji market. Next year, if all goes as planned, the tradition won’t be quite the same.

The world’s biggest and most famous fish and seafood market is due to move in November to a massive complex farther south in Tokyo Bay, making way for redevelopment of the prime slice of downtown real estate.

The closure of the Tsukiji market will punctuate the end of the post-war era for many of the mom-and-pop shops just outside the main market that peddle a cornucopia of sea-related products, from dried squid and seaweed to whale bacon and caviar.

The auction is typical of Japan’s penchant for fresh starts at the beginning of the year — the first visit of the year to a shrine and the first dream of the year are other important firsts — and it’s meant to set an auspicious precedent for the 12 months to come.

Sushi restaurateur Kiyoshi Kimura has prevailed in most of the recent New Year auctions, and he did so again this year in the bidding for a 440-pound tuna.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Post