Tuna Archives - Page 55 of 59

San Diego tuna chief addresses Congress

March 1, 2016 — A leader in the San Diego tuna industry addressed U.S. Congress on Tuesday over fishing restrictions on the high seas that he said favor foreign boats.

American Tunaboat Association head Brian Hallman threw his support behind legislation that would potentially give U.S. boats a leg up in treaty negotiations for areas of the world’s largest ocean.

The U.S. fleet, many with ties or based in San Diego, has had a rough year so far, losing access to massive sections of the western and central Pacific Ocean.

Compliance in international waters — for things like how many days boats are allowed to fish for tuna in areas where there is no treaty — is governed by three multinational agreements.

The legislation, called the Ensuring Access to Pacific Fisheries Act, was introduced by congressional delegate Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa) and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

Its basic function would give more people a chance to negotiate for fishing rights instead of just two people from the federal government.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

House Natural Resources Committee to Hold Hearing on International Fisheries Treaties, March 1, 2016

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — February 29, 2016 — The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans will hold a meeting on March 1, 2016 at 2:00pm to discuss a bill that implements U.S. participation in two international fisheries treaties that the country helped negotiate: the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources in the North Pacific Ocean, and the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources in the South Pacific Ocean.

Bill Summary:

H.R. 4576 implements U.S. participation in two international fishery management agreements to which the United States helped negotiate: the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources in the North Pacific Ocean and the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources in the South Pacific Ocean.

The bill also amends the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention Implementation Act (P.L. 109-479) to help ensure that U.S. Commissioners to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention (Convention) advocate positions that minimize disadvantages to U.S. fishermen in relation to other foreign entities party to the Convention.

Witnesses (listed in alphabetical order):

Ambassador David Balton

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries

U.S. Department of State Washington, D.C.

Mr. Brian Hallman

Executive Director

American Tunaboat Association San Diego, California

Mr. Dan Hull

Chairman

North Pacific Fishery Management Council Anchorage, Alaska

Ms. Kitty Simonds

Executive Director

West Pacific Fishery Management Council Honolulu, Hawaii

Mr. Russell Smith

Deputy Assistant

Secretary for International Fisheries National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Washington, D. C.

Cosponsors: Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

View a PDF of the Hearing Notice

View a PDF of the Hearing Memo

Slave Labor on the High Seas

February 20, 2016 — Shocking revelations about the international fishing industry’s reliance on slave labor have caused many people to question the origin of the shrimp or tuna they eat. The disclosures have also led the United States to take some important new steps to clamp down on the use of indentured workers and discourage other unlawful activities on the high seas.

President Obama is expected to sign legislation that effectively bans American imports of fish caught by forced labor in Southeast Asia. The bill, passed by Congress this month, would close a loophole in the Tariff Act of 1930 that prohibits imports made by convicts or forced labor but exempts such goods if American domestic production could not meet demand. Now that is expected to end. The president recently signed an agreement allowing officials to deny port services to foreign vessels suspected of illegal fishing.

In another useful move, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this month said it would improve how seafood is tracked from catch to market by imposing new reporting requirements on American importers, who purchase from overseas sources 90 percent of the seafood that humans and pets consume in the United States. These new requirements would affect 16 species, including cod, snapper and some tuna, and are intended to protect species that are overfished or at risk of being overfished by cracking down on illegally caught or mislabeled fish.

Read the full editorial at The New York Times

US tuna tie-up causing skipjack prices to firm further for February

February 9, 2016 — Skipjack tuna prices for delivery in February to the Asian tuna hub of Bangkok, Thailand are firming up on the previous month, sources told Undercurrent News.

With the US vessel tie-up continuing, prices for January deliveries firmed somewhat, a trend that is looking set to continue.

A deal has been done at $1,175 per metric ton between a trader and a canner, sources in the US and Asia told Undercurrent.

The large tuna traders, a US-based executive said, are holding out for $1,200/t for the rest of the deals.

“They [the traders] are only offering around half of the usual contract monthly tonnages,” he said. “Canners tell me that $1,300/t or $1,400/t for March is talked of, but I don’t see them able to pay that.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Fish Farming In Gulf Poses Questions And Opportunities

February 3, 2016 — Most of the fish we eat in the U.S. comes from other countries. Fishermen in Louisiana have long sought to displace some of those imports but the industry has faced challenges like hurricanes and the 2010 BP oil spill.

Now, a new source of fish in the gulf offers promise — but also raises questions.

For the first time, the Gulf of Mexico is open for fish farming.

Companies can apply for permits through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency. Then they can install floating fish cages — like those already in place in state waters off the coasts of Maine, Washington and Hawaii.

Harlon Pearce owns Harlon’s LA Fish, which sells local fish to restaurants and grocery stores across the south. On a recent afternoon his refrigerated warehouse in Kenner was full of them. He pointed to yellowfin tuna, snapper, black drum and sheep’s head. It doesn’t always look this way.

Pearce, who is on the board of the Gulf Seafood Institute, says he freezes a lot of his fish in order to meet continuous demand, but ultimately always runs out. He wants to sell nationwide and contract with big chains, like Red Lobster, but he says, “We never have enough fish to supply the markets. Never.”

That’s true for a couple of reasons – the seafood industry in the Gulf still hasn’t bounced back from the 2010 BP oil spill, but it’s always fluctuated due to hurricanes and pollution.

Read the full story at New Orleans Public Radio

Feds Dive Into Giant Tuna Price-Fixing Case

January 22, 2016 — SAN DIEGO (CN) — An ongoing antitrust case against seafood giants got even bigger as the federal government has intervened in litigation against the likes of Bumble Bee, Tri-Union Seafoods, StarKist, and others.

U.S. District Court Judge Janis Sammartino held a status conference Wednesday in a room filled to the brim with more than 50 lawyers from around the nation, hoping to move the case forward.

The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division filed an unopposed motion to intervene in the lengthy litigation on Jan. 13. The feds are seeking a limited stay of discovery to aid in an ongoing federal grand jury investigation in the Northern District of California, into whether the biggest canned tuna producers violated the Sherman Act by conspiring to fix prices.

The original class action complaint was filed in San Diego by Olean Wholesale Grocery Cooperative on Aug. 3, 2015. Dozens of lawsuits over price-fixing by the three biggest packed-seafood companies have since trickled into San Diego Federal Court after being transferred from other courts across the nation.

The three companies control 73 percent of the U.S. market: Bumble Bee, 29 percent; StarKist, 25.3 percent; and Tri-Union, 18.4 percent, according to the complaint.

Both Bumble Bee and Tri-Union Seafoods, which makes Chicken of the Sea brand shelf-stable tuna, are headquartered in San Diego – once the tuna-fishing capital of the world.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

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