Saving Seafood

Climate change threat to ‘tuna dependent’ Pacific Islands economies

July 30, 2021 — Climate change-driven redistribution of key commercial tuna species will deliver an economic blow to the small island states of the Western and Central Pacific and threaten the sustainability of the world’s largest tuna fishery, a major international study has found.

The study combines climate science, ecological modeling and economic data to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of climate change on Pacific tuna stocks and on the small island states that depend on them. It is published today in Nature Sustainability.

A consortium of institutions and organizations from across the Pacific, North America and Europe contributed to the research, including the University of Wollongong, Conservation International, the Pacific Community (SPC), the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement Office (PNAO).

The 10 island states of the Western and Central Pacific—Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu—are so reliant on their tuna fisheries for economic development and food security that they are considered “tuna dependent.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

MSC warns WCPO tuna fisheries of potential certification suspension

July 28, 2021 — The Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) is warning that its certification of 22 tuna fisheries in the Western Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) could be suspended if regional fisheries management organizations fail to act on measures to keep the fisheries harvested at sustainable levels.

According to an MSC press release, the tuna fisheries are facing suspension if there is no agreement to update management measures by June 2023. Losing the certification means the fisheries would also lose the MSC blue eco-label placed on their products sold at retail.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chicken of the Sea giving away USD 10,000 in post-COVID “reunion grants”

July 28, 2021 — Chicken of the Sea is encouraging vaccinated Americans to gather together for family occasions with a new promotion.

Consumers can enter to win one of twenty USD 500 (EUR 423) “Reunion Grants” – a total of USD 10,000 (EUR 8,500) – to ensure their outdoor gatherings “are the most memorable yet for family and friends,” Chicken of the Sea said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Concerns emerge that IOTC yellowfin tuna agreement could flop

July 28, 2021 — Uncertainty hangs over a June 2021 agreement by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) to limit the total Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna catch to 401,000 metric tons (MT) after six members of the commission announced intentions to object to the resolution.

In a statement, the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) said the move by Indonesia and Oman to formally object to the agreement reached during the 25th session of the IOTC, in addition to the subsequent objections of India, Iran, Madagascar, and Comoros mean the IOTC agreements “may be futile.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Tuna too few: Commercial season off to standard slow start

July 21, 2021 — Commercial albacore tuna season swam into action last week with the first official landings hitting local docks.

Safe Coast Seafoods and Ilwaco Landing each recorded their first offload of the 2021 commercial tuna season Monday, July 12 in Ilwaco.

Landings have been slow to start the season, fishermen and processors reported, which is par for the course. August has historically been the month with the heaviest commercial tuna landings for Oregon and Washington, with the season wrapping up around October, depending on weather.

“It’s a pretty typical start with fish scattered and in low numbers, but we are encouraged that the water temperature and sea life look more typical and are in good shape to hold large numbers (of tuna) as they come in,” said Tre-Fin Day-Boat Seafood co-founder Michael Domeyer, who recorded their first tuna of the season Saturday, July 17.

Read the full story at The Chinook Observer

Safe Catch tuna mercury ad claims panned as misleading by BBB, NFI

July 20, 2021 — The Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division (NAD) has determined pouched and canned tuna supplier Safe Catch provided a “reasonable basis” for several mercury and sustainability ad claims, but recommended that others be modified or discontinued.

The National Fisheries Institute (NFI), a trade group representing the U.S. seafood industry including some of the largest processors of canned and pouched tuna in the United States, requested the review of Safe Catch’s ad claims.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Saving the Seas: Smarter Hooks and Nets

July 15, 2021 — Last year, fish consumption reached a global annual average of 37.5 pounds per person. Meanwhile, cod and bluefin-tuna populations have collapsed, and animals ranging from whales to turtles have been added to the Endangered Species Act. Our voracious appetite isn’t the only problem. Fishermen catch a lot of things unintentionally, in what Tim Werner, director of the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Engineering program, calls the “collateral damage” of commercial fishing: bycatch.

Compared with the more intractable problem of overfishing, technological solutions to bycatch abound. Bycatch ensnares coral, sponges, starfish, sharks, whales, turtles and even birds. It is “one of the more immediate threats that marine diversity faces,” Werner says. It has led to the assumed extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, has nearly wiped out the Gulf of California’s vaquita porpoise (fewer than 200 remain), and threatens the survival of the North American right whale (400 remain) and the short-tailed albatross. A United Nations report estimates bycatch at 7.5 million tons a year, or 5 percent of the total commercial-fishing haul. Because most available data is self-reported, Werner says that the U.N.’s numbers “woefully underestimate” the problem. A more representative statistic, he says, comes from Gulf of Mexico shrimp fisheries, some of which dredge up to five pounds of bycatch for every pound of shrimp.

The good news is that compared with the more intractable problem of overfishing, technological solutions to reduce bycatch abound. Shrimp companies, for example, have begun using “turtle-excluding devices,” metal grates at the front of a trawl net that let the shrimp in and keep the turtles out. Fishermen who use long subsurface “gillnets” have begun to deter porpoises by equipping these nets with battery-powered acoustic “pingers.” In the best cases, pingers have reduced casualties from 25 porpoises per net to one. At Florida Atlantic University, associate professor Stephen Kajiura is trying to protect sharks by affixing rare-earth elements to the lines that fishermen use to catch tuna. The metals react with seawater to create an electromagnetic field that repels sharks (as well as skates and rays).

Read the full story at Popular Science

Scientists Can’t Agree On What’s Really In Subway’s Tuna Sandwiches

July 15, 2021 — July marks month number seven of the great Subway tuna sandwich debate. In January, two California women sued Subway, alleging that they tested several of the chain’s tuna sandwiches in a lab and found that the ingredients were not tuna nor fish, but a “mixture of various concoctions” mixed together to “imitate the appearance of tuna” (via the Washington Post). Subway fought back, saying that it uses only wild-caught tuna in its subs. The plaintiffs then slightly amended the lawsuit, The New York Times reported, questioning only whether or not the tuna is “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin.”

That was only phase one of the controversy. Next, news outlet Inside Edition conducted its own investigation of the sandwiches. Reporters sent samples from three tuna subs to Applied Food Technologies for DNA testing, according to a press release sent to Mashed, and received confirmation that they all contained tuna. The story doesn’t end there. Last month, The New York Times published a story detailing its own investigation, which hired an anonymous testing center to test another round of sandwiches. The results? “No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample.”

Read the full story at Mashed

On the Hook once again urges independent external review of MSC as it relaunches

July 1, 2021 — The On the Hook campaign has relaunched, shifting its focus back towards the pursuit of a “full, external, independent, and forensic review” of the Marine Stewardship Council’s standards and operation.

On the Hook was first founded in 2017 to challenge the Marine Stewardship Council’s certification of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement’s tuna fishery, the world’s largest.

Read the full story at Seafood Source