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How The Trade War With China Is Threatening America’s Largest Fishery

February 13, 2019 — Alaskan pollock is an incredibly versatile fish when it comes to cooking. The species is often referred to as a “cousin of cod” because the two species are classified in the same family, Gadidae. This means they have many shared characteristics, including how they taste. Their meat is a flaky blank slate, ready for nearly any preparation you could throw at it. Pollock’s affordability also makes it an attractive species for a variety of markets, from fast-casual to university and corporate dining.

These factors, along with the stability and health of the species’ population, helped to make Alaskan pollock the top species landed by volume in the United States in 2017. It hasn’t always been a top seller though. Back in the 1980s, there was very little demand for the species, but seafood distributors such as Trident Seafoods, based in Seattle, saw pollock’s potential as a cheaper cod alternative. Trident started a pollock revolution and became the largest vertically integrated seafood company in North America. Its founder, Chuck Bundrant, even became a billionaire, with a net worth Forbes estimates at $2.4 billion. Today, Alaskan pollock remains one of the top five most commonly eaten species in the U.S., but the fishery is at risk of being diminished by the ongoing trade war with China.

The species’ dominance could change if markets become unavailable because of shifts in global seafood processing and distribution due to an escalating international trade war. Last summer, China put in place a retaliatory tariff of 25% for seafood products. Then the U.S. proposed a 10% increase for tariffs on seafood imported from China. The issue here is that a portion of seafood caught by American fishermen is shipped to China for filleting and processing before being re-exported back in the U.S. for Americans to buy. While this seems like a wildly inefficient move, it has been, in fact, a commonly used method to cut costs. That meant when Alaskan pollock was processed in China and re-exported to America, it was included on the tariff lists.

After reports came out that the tariffs were harming the American fishing industry, particularly in Alaska, the U.S. announced that certain species of fish caught in the state would be excluded from the tariff list. Alaskan pollock is included in this group and will not be taxed when re-entering America. But the exemption doesn’t solve all problems for Alaskan fishermen and processors.

According to an FAO market report from January, Trump’s trade war “could end up favoring Russian Federation (and Chinese) exporters at the expense of Alaska processors.” This is because foreign fishing competitors can still ship pollock caught in their waters to China for lower-cost processing and then re-export to the U.S. tariff free. It seems like a bad turn of events for Alaskan fishermen and processors.

Read the full story at Forbes

 

Americans Need to Know U.S. Fisheries are Sustainable: Former Senior NOAA Official

July 24, 2017 — Earlier this month, Saving Seafood unveiled our campaign to tell the public that American Seafood is Sustainable Seafood™. A recent paper by Mark Helvey, former NOAA Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries for the Pacific Region, confirms that purchasing U.S.-caught seafood is one of the most sustainable choices consumers can make, and notes that, “Most Americans remain unaware of the high environmental standards by which U.S. federal marine fisheries – and many state fisheries – are managed, in compliance with multiple state and federal laws.”

According to the paper, the standards under which U.S. fishermen operate “conform to or exceed internationally accepted guidelines for sustainable fisheries adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”

The first recommendation made in the peer-reviewed paper is to “increase awareness…of the high environmental standards by which U.S. federal marine fisheries – and many state fisheries – are managed.”

The paper makes the case that, “Sea Grant Extension Programs in U.S. coastal states and territories have conducted education and out-reach, with NOAA Fishwatch and a number of nongovernmental organizations also helping to bridge this gap. However, further efforts to address this lack of understanding are needed.”

This is precisely the goal of our American Seafood is Sustainable Seafood™ campaign.

Mr. Helvey provided the following summary of his paper to Saving Seafood:

  • The United States is recognized for its robust seafood appetite and strong commitment to environmental conservation. However, efforts to close or restrict its own domestic fisheries in pursuit of environmental protection are often not considered within the context of seafood consumption.
  • Restricting U.S. fisheries comes at the cost of displaced negative environmental impacts associated with the fishing activities of less-regulated, foreign fisheries.
  • The authors provide six solutions for addressing this issue beginning with the need for U.S. consumers becoming more aware of the exceedingly high environmental standards by which U.S. marine fisheries are managed relative to many foreign ones.
  • While efforts by NOAA’s Sea Grant Extension Program, FishWatch, and a number of nongovernmental organizations are bridging the information gap, the authors stress that more is required for increasing awareness that U.S fisheries are sustainable fisheries.

The paper, “Can the United States have its fish and eat it too?,” was published in the January 2017 volume of Marine Policy and is co-authored by Caroline Pomeroy, Naresh C. Pradhan, Dale Squires, and Stephen Stohs.

Read the full paper at ScienceDirect

Taiwan Protests Exclusion From UN Fisheries Conference

September 22, 2016 — BEIJING — Taiwan has protested its exclusion from a United Nations conference on the global fishing industry, allegedly at the behest of chief rival China, the official Central News Agency reported.

CNA said in a report late Wednesday that the Foreign Ministry delivered a letter to the Food and Agricultural Organization protesting against what it called “discriminatory treatment” against two Taiwanese representatives who were barred from the organization’s Committee on Fisheries meeting being held in Italy this week.

It said China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, was behind their rejection but did not say how that information was obtained.

Taiwanese representatives had participated in the biennial conference since 2003 as experts or members of non-governmental organizations.

As a major deep-sea fishing nation, Taiwan had argued that its presence at the conference was appropriate and necessary.

However, the exclusions are seen as the latest sign of how China is tightening the diplomatic screws on Taiwan as a way of pressuring the island’s new independence-leaning president, Tsai Ing-wen.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

ABTA: Atlantic Marine Monument Says U.S. Doesn’t Support Its Own Sustainable Fisheries

September 15, 2016 — The following was released today by the American Bluefin Tuna Association, in response to President Obama’s decision to designate a new Marine National Monument off the coast of Cape Cod:

The American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) represents 27,000 commercial, charter/headboat and recreational fishermen who fish for Bigeye, Yellowfin, Bluefin and Albacore tuna. ABTA is deeply saddened to hear of President Obama’s decision today to designate a marine monument in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts. All of the aforementioned fish species are found and fished by our fishermen within the newly designated monument.

ABTA’s fishermen have the distinction of employing the most sustainable fishing methods of any oceanic fishery in the U.S.  ABTA’s commercial fishery is the U.S.’s only artisanal fishery, as defined by the United Nations Fish and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) and by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). ABTA fishermen catch one fish at a time, using handgear, with negligible bycatch and its commercial fishermen have the highest record of compliance with fishery regulations of any such fishery in the world.

ABTA’s takeaway from the Administration’s decision to designate an Atlantic marine monument:

  1. This decision sends a message to the world that the U.S. does not support its own sustainable fisheries; that the U.S. is more interested in promoting the concept of marine protected areas internationally than it is in protecting its own fishing economy and food supply. Implicit in this action is the message that the U.S. does not trust the body of law that we have created and the democratic institutions we have empowered to enact that law in the stewardship of our oceans.
  1. This decision will most definitely result in the U.S. having greater difficulty in utilizing its fishing quota, as set by ICCAT, for certain species fished in this region; in particular, swordfish. There is a very real threat that the U.S. will have to surrender some or all of its unutilized swordfish quota to another ICCAT-member country who may not maintain sustainable fishing practices. This decision will also result in an unnecessary increase in fish imports.
  1. The proposed prohibition on all forms of fishing in the monument is simply punitive and completely unnecessary. The Canyons and Seamounts region is in very deep water, from 1,500 to 15,000 ft in depth. Much of the fishing in this region uses surface and sub-surface fishing gear, sustainable fishing methods in which the fishing gear never comes into contact with deep sea coral found on the sea floor. Prohibiting these forms of fishing is tantamount to prohibiting commercial airline flights over Yellowstone National Park for fear that trees will be knocked down.
  1. The notion that creating a marine monument will contribute to the sustainability of the marine species found there is a myth. All of the marine species harvested in this region are from healthy fish stocks and are sustainably managed by NOAA. Most of the marine species that are harvested in this region are highly migratory, highly fecund pelagic species whose habitat is the entirety of the tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions of the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas. These species do not preferentially inhabit this region for long periods of time. They swim in and out of the region constantly during certain months and migrate to the east Atlantic, West Africa or the east coast of South America regularly.

A negative message

Abandoning the open, democratic and thoroughly science-based process by which we undertake to establish protections for important marine attributes in favor of a monument established by executive fiat sends a negative message to those U.S. fishermen and shoreside industries who would needlessly pay for this monument by loss of income. It also sends a negative message to the majority of our fishermen who are committed to adhering to the processes and respect for regulation promulgated in accordance with the Magnuson Stevens Act. The decision is a clear denouncement of the democratic institutions that are charged with safeguarding the public interest as it pertains to oceanic marine matters. U.S. fisheries, in particular those fisheries that are found in the proposed area, are already the most highly regulated such fisheries in the world.

Absent strong, verifiable scientific support for such an action, creating a marine monument based upon vague and unsupported concerns “for the future”, can be likened to such expressions as “better safe than sorry” or “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. These are fairly vacuous guidelines for safeguarding the environment and for public policy in general.

David Schalit, Vice President

American Bluefin Tuna Association

NILS STOLPE: When it comes to fish and fishing Huffington Post is all wet

August 30, 2016 — FISH NET USA — Last week Dana Ellis Hunnes, a Huffington Post blogger, managed to package in just 700 words more false, misleading, distorted and just plain wrong information about fish and seafood production than I’ve ever seen in works with far more words by professional anti-fishing activists. Addressing her inaccuracies on a point by point basis:

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·        Sustainable Fish Do Not Exist

Starting out with her title, the Merriam-Webster definition of sustainable is “able to be used without being completely used up or destroyed, involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources, able to last or continue for a long time.” The concept of renewable resources revolves around the sustainable utilization of those resources.

In 2014, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the United States was ranked number three in the production of its capture fisheries in the world (behind China and Indonesia). The federal fisheries management system, as set forth in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, has sustainability as its primary focus. Overfished fish stocks are those that are harvested at an unsustainable level and the Act demands that fishing effort on overfished stocks be reduced to the level of sustainability (also known as the maximum sustainable yield or MSY). In 2015 only nine percent of U.S. fish stocks were being fished at an unsustainable level –http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/fisheries_eco/status_of_fisheries/.

Note that as defined in the Magnuson Act “overfished” does not necessarily mean too much fishing, it means that there are not as many fish in a stock as fishery scientist think should be there regardless of the cause 

By any definition of sustainability that is used (except for Ms. Hunnes’), nine out of ten of our fisheries, and more than 90% of the fish that we harvest, are inarguably sustainable.

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·        In fact, the United Nations Environmental Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization, report that we are running out of fish. We have overfished or overexploited more than 80% of our fish stocks.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in its 2016 The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture reported “fully fished stocks accounted for 58.1 percent (of the world’s capture fisheries) and underfished stocks 10.5 percent.” (http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5555e.pdf on Pg. 5). Fully fished stocks are those that are being harvested at their MSY. So, in spite of what Ms. Hunnes wrote in the Huffington Post, almost 70% of the fish stocks in the world are being harvested sustainably. That is a far cry from “running out of fish.” As the graph below (from Pg. 13 of the same FAO report cited above) demonstrates, the production of the world’s capture fisheries has been level since the late 1980s. I could find nothing on the FAO website that even hinted that there was any indication that we were “running out of fish.”

  • In fact, a number of the species have been declared as critically endangered and threatened with extinction by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In spite of IUCN declarations, in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Environmental Conservation Online System, listing animal species that are Endangered or Threatened in the U.S. and abroad (http://preview.tinyurl.com/zl3qgk3), the only fish listed that support commercial fisheries are geographically distinct groups of salmon (threatened or endangered because of anthropogenic impacts on their spawning grounds, not fishing – see note above). None of those salmon species are considered endangered or threatened throughout their range. Some species of sturgeon are listed throughout their range as are some distinct population segments of others, but no commercial sturgeon fisheries are permitted in the U.S. The same for sawfish. The rest of the listed threatened or endangered species are species of no commercial interest.

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·        And, while we may believe that consuming farmed fish is a more sustainable and ecological choice….

Any definition of “sustainable” that I’m aware of indicates that it’s an all or nothing term. Something is either utilized sustainably or it isn’t. Ms. Hunnes’ use of “more sustainable” is linguistically puzzling. “Ecological” relates to or is concerned with the study of organisms in relation to each other and to their living and non-living environment. The idea of applying the term to a dietary choice is even more linguistically puzzling than “more sustainable.”

But, the niceties of effective communications aside, there are numerous ways to grow fish and to catch fish. Some are – or should be – unacceptable because of the damage they do to the environment. It’s the role of government to insure that these are not permitted, and in the U.S. they aren’t. Other methods of fish production in the U.S. and in much of the rest of the world are environmentally acceptable and are permitted, though highly regulated.

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·        It takes approximately five pounds of wild small fish such as herring, menhaden, or anchovies to create one pound of salmon, a predatory fish. The proportion of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon is lower pound-for-pound than it would be simply in the smaller fish.

This is a generalization that, like many generalizations, doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The DHA and EPA (respectively docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid, fish-derived omega 3 fatty acids) content of the flesh of particular fish as determined by the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services are below.

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  • Current statistical analyses and estimates indicate that in a “business as usual” world, we will run out of the fish we eat by 2048

In 2006 Canadian fisheries researcher Boris Worm and a group of scientists published a paper in the journal Science predicting that the continuation of present trends would mean that all of the big fish in the oceans would be gone by 2048. Needless to say, this prediction generated a media storm and much scientific controversy, which the media ignored. Unfortunately, a casual web search will provide links to the dire prediction that Ms. Hunnes focused on.

But she was off by at least a decade with what she refers to as “current statistical analyses.” In fact, in 2009 Worm and University of Washington Fisheries Professor Ray Hilborn and a group of other researchers published a follow-up paper that soundly rejected the 2006 prediction of the imminent destruction of the world’s fisheries. (http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090730/full/news.2009.751.html)

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  • But the fact of the matter is, it’s near impossible to grow or to take a fish in a sustainable way. In a way, nearly every fish humans eat is threatened with extinction.

It’s hard to imagine in exactly what way that would be, and unfortunately Ms. Hunnes didn’t share her insights on this with her readers. She could have just as easily written in a way, nearly every cow (or pig or goat or string bean or ear of corn) humans eat is threatened with extinction. The whole point of sustainable food production is to not eat more than is being produced. That covers a very large proportion of our seafood and that proportion increases every year.

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  • Never order bluefin tuna. It would be akin to eating a rhinoceros.

According to the USFWS bluefin tuna are not classified as endangered or threatened – in spite of an ongoing campaign by anti-fishing zealots to have them listed as such. Accordingly, if it’s legally caught and legally sold, ordering bluefin tuna is akin to ordering a beef steak, though the tuna is much healthier. But in keeping with the old adage “even a blind squirrel finds the occasional acorn,” Ms Hunnes was right about rhinoceroses. They definitely shouldn’t be eaten.

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  • If you are going to eat fish, consume the small ones. The anchovies, the herring; the bottom of the food chain.

The bottom of the ocean food chain is composed of plants, almost exclusively algae and almost exclusively planktonic. The “small ones” Ms. Hunnes is referring to are a couple of steps up the food chain from there.

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  • Skip that fish oil. You don’t need it, there’s no real benefit, and you can get those healthy oils from other foods including algal oils, flaxseed, seeds and nuts.

The pros and cons of dietary fish oil, or more precisely of omega 3 fatty acids, and of the relative health benefits of omega 3s produced by oceanic algae and found in oceanic fish vs the health benefits of omega 3s produced by terrestrial plants, has been going on for more than a decade. There’s nothing approaching a scientific consensus as yet, except perhaps in Ms. Hunnes’ mind. For the other side of the argument take a look at The Best Omega-3 Supplement: Flaxseed Oil vs. Fish Oil on the University Health News website at http://universityhealthnews.com/daily/nutrition/the-best-omega-3-supplement-flaxseed-oil-vs-fish-oil/.

And from the Tufts University Health and Nutrition Newsletter (January 2012 Issue)

Question: As a vegetarian, can I get enough omega-3 from walnuts, flax seed, canola oil and trace amounts in other foods?

Answer:  The omega-3 fatty acids found in plant foods (ALA) have their own health benefits, but they are not the same as the omega-3s found in fish (DHA and EPA) that have been associated with heart-health benefits. According to Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, director of Tufts’ HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, while your body does convert ALA into DHA/EPA, studies have found that this conversion is very inefficient. Only between 3% and 5% of the ALA gets converted into EPA and as little as 0.5% to 9% into DHA. If you’re concerned about getting enough of the omega-3s found in fish, it is possible to buy vegetarian supplements that derive DHA from algae. (http://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/issues/8_1/ask-experts/ask-tufts-experts_1173-1.html)

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  • Confirm that it is not an endangered species simply renamed for marketing purposes.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has a list of common and scientific names of fish and shellfish called the Seafood List, which is regularly updated. More properly the Guide to Acceptable Market Names for Seafood, it’s available at http://preview.tinyurl.com/jaffa33, it’s quite extensive, and reputable seafood dealers and restaurateurs adhere to its content. But above and beyond the Seafood List, the probability of an endangered – or a threatened – species making its way to any retail markets or restaurants which don’t follow federal and state laws is remote. The probability of buying an endangered species of fish or shellfish from a fish market would be approaching the probability of buying a rhinoceros roast from a butcher.

There has been a problem with misidentified species, but this involves either mislabeling a less expensive product as a more expensive one or concealing where the seafood originated to circumvent import restrictions. Curtailing this misidentification was recently made a federal priority (see http://www.iuufishing.noaa.gov/) .

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In sum it appears as if Ms. Hunnes is not a fan of seafood in the human diet. And she appears to have fully embraced every doom and gloom report she stumbled upon in researching this blog, selecting the worst of the worst. But by looking just the slightest bit behind the headlines she would have found that much of the worst that she has embraced is not justified. I would think that her readers deserve better.

With a world population of over seven billion no one who wasn’t suffering from some level of misanthropy could have a problem with 60 percent of our fisheries being fully and sustainably exploited (though they might not look with favor at the 10 percent that aren’t), but somehow Ms. Hunnes insists that there’s no such thing as a sustainable fishery. Perhaps in another blog she’ll explain how she arrived at that conclusion and set the world of fishing and fishery management straight, because an awful lot of people believe in, an awful lot more people depend on and even more people than that both enjoy and benefit from sustainably grown and sustainably harvested fish and shellfish.

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“This significant growth in fish consumption has enhanced people’s diets around the world through diversified and nutritious food. In 2013, fish accounted for about 17 percent of the global population’s intake of animal protein and 6.7 percent of all protein consumed” (Pg. 4 of the FAO report cited above). This might be inconsequential to Ms Hunnes and the Huffington Post, but rest assured that to the people who depend on catching, processing, transporting, marketing and consuming these fish, it surely isn’t, and no alternative animal protein sources are very likely. Maybe their plan, like Marie Antoinette’s, is to let them eat cake instead.

This story originally appeared on FishNetUSA.com. It is reprinted with permission.

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