Saving Seafood

Mistake in fisheries statistics shows false increase in catches

February 7, 2018 — Countries’ improvements to their fisheries statistics have been contributing to the false impression that humanity is getting more and more fish from the ocean when, in reality, global marine catches have been declining on average by around 1.2 million tonnes per year since 1996.

A new study in Marine Policy explains why the reconstructed catch  of the Sea Around Us show declining , while the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations claims that catches have been more or less ‘stable’ since the 1990s. The Sea Around Us is a research initiative at the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia.

The problem – say authors Dirk Zeller and Daniel Pauly- occurs as an inadvertent side effect of well-intentioned efforts by countries to improve their national data monitoring and reporting systems. As they include new information, for example of a previously unmonitored or poorly-monitored fishery, region or fleet, these new data add additional catches to those of already monitored sectors, thus creating the impression of a growing trend.

But such upward tendencies in catches do not match reality in most countries because often national statistical systems do not correct their new numbers retroactively. This incidental by-product of updates in fisheries data collection systems is what Zeller and Pauly call a “presentist bias,” which means that the emphasis is on the ‘present’ at the expense of the ‘past.’

“In our paper, we use the example of Mozambique where officials reported that small-scale catches ‘grew’ by 800 per cent from 2003 to 2004. This is incorrect. What happened was that the small-scale sector was massively under-represented in the reported data for the longest time and when a new reporting scheme was put in place in the early 2000s, improved catch data by the always-present subsistence and artisanal fisheries were added. A very similar amount of fish was caught in previous years, it was just not registered in the reported data,” says Zeller, who is the lead author of the study and head of the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean at the University of Western Australia.

Read the full story at PHYS

 

Alaska: Five crab fisheries meet stringent criteria

January 26, 2018 — Five crab fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands have met the stringent requirements for certification under the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management program, two of them for the first time.

The newly certified fisheries were identified by ASMI on Jan. 18 as the Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab and Aleutian Islands golden king crab. The recertified fisheries were the Bristol Bay red king crab, St. Matthew Island blue king crab and Eastern Bering Sea snow crab.

“Both the reassessed crab fisheries and the new additions scored high in each of the assessment criteria exemplifying their fisheries management excellence,” said Susan Marks, sustainability director for ASMI.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Too Big To Ignore explores challenges to sustainable development of local fisheries

August 10, 2017 — Two years after FAO member states agreed to adopt a human rights-based approach to governing the small-scale fisheries in their countries, researchers invested in the development of small-scale fisheries have released a book outlining progress made in implementing those reforms and the challenges in doing so.

The book, “Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines: Global Implementation,”  reviews countries’ efforts thus far to implement the human rights-based principles, otherwise known as  Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries, at the local level. Comprising essays and case studies by more than 90 authors from academia, the FAO, and civil society, it also considers the need to contextualize the guidelines to fit local circumstances.

Edited by researchers associated with Too Big To Ignore, a research network and global partnership dedicated to the promotion and support of small-scale fisheries, the book considers case studies in 34 countries, including the Pacific, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Who Governs the High Seas?

Creating, coordinating, and implementing international ocean policy is a complex and time-consuming endeavor.

August 10, 2017 — The earth’s surface is more than 70% ocean, more water than land, a mass of blue connecting disconnected green. Nation states claim up to 200 miles from their coasts as areas of “national jurisdiction” over which they have the power to exploit, consume, and regulate. But the vast majority of the ocean lies outside those boundaries—the high seas—an enormous reservoir of biodiversity that presents a very difficult challenge for governance and enforcement, for protection and sustainability.

In 1967 international diplomats, representing some 160 countries, began discussions and negotiations for what became in 1973 the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that, in 1994, was ratified as a means “to define the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world’s ocean, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources.”

Since the ratification of the Law of the Sea, international experts have been considering and debating how to create a binding instrument to address the changing accessibility of marine areas outside national jurisdiction and the new technologies, increased scientific knowledge, and expanding resource demands that impact them.

Read the full story at HuffPost

On North Carolina’s Outer Banks, A Preview Of What Might Be In Store For Mass. Barrier Beaches

August 9, 2017 — The first truly global disaster resulting from climate change may come from rising sea levels.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change has projected sea level rise of 1 to 3 feet by the end of the century, and more recent estimates by NASA and other scientists have projected a rise of up to 8 feet.

In Massachusetts, the rising sea will mean more frequent flooding, more severe storms, and dramatic change.

It’s a problem we will share with every coastal community on every continent. A bit farther down the Atlantic Coast, there’s a place that’s on a faster track to where we too may be headed.

‘These Beaches Are Doomed’

Leonardo Da Vinci wrote that “water is the driving force of all nature.”

Fascinated by great storms and terrible floods, DaVinci would have loved the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Nearly 200 miles of low-lying, shifting sand islands link into a high energy system of waves and storms.

“These beaches are doomed,” says Orrin Pilkey, a professor at Duke University and an octogenarian prophet. “The buildings are doomed too.”

Traveling through a shanty town of triple-decker McMansions on stilts, motels and condos too close to the sea, we stop in the town of Nags Head. Pilkey predicts catastrophe in vacationland.

“The future is one of retreat,” Pilkey says. “It’s the only way to save the beach. It’s the only way to save the buildings.”

Read and listen to the full story at WBUR

Nations Will Start Talks to Protect Fish of the High Seas

August 2, 2017 — UNITED NATIONS — More than half of the world’s oceans belong to no one, which often makes their riches ripe for plunder.

Now, countries around the world have taken the first step to protect the precious resources of the high seas. In late July, after two years of talks, diplomats at the United Nations recommended starting treaty negotiations to create marine protected areas in waters beyond national jurisdiction — and in turn, begin the high-stakes diplomatic jostling over how much to protect and how to enforce rules.

“The high seas are the biggest reserve of biodiversity on the planet,” Peter Thomson, the ambassador of Fiji and current president of the United Nations General Assembly, said in an interview after the negotiations. “We can’t continue in an ungoverned way if we are concerned about protecting biodiversity and protecting marine life.”

Without a new international system to regulate all human activity on the high seas, those international waters remain “a pirate zone,” Mr. Thomson said.

Lofty ambitions, though, are likely to collide with hard-knuckled diplomatic bargaining. Some countries resist the creation of a new governing body to regulate the high seas, arguing that existing regional organizations and rules are sufficient. The commercial interests are powerful. Russian and Norwegian vessels go to the high seas for krill fishing; Japanese and Chinese vessels go there for tuna. India and China are exploring the seabed in international waters for valuable minerals. Many countries are loath to adopt new rules that would constrain them.

Read the full story at the New York Times

ARA BUAKAMSRI: Major change for the Thai and global seafood industry

July 27, 2017 — Thailand is on the brink of making real progress toward the elimination of destructive fishing and human rights abuses in its seafood supply chains. As a potential yellow card de-listing from the European Commission looms, it remains to be seen whether the country will take the steps needed to fully meet the standards to eliminate human rights abuse in the seafood industry.

It’s fair to say that Thai authorities have made progress in key areas, including reforms to the legal and regulatory framework for fishing that was drawn up in 1947, along with improvements to and the enforcement of labour regulations. At the UN Ocean Conference in New York this year, Thai delegates announced a voluntary commitment to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by rigorously controlling, monitoring, and inspecting all Thai-flagged fishing vessels operating inside and outside Thai waters. A key piece of this commitment is to eliminate all IUU fishing in Thai fishing fleets by 2019.

Understandably, this progress has been met with criticism, seen by some as insufficient and cosmetic.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangkok Post

An Ocean in Chains: Reviewing SDG 14 in Advance of the HLPF

July 6, 2017 — Five meetings in 2017 are pivotal for global efforts to save the ocean, including the July 2017 meeting of the High-level Political Forum for Sustainable Development (HLPF). Parties to the Port State Measures Agreement (on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing) convened for the first meeting of the Parties in May, to set forth its implementation. In June, the first-ever Ocean Conference convened at UN Headquarters in New York. In July, the HLPF will review progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 14) on life below water, as one of seven SDGs to receive special attention. In parallel to the HLPF, a UN preparatory committee will discuss recommendations to the UN General Assembly on negotiating a treaty on the management of marine biological diversity in the high seas. And, in December, the World Trade Organization will hold its eleventh Ministerial Conference, during which many are hoping fisheries subsidies will be on the agenda. While these meetings are not the only important ocean events occurring in 2017, they will influence how stakeholders, from governments to civil society to individuals, will approach ocean issues going forward.

This policy update reviews themes threading through these meetings as reported by the SDG Knowledge Hub. It provides readers with background knowledge, recalls how the international policy community has framed prominent ocean issues, and looks forward to the next steps. This update follows the structure used in the ‘2017 HLPF Thematic Review of SDG 14’ (HLPF Brief), lightly canvassing the issues of pollution, acidification and climate change, marine spatial planning/marine protected areas (MPAs), small-scale fisheries (SSF), subsidies, research, and linkages.

To begin, the Ocean Conference is to be celebrated simply for existing. The guest article ‘SDG at Sea‘ recounts the rise of the ocean in the global sustainable agenda, going from the absence of ocean issues in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to becoming the largest substantive section of the ‘The Future We Want,’ to eventually securing a stand-alone goal among the 17 SDGs. The June Ocean Conference was a key moment for the global ocean policy community, which came together to identify and discuss solutions to ocean challenges. It concluded with a negotiated ‘Call for Action’ and over 1,300 voluntary commitments announced by an array of stakeholders (governments, civil society and the private sector) to tackle ocean-specific problems.

Read the full story at the International Institute for Sustainable Development

HÉCTOR SOLDI: Clear waters, clear hearts: Now is the time for more transparency in our oceans

July 5, 2017 — Last month, leaders from around the world gathered in New York City for the United Nations’ Ocean Conference. The UN Ocean Conference was an opportunity for countries to discuss how we will implement one of the organization’s key conservation goals — how to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

As Peru’s vice minister of fisheries and aquaculture, I came to the UN Ocean Conference to announce a major new transparency measure we are undertaking to demonstrate our commitment to sustainable management of our marine resources.

Peru is making its national vessel tracking data publicly available through Global Fishing Watch, an organization that provides the first global view of commercial fishing activity. Global Fishing Watch already uses public broadcast data collected by satellite and terrestrial receivers to show the movement of vessels over time and identify fishing activity. The addition of our government’s data to the platform will provide the world with an even clearer view of fishing activity in our oceans.

We are also pleased to have been joined by Indonesia, which fulfilled a similar transparency commitment the country made in 2015. Indonesia’s vessel tracking data is now public and available for the first time through Global Fishing Watch.

Read the full opinion piece at The Hill

Seven Species of Giant Clam on Deck for Federal Protection

June 28, 2017 — The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that seven of ten giant clam species petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act need further study. The 90-day review process found that the petition provided enough scientific evidence to move seven of the species to the second stage of the ESA listing process, known as the 12-month status review.

The petition was filed by “private citizen” Dwayne W. Meadows Ph.D., formerly the Coordinator for the NMFS’ Species of Concern Program, who is a conservation biologist and educator, with additional background in SCUBA diving and underwater photography.

Giant clams live along shallow shorelines and reefs in the tropical Indo-West Pacific region. The largest of the giant clam species, Tridacna gigas, grows up to 4.5 feet wide and can weigh up to 440 pounds. “The petition points out that the giant clam (T. gigas) is preferentially targeted for international trade due to its large size and because it is considered a desirable  luxury item in China thought to confer supernatural powers and improve health,” the action notes. “A pair of high quality shells (from one individual) can fetch up to US $150,000.”

A United Nations tribunal arbitrated a dispute between the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China last year regarding maritime rights in the South China Sea, including the matter of China’s poaching of giant clams.

“The Tribunal is particularly troubled by the evidence with respect to giant clams, tons of which were  harvested by Chinese  fishing vessels from Scarborough  Shoal,  and  in  recent  years, elsewhere in the Spratly Islands. Giant clams (Tridacnidae)… play a significant role in the overall growth and maintenance of the reef structure…Excavation is highly destructive, with early reports showing a drop in coral cover by 95 percent from its original value. More recently, fishermen  in  the  South  China  Sea  are  reported  to  utilize  the  propellers  of  their  boats  to excavate shells from reef flats in the Spratly Islands on an industrial scale, leading to near-complete destruction of the affected reef areas,” the report stated.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service