Saving Seafood

Another GBP 1 billion year for UK fishing fleet but profits fall

August 22, 2019 — The turnover achieved by the United Kingdom’s fishing fleet reached GBP 1 billion (USD 1.2 billion, EUR 1.1 billion) for the second consecutive year in 2018, although external factors such as fuel cost, weather, and the political landscape have led to a fall in profits, new figures released by seafood public body Seafish showed.

Seafish’s report, “Economics of the UK Fishing Fleet 2018,” which analyzes the performance of the catching sector and is based on the most recent annual accounts available for fishing vessels, also confirmed that operating costs for U.K. vessels increased by 2 percent last year to GBP 759 million (USD 922.9 million, EUR 832.6 million).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

CleanTreat by Benchmark wins top aquaculture innovation prize at Aqua Nor

August 21, 2019 — United Kingdom-based Benchmark Animal Health took home the 2019 Innovation Award at this year’s Aqua Nor event for its CleanTreat technology, a water purification system for aquaculture.

Well boats, tankers, platforms, and onshore facilities could all potentially utilize the award-winning CleanTreat, which cleanses treatment water after delousing, according to Benchmark Animal Health. The company is showcasing CleanTreat at Aqua Nor, the world’s largest aquaculture technology exhibition, this week in Norway from 20 to 23 August.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Brexit Could Spark The Next Big Fishing War

August 19, 2019 — Britain’s looming exit from the European Union threatens to spark a new fishing war ― one that risks depleting stocks at a moment when warming seas are already stressing aquatic populations.

Newly sworn-in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to take his country out of the bloc by the end of October with or without a deal. That raises the possibility of fresh conflicts as European and British trawlers compete for catches in once-shared fisheries and regulatory enforcement falls to the wayside.

A so-called “no-deal Brexit” would pull the United Kingdom out of the EU’s common fisheries policy and could affect “nearly every fishery and species caught commercially in the Northeast Atlantic,” said Michael Harte, a professor and fisheries policy expert at Oregon State University.

Read the full story at The Huffington Post

Sharks Have Few Places To Hide From Fishing, Study Shows

July 24, 2019 — Ocean-dwelling sharks often like to hang out in areas that also get frequented by industrial fishing ships, which puts them at grave risk of being caught either for food or as bycatch.

That’s according to a new study in the journal Nature that mapped the activity of 23 shark species and fishing vessels around the globe.

Researchers tracked more than 1,500 sharks with satellite tags and combined that data with information on ship movements taken from safety technology that vessels use to avoid collisions at sea.

“Tens of millions of these pelagic sharks are being caught by industrialized fisheries in areas where there’s little or no management, and some populations have declined as a result,” says David Sims, a U.K.-based marine ecologist at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth and the University of Southampton.

Fishing vessels can catch sharks accidentally, because their long lines can extend for miles and have more than 1,000 hooks.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

‘Smart boats’, AI could revolutionise UK fishing, seafood industries

July 22, 2019 — UK environment secretary Michael Gove has today delivered a boost for innovation in the country’s seafood industry with the opening of a new £10 million research and development fund.

The move paves the way for the potential use of artificial intelligence by fishermen and providing a potential double return on investment for the UK economy, the government claimed.

With the UK fishing industry contributing around £1.4 billion to the economy and employing over 24,000 people, there is huge potential for innovation to improve the technology available across the sector.

Unlike existing funding programs, the Seafood Innovation Fund will focus on delivering longer-term, cutting edge innovation.

UK businesses are already developing satellite technology and virtual watch rooms to track vessel movements, and integrating lighting into fishing nets to reduce unwanted catch and improve efficiency. But with the global fishing industry worth nearly £300bn, the government hopes this fund will encourage further technological development and unlock export opportunities around the world for UK technology pioneers.

“This government is investing record amounts in research and development, with this £10m fund further driving UK innovation,” said Gove. “As the UK establishes itself as an independent coastal state, the Seafood Innovation Fund will bring together our world-leading fishing, seafood, and technology industries to deliver more sustainable and productive fisheries for the future.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

“Stocks remain at risk” – Lords slam poor implementation of EU discard ban

July 17, 2019 — Six months after the rules took effect, the U.K. government does not know the extent of compliance with the E.U.’s landing obligation and the fact that the anticipated challenges have not arisen raises concerns that illegal discarding may still be taking place, according to the House of Lords E.U. Energy and Environment Sub-Committee’s new report, “The E.U. fisheries landing obligation: six months on.”

The committee has found that the new rules seem to have had little impact since they came in to full force six months ago. If the landing obligation were being complied with, the committee heard that some vessels would have to stop fishing halfway through the year, and that storage facilities and supply chains would struggle to cope with the amount of undersized fish being brought to shore. It stated that neither of these eventualities have occurred, suggesting fishers are continuing to discard fish illegally.

In its report, the committee highlights that if fishing is permitted above the maximum level that scientific advice states is sustainable, the long-term damage to fish stocks could pose a serious threat to the fishing industry. Given the important ecological reasons for the introduction of the landing obligation, it is concerning both that the government believes illegal discarding is still taking place and that it does not know the extent of compliance, it said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New study maps out how the world’s fisheries are interconnected

July 17, 2019 — A new study published in the journal Science reveals that the world’s marine fisheries form a single global network – linked by transnational flows of fish larvae – rather than existing as discrete groups.

Researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom believe that their work could lead to greater international cooperation in the way fish stocks are managed in the future.

The study combined data from satellites, ocean buoys, field observations, and marine catch records to build a computer model of how the eggs and larvae of more than 700 of the world’s commercially harvested fish species are dispersed. The results showed that more than USD 10 billion (EUR 8.9 billion) worth of fish is caught each year in a country other than the one in which it spawned.

Fisheries are traditionally managed within EEZs, where around 90 percent of the world’s fish are caught. And while adult pelagic stocks can be tracked across international borders, as they tend to swim in large schools, the wider movements of non-pelagic populations are more of a grey area.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ICES recommends slashing North Sea cod quota, NGOs respond

July 1, 2019 — The 2020 North Sea cod catch should be no more than 10,457 metric tons (MT), which is 70 percent less than this year’s total allowable catch (TAC), the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has recommended.

ICES latest scientific advice is also 63 percent less than its own recommendation for 2019.

The intergovernmental marine science organization said the change is due to a combination of a downward revision of the spawning stock biomass (SSB) in recent years, the recruitment estimates for 2019 being substantially below the value assumed last year, and the need for a large reduction in fishing mortality to recover the stock to its maximum sustainable yield by 2021.

The United Kingdom’s other cod stocks – in the Celtic Sea, Irish Sea, and West of Scotland – are also subject to similar warnings, with the advice for a zero catch for both the West of Scotland and Celtic Sea.

Following these latest recommendations, E.U. fishing ministers have again come under fire from the NGO community for failing to support the recovery of vulnerable stocks.

“This follows years of policy decisions that put short term political interests over long-term economic and environmental sustainability. Sadly, this was entirely predictable and preventable; failing to follow the scientific advice makes announcements like this inevitable,” Jonny Hughes, U.K. officer for The Pew Trusts’ Ending Overfishing in Northwestern Europe campaign, said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Salmon sales surge helps Scotland set new export record

June 24, 2019 — Scottish food and drink exports achieved record sales of GBP 1.4 billion (USD 1.8 million, EUR 1.6 billion) in the first quarter of this year, representing a year-on-year increase of 14 percent, with sales of whiskey and salmon driving much of the growth, new U.K. government figures show.

In total, Scottish beverage exports in the first three months of 2019 were worth GBP 1 billion (USD 1.3 billion, EUR 1.1 billion), up 16 percent on Q1 2018. Fish exports in the same period accounted for GBP 210 million (USD 267.4 million, EUR 234.8 million), while fruit and vegetables exports increased by 37 percent to GBP 21 million (USD 26.7 million, EUR 23.5 million). Dairy and egg sales rose by 24 percent to GBP 17 million (USD 21.6 million, EUR 19 million).

British whiskey sales, almost all from Scotland, rose by 19 percent, and salmon exports were up by 41 percent – the strongest growth of all the top 10 U.K. food and drink products. There was a 20 percent increase in the volume of farmed salmon exported from Scotland in the quarter.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

How Scottish salmon exports its way around the world and maintains its reputation

June 20, 2019 — Three days, that’s all it takes. That’s the maximum time needed to get salmon from the cold waters of a pristine sea loch in the far north-west of Scotland to an upmarket restaurant in Beijing, Sydney or Cape Town. Often it’s quicker than that. Salmon harvested just after midnight in Mallaig are in the main transport hub at Larkhall, just off the M74 south of Glasgow, by lunchtime that day, often arriving at Heathrow the same evening.

Sent out in the bellies of passenger aircraft, the fish can then be presented on dinner plates in New York the following day.

Salmon is Scotland’s biggest food export and in the top-three of UK food exports too.

It is, quite clearly, a hugely successful product. It is renowned globally for its quality and regularly comes top of surveys rating the best salmon in the world.

But, because it is a perishable product, the routes to market have to be swift. That is why so much effort goes into getting from the sea to the customer as quickly as possible.

That is also why the harvesting often begins at midnight. That way, the normally quiet hours of the night are utilised to transport the fish and get them to the processors by the morning.

There they will be packed in ice boxes and sent to Larkhall.

Read the full story at The Scotsman