Saving Seafood

Countries agree on historic oceans treaty to protect the high seas

March 6, 2o23 — Nearly 200 countries have agreed to a legally-binding “high seas treaty” to protect marine life in international waters, which cover around half of the planet’s surface, but have long been essentially lawless.

The agreement was signed on Saturday evening after two weeks of negotiations at the United Nations headquarters in New York ended in a mammoth final session of more than 36 hours – but it has been two decades in the making.

The treaty provides legal tools to establish and manage marine protected areas – sanctuaries to protect the ocean’s biodiversity. It also covers environmental assessments to evaluate the potential damage of commercial activities, such as deep sea mining, before they start and a pledge by signatories to share ocean resources.

“This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics,” Laura Meller, Oceans Campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic, said in a statement.

The high seas are sometimes called the world’s last true wilderness. This huge stretch of water – everything that lies 200 nautical miles beyond countries’ territorial waters – makes up more than 60% of the world’s oceans by surface area.

These waters provide the habitat for a wealth of unique species and ecosystems, support global fisheries on which billions of people rely and are a crucial buffer against the climate crisis – the ocean has absorbed more than 90% of the world’s excess heat over the last decades.

Read the full article at CNN

Countries gather to thrash out U.N. ocean protection treaty

February 21, 2023 — Delegations from hundreds of countries will meet in New York this week in an attempt to hammer out a new legally binding ocean protection treaty that green groups believe will decide whether efforts to safeguard global biodiversity can succeed.

Last August, an earlier round of talks on the new United Nations ocean conservation treaty were suspended, with countries unable to reach an agreement on financing. Sharing the proceeds of “marine genetic resources” and the establishment of ocean environmental impact assessment rules for development were also major sticking points.

Experts familiar with the negotiations said major parties have now moved closer together on key issues as new talks begin, though compromises were still being sought.

Read the full article at Reuters

High seas management treaty negotiations fail again

September 13, 2022 — Negotiations on a treaty to create a system of management and protection of biodiversity on the high seas have fallen short again.

United Nations member-states have been trying and failing for the past 15 years to reach an ocean conservation agreement that would create a regulatory framework to oversee commercial use of the high seas. Howeveer, attempts at creating an agreement have foundered in part because it would have implications for the control of fishing fleets operating on the high seas. Russia and Iceland have both called for fisheries to be exempted from any agreement.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

 

UN head declares ‘ocean emergency’ as global leaders gather in Lisbon

June 28, 2022 — The UN secretary general has declared that the world is in the middle of an “ocean emergency”, and urged governments to do more to restore ocean health.

Speaking at the opening of the UN ocean conference in Lisbon, Portugal, attended by global leaders and heads of state from 20 countries, António Guterres said: “Sadly, we have taken the ocean for granted and today we face what I would call an ocean emergency. We must turn the tide.”

Guterres said the “egoism” of some nations was hampering efforts to agree a long-awaited treaty to protect the world’s oceans.

In March, UN member states were criticised by scientists and environmentalists for failing to agree on a blueprint for protecting the high seas against exploitation. Of the 64% of the high seas that lie beyond territorial limits, only 1.2% is currently protected.

Read the full story at The Guardian

Biden aims at China in new illegal fishing policy framework

June 27, 2022 — The Biden administration is stepping up efforts to combat illegal fishing by China, ordering federal agencies to better coordinate among themselves as well as with foreign partners in a bid to promote sustainable exploitation of the world’s oceans.

On Monday, the White House released its first ever National Security memo on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or IUU, to coincide with the start of a United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Nearly 11% of total U.S. seafood imports in 2019 worth $2.4 billion came from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, a federal agency.

While China isn’t named in the lengthy policy framework, language in it left little doubt where it was aimed. The memo is bound to irritate Beijing at a time of growing geopolitical competition between the two countries. China is a dominant seafood processor and through state loans and fuel subsidies has built the world’s largest distant water fishing fleet, with thousands of floating fish factories spread across Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Specifically, the memo directs 21 federal departments and agencies to better share information, coordinate enforcement actions such as sanctions and visa restrictions and promote best practices among international allies.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

FAO’s Manuel Barange calls for countries to make “blue transformation” a strategic priority

June 21, 2022 — Seafood plays a vital part in global food security and nutrition, yet only half of the countries with a nutrition strategy identify fish consumption as a key objective in their public policies, Manuel Barange, the director of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division of the Food, and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) said in his opening keynote address at the Blue Food Innovation Summit in London, U.K. on 14 June, 2022.

In his address, “Realizing the full potential of the blue food economy,” Barange said there are around 32,000 different species of fish in the world’s lakes, rivers, and oceans, “forming part of a valuable ecosystem. The biomass of fish is twelve times that of humans,” he said, making them a readily available source of food for the entire planet, especially impoverished, remote areas of the world.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

NOAA Fisheries is Leading the United Nations in Advancing Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management

June 2, 2022 — Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management are key to addressing the many different challenges we are currently facing, such as climate change, and balancing the needs of nature and society for a more sustainable future.

At a United Nations conference in May, NOAA Fisheries discussed Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management with other interested nations. The event highlighted the importance of an ecosystem approach on a global stage.

Adopting ecosystem approaches to fisheries management allows countries to address the many problems the globe is facing, such as climate change, and create a more sustainable future for our ocean.

“For the United Nations to prioritize discussing Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management is not trivial. It is indicative of how important the topic has become around the world,” said Jason Link, Senior Scientist for Ecosystems at NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

Debate sparked over use of EU funds for clean-fuel conversion, response to Ukraine crisis

April 28, 2022 — European Association of Fish Producers Organizations President Esben Sverdrup Jensen has called for the revision of parts of the European Union’s Common Fishery Policy to simplify the transition of the E.U.’s fishing fleet to using cleaner fuels.

With the price of conventional fuels soaring in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Sverdrup Jensen said the E.U. should relax limits on boat capacity “because vessels that use alternative fuels like ammonium require fuel tanks twice as big as those using current fuels.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Japan, Russia settle salmon quota amid tensions over Ukraine

April 23, 2022 — Japan and Russia have reached an agreement over Tokyo’s annual catch quota for Russian-born salmon and trout, the Japanese Fisheries Agency said Saturday, despite delays and chilled relations between the two sides amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The agreement on Japan’s quota for the popular fish in waters near disputed islands north of Hokkaido is a relief for Japanese fishermen who were worried about the prospects amid worsening ties between the two governments.

Japan and Russia concluded talks Friday, setting a catch quota of 2,050 tons for salmon and trout this year in Japan’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, the fisheries agency said in a statement. The quota is unchanged from last year, and Japan will pay 200-300 million yen ($1.56-2.34 million) in fees — depending on the actual catch — to Russia.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

 

The information age is starting to transform fishing worldwide

April 14, 2022 — People in the world’s developed nations live in a post-industrial era, working mainly in service or knowledge industries. Manufacturers increasingly rely on sensors, robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace human labor or make it more efficient. Farmers can monitor crop health via satellite and apply pesticides and fertilizers with drones.

Commercial fishing, one of the oldest industries in the world, is a stark exception. Industrial fishing, with factory ships and deep-sea trawlers that land thousands of tons of fish at a time, are still the dominant hunting mode in much of the world.

Fishing with data

Changes in behavior, technology and policy are occurring throughout the fishing industry. Here are some examples:

  • Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit, monitors and creates open-access visualizations of global fishing activity on the internet with a 72-hour delay. This transparency breakthrough has led to the arrest and conviction of owners and captains of boats fishing illegally.
  • The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, an international business-to-business initiative, creates voluntary industry standards for seafood traceability. These standards are designed to help harmonize various systems that track seafood through the supply chain, so they all collect the same key information and rely on the same data sources. This information lets buyers know where their seafood comes from and whether it was produced sustainably.
  • Fishing boats in New Bedford, Massachusetts – the top U.S. fishing port, based on total catch value – are rigged with sensors to develop a Marine Data Bank that will give fishermen data on ocean temperature, salinity and oxygen levels. Linking this data to actual stock behavior and catch levels is expected to help fishermen target certain species and avoid unintentional bycatch.

The ocean’s restorative power

There is no shortage of gloomy information about how overfishing, along with other stresses like climate change, is affecting the world’s oceans. Nonetheless, I believe it bears emphasizing that over 78% of current marine fish landings come from biologically sustainable stocks, according to the United Nations. And overharvested fisheries often can rebound with smart management.

For example, the U.S. east coast scallop fishery, which was essentially defunct in the mid-1990s, is now a sustainable US$570 million a year industry.

Read the full story at The Conversation