August 13, 2019 — Climate change will cause fish biomass to decline 5 percent for every one degree Celsius of warming, according to the most comprehensive analysis of marine ecosystem models to date.
The study, which was authored by 35 researchers from 12 countries, combines multiple climate and ecosystem models to create an ensemble model that estimates future global marine biomass — the total weight of all the fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals in the ocean.
August 8, 2019 — Time is running out for the fishing and seafood industries to weigh in on a United Nations treaty that will govern fishing and other activities on the high seas.
The treaty is being developed as part of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and is formally known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement. It could raise costs for fishermen by adding administrative and reporting requirements for those who fish outside of countries’ national waters.
July 25, 2019 — In its annual outlook for the world’s seafood market, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicted a “flat or marginal growth” in seafood supply over 2019, with global seafood demand continuing to grow.
The forecast, created by the team of seafood analysts in the FAO’s Globefish unit, predicts that total global wild catch will drop by approximately 3.4% in 2019, as catches of cod, mackerel and octopus remain low, while the world’s tuna fisheries have also been less productive than they were during the first half of 2018.
Meanwhile, global aquaculture production is set to increase by 4%, although supply is likely to remain tight for major species such as salmon, according to Globefish.
The team has estimated that 177.8 million metric tons of fish will be produced worldwide in 2019, of which roughly 89% will go towards direct human consumption. This, in turn, means that global per capita seafood consumption is estimated at 20.5 kg.
July 8, 2019 — As the World Trade Organisation confronts a deadline this year to reach an agreement to eliminate subsidies that are decimating global fish populations, perhaps no nation faces higher stakes than China.
China operates the planet’s largest fishing fleet, catches the most seafood and hands out the most money in fuel subsidies and other support that enables industrial trawlers to travel to the furthest reaches of the ocean. As a result of the expansion of global fishing fleets to meet rising demand, 33% of fish populations are being harvested at biologically unsustainable levels while 90% are fully exploited, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Researchers in 2016 pegged total annual fishing subsidies at US$35 billion (in 2009 dollars). They categorised US$20 billion of those incentives as harmful with as much as 85% of that money going to industrial fishing operations. A 2018 study found that in the absence of US$4.2 billion in subsidies, more than half of high seas fishing would be unprofitable. Furthermore, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Spain account for 80% of fishing outside territorial waters. Researchers estimate that China alone was responsible for 21% of high seas fishing in 2014 and nearly 19% of global fish catch averaged between 2014 and 2016.
In 2001, the WTO formally recognised the need to reform fishing subsidies and member nations four years later called for the abolition of incentives that contribute to overfishing. Negotiations languished for a decade but took on new urgency in 2015 after the UN adopted a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Among them was SDG 14.6, which calls for the prohibition by 2020 of subsidies that contribute to overcapacity, overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Still, WTO’s last biennial meeting in December 2017 ended without an agreement on fishing subsidies. However, the 164 WTO member states, which must approve decisions by consensus, did agree to redouble efforts to reach an agreement by the end of 2019.
This year, negotiators have been meeting monthly at WTO headquarters in Geneva to try to break the stalemate. An agreement to ban fishing subsidies would have a profound impact on ocean health and national economies. Unlike other international agreements, such as the Paris accord on climate change, WTO actions are binding and carry the weight of law.
June 28, 2019 — The new head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has played a central role in expanding China’s global seafood reach and will now get to shape key global policies on agriculture, aquaculture, and fisheries.
China Vice Minister for Agriculture Qu Dongyu won the support of a majority of FAO nation-states, defeating France’s Catherine Geslain-Laneelle 107-71 in an election during the 41st session of the FAO Conference, which took place 22 to 29 June. Qu becomes the ninth director-general of the Rome, Italy-based organization.
Qu will replace Brazilian Jose Graziano da Silva, who reportedly lobbied Latin American nations for Qu. Qu’s election is a clear indication of China’s power as a purchaser and investor in agriculture and fisheries commodities globally. According to French news reports, China used its role as a key customer of Latin American commodities such as soy, seafood, and meat to deliver votes for Qu.
The new FAO director has become familiar with many of the world’s agriculture and fisheries ministers during his many trips around the world as a Chinese minister. As China’s vice minister for agriculture, Qu represented China in World Trade Organization talks on fishery subsidies (which were held up in part over objections from India and China over the scale and timing of subsidy cuts by developing nations).
June 25, 2019 — A recently published study has called into question a cornerstone policy argument for segments of the American seafood industry.
For years, government officials, aquaculture proponents, industry experts, and even environmentalists have consistently cited that 90 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. comes from foreign markets. However, three researchers say that oft-repeated statistic is misleading, and that the actual figure is closer to 65 percent.
The issue Jessica Gephart, Halley Froehlich and Trevor Branch have with the 90 percent figure is that it creates an assumption all imports contain only foreign caught fish.
“Although this may seem logical, it is not always the case; large quantities of seafood landed in the United States are exported for processing and shipped back into the United States,” they wrote in an opinion piece for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
They also note that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s calculations estimate imported products only account for 70 percent of U.S.-consumed seafood.
June 14, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — 50 years ago fisheries were in crisis. The prevailing international law allowed no national control of ocean activities beyond 12 miles. In New England, this meant giant Soviet factory trawlers practicing pulse fishing came in to devastate the abundant haddock stock, leaving US fishermen crumbs after they left.
Similar fishing situations were occurring around other coastal nations. Chile and Peru were the first countries to declare a 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Other countries such as the US and Iceland followed and by 1982, the UN recognized the right of countries to establish a 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
The implementing legislation in the US was the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Passed in 1976, the act not only restricted foreign fishing but much to the surprise of East Coast fishermen, it also implemented a system of fisheries management to set quotas and control overfishing.
The key features of Magnuson were to establish regional councils so as to promote local control over fisheries, to require management decisions be based on the best available science, and to involve all stakeholders in the council and decision-making process.
The results have been a fisheries management system that has preserved healthy stocks, as in Alaska, rebuilt overfished stocks (on the West Coast), and became the model for global sustainable fisheries management. It is fair to say that the prosperity we see in the US seafood industry today would not exist without Magnuson.
But we are facing a new crisis every bit as profound as the lack of EEZ’s in the 1970s. That is the crisis of global warming and ocean acidification, caused by the use of fossil fuels that have built up CO2in the atmosphere to dangerous levels.
CO2 induced warming is leading to movement of fish to different areas, increased acidification that is interfering with the use of calcium for shells, including for zooplankton, changes in ocean currents, loss of sea ice, and sea level rise that is reducing the area of coastal marshes. Taken together, these changes challenge the very basis of our fisheries management system, which depends on predicting the changes in stocks in a stable environment.
Several recent reports have provided eye-opening data. One is an excellent report produced by the Canadian DFO on the state of the North Atlantic Ocean. Finally, the DFO is spending money on transparent science and providing a real public service by documenting in one place all aspects of the North Atlantic ecosystem.
The most significant factors in the report are the change in the quality of zooplankton due to mistiming of plankton blooms. This impacts the entire marine food chain. A second is the movement of fish to new habitats, exemplified by the lobster fishery which is currently booming off of Nova Scotia, but which is likely to crash as waters exceed a certain summer temperature. We published a summary of this report this week.
Another recent report, issued in May, was the UN report on the loss of biodiversity. This report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), was approved and adopted by the UN, and says that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.
Sir Robert Watson, chair of the panel, said “The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture. The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”
The seafood industry is complex because it is so varied, and regional differences abound. This is partly why those of us in the industry love it so much. There is just nothing comparable to the interplay of natural productivity, human knowledge and skill, and highly diverse conditions and ecosystems. Seafood distributors routinely carry over 100 items, even though most sales are from a smaller cluster of major species.
The commercial experience of the oyster farmer, a lobster fisherman in Nova Scotia, a salmon grower, a pollock captain in the Bering Sea, or a Dungeness fisherman out of Newport, Oregon are totally different, with each adapted to their particular resource and environment.
This complexity and localization make it very hard for people in particular fisheries to see the big picture. Local communities can get dependent on a fishery that appears to be stable, and then have that stability pulled out from under them in an instant.
The common denominator for a new “Magnuson Act” should be the economic vitality and resilience of coastal communities. This may not always come from fishing.
Wind power, tourism, marine protected areas, as well as fishing all can serve as an economic foundation as communities adapt to climate change and sea level rise. Today proponents of most of these are in their own silos, in a war of all against all.
So fishermen oppose wind power developments, even though reducing fossil fuel emissions is the only possible path to prevent catastrophic increases in ocean temperatures. The temperature rise upends the productivity of most of the species on which they fish.
Fishermen also, by and large, oppose a massive increase in marine protected areas. Yet a rethinking of habitat protection may be the only approach that would avoid a catastrophic loss of biodiversity. We thrive on complex ocean ecosystems that offer changing opportunities. If the price of maintaining that complexity means changing the way some ocean areas used for fishing, that is a price well worth paying.
Tourism is a bit more compatible with traditional fisheries. In Astoria, Oregon, the Bornstein’s built their seafood processing plant in a way they could accommodate cruise ship visitors. In our story about Nova Scotia lobstering, Lucien LeBlanc says he outfitted his new 50-foot lobster boat, the John Harold, to double as a tourist vessel and rely less on the fishery. “Financially, I treat [every year] like it’s my last year,” he says.
New Bedford, which on the one hand is the center of scallopers opposition to offshore wind power in New England, is, on the other hand, experiencing a dock and marine construction boom as the hub of offshore wind power.
The point is that these activities: fishing, power generation, tourism, and protecting biodiversity do not need to be in conflict with each other but could all contribute to the economic vitality needed to keep coastal communities intact.
This is where a new “Magnuson” type vision is needed. We need a way to put forward an overarching vision of how to protect coastal communities in an era of climate crisis, not by watching individual ocean industries get destroyed but by developing a framework where they can all thrive together.
This not a Pollyanna puff piece about everyone working together. The fact is that all these industries need support. The fishing industry has benefitted massively from having the Magnuson Act as the foundation on which to build. A new framework that focused on making coastal communities economically resilient around all ocean uses is not a zero-sum game.
By broadening our idea of what is necessary to keep fishing healthy for another 50 years, and by focusing on what will keep fishing communities healthy, we may find we get more support and better results if we look at the total picture of what we are facing, rather than just fighting over which 10 sq. mile grid to assign to wind, fishing, or protected areas.
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
June 10, 2019 — The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is reaching out directly to the Chinese public in a bid to turn opinion against illegal fishing.
The FAO recently launched a social media campaign on Chinese social media in Mandarin, aimed at popular platforms including microblogging site Weibo. The campaign calls for locals to “fight against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing” and also calls for the protection of fisheries to guarantee food security around the world.
The campaign is a new effort to inform the Chinese public of the impact of illegal fishing on the high seas – some of it conducted by Chinese vessels. The FAO’s campaign is an interesting contrast with state media, which tends to portray the development of China’s distant-water fleet as a strategic national priority.
May 31, 2019 — The biodiversity of the world’s oceans is declining in a manner unlike any time in human history.
A recent report from the United Nations paints a dire picture for wildlife around the globe, in both land-based and marine environments. About two-thirds of the marine environment has been significantly altered by human actions and climate change has the potential to make the situation much worse, the report said.
The report, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity Ecosystem Services (IPBES), was written by nearly 150 expert authors from 50 countries who assessed global changes over the last five decades. Only the initial summary of the report has been released; the full report is expected to exceed 1,500 pages and will be released later this year.
May 9, 2019 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation & Common Oceans ABNJ Tuna Project:
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) and the Common Oceans ABNJ Tuna Project co-sponsored the Mitigating Environmental Impacts of Tropical Tuna Purse Seine Fisheries workshop, held at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) Headquarters in Rome, on 12-13 March 2019. The workshop reviewed the progress cross-sector research and advocacy efforts have made in reducing bycatch and other environmental impacts and also identified main focus areas for future activities.
Workshop sessions focused on: (1) bycatch of the tuna purse seine fishery; (2) sharks and rays; (3) small bigeye and yellowfin tuna; (4) fish aggregating device (FAD) structure impacts; (5) FAD management; and (6) looking ahead: the next 10 years. Each session comprised an expert presentation followed by a discussion panel including representatives from across the multi-sector workshop participants. The newly released report detailing the six sessions is now available for download. The report also offers data-rich presentations for each session.