Saving Seafood

Balancing the Needs of People and Marine Ecosystems: Saving Seafood Looks at Aquaculture Sustainability

June 12, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Leading aquaculture experts discuss what sustainability looks like in farmed fishing and how we achieve it in the latest episode of Saving Seafood’s video series, Aquaculture Today. 

“One thing that’s true is the aquaculture industry is here to stay, has a very bright and important future for food security on the planet,” says Corey Peet, Managing Director of the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative. “But that has to be grounded in an objective view of how do we develop it sustainably.”

According to the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s 2017 overview of reduction fisheries – fisheries used for the production of fishmeal and fish oil – just over 83 percent of global catch from reduction fisheries comes from stocks that are reasonably well managed or better. Only an estimated 17 percent of reduction catch comes from poorly managed fisheries.

“20 years ago we were obsessed by this issue of fishmeal sustainability and inputs,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program. “We’ve pretty much solved that and it’s been through economic forces largely.”

According to Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the goal of sustainability should not be maintaining the status quo, but ensuring that aquaculture will be able to feed the world’s growing population while protecting marine ecosystems.

“Sustainability means to understand the needs of the people for this generation and in future generations, and therefore how to protect the marine environment and the freshwater environment so that they keep producing,” says Mr. Barange.

Experts also stressed the importance of more data to help fisheries managers make informed decisions about aquaculture, as well as the need for continued industry involvement.

“Fishery management is better the more data we can get, the more accurate modeling that we can get,” says Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director at IFFO.

“Doing good science, having good industry participation, and recognizing that when there are challenging issues, that collaboration within the industry is probably one of the best ways to solve them,” says Tim Fitzgerald, Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Impact Division.

The video is the fourth and final in a series, Aquaculture Today, in which Saving Seafood interviews leading aquaculture experts about advances in farmed fishing and what the industry will look like in the future. Previous episodes of Aquaculture Today covered its role in feeding the world, its efficiency, and the nutritional benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.

Interviews for Aquaculture Today were conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

 

Government subsidies serving to prop up destructive high-seas fishing: study

June 8, 2018 — Much of the fishing that takes place in international waters would be unprofitable without the billions of dollars in subsidies pumped in by governments to sustain the ecologically destructive industry, a recent study has found.

International waters, or the high seas, are not governed by any one international body or agency, and account for nearly two-thirds of the ocean’s surface. There is currently no comprehensive management structure in place to protect the marine life that relies on them.

Researchers poring over information for fishing in these zones in 2014, the most recent year for which complete datasets are available, concluded that 54 percent of high-seas fishing would be in the red if not for governments covering some of the industry’s costs.

In their study published June 6 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers noted that labor exploitation and underreported catches could also explain how some operators could afford to keep fishing in the high seas, where species like tuna are often overfished, and migratory sharks — 44 percent of which are threatened species — are often killed as bycatch.

“While our analysis is for a single year, the slight increase in high seas catch and revenue, coupled with the high and constant price of fuel between 2010-2014, suggest that our estimate of profits is likely to be representative of, or slightly higher than, the average state during the first half of this decade,” the researchers wrote.

Read the full story at Mongabay News

How to spot the secretive activities of rogue fishing boats

June 7, 2018 — The vast majority of fishing vessels follow the rules governing fishing – but many are not, and these bad actors can cause a lot of damage.

Vessels may take too many fish ­– overfishing – which is causing our fisheries to collapse. Then there is the problem of illegal fishing, which can occur in protected areas, in other country’s waters or on the high seas. Many countries simply don’t have the capacity to enforce fishery management rules. As a result, illegal fishing has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, worth up to $23bn each year. Because of overfishing – both legal and illegal – one third of fisheries assessed in a study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation were overfished and over half were fully fished. This threatens jobs and food security for millions of people, all around the world.

The trouble is, so much of this illegal activity is hidden – it happens out to sea, making it difficult to scrutinise what individual vessels are getting up to. To address the problems facing our oceans, we need to know what’s happening beyond the horizon.

Fortunately, we are now beginning to see what happens after commercial fishing vessels leave port. The data that underpins the map above is helping to make fishing activity at sea more transparent. In September 2016, my colleagues and I at Oceana – an advocacy organisation focused on ocean conservation – launched a mapping platform called Global Fishing Watch, along with Google and SkyTruth, a non-profit that uses satellite data to encourage environmental protection.

Read the full story at BBC

‘Extracting Value from the Right Amount of Fish’: Saving Seafood Looks at Aquaculture Efficiency

June 6, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Through new techniques and technologies, farming fish is becoming increasingly efficient, leading aquaculture experts tell Saving Seafood in a new video.

“With a whole range of factors – improved nutritional knowledge, better management techniques of feeding on the farm, and all of that – [the fish in–fish out] ratio has gone down,” says Andrew Jackson, Chairman of IFFO RS.

“For every 0.7 kilos of fish in, you get a kilo of fish out,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program. “So that’s becoming very favorable towards aquaculture productivity.”

In the case of salmon farming, nutritionists are using alternative ingredients, including plant proteins like soy, and mixing canola and other vegetable oils in with pure fish oil. This has helped lowered the percentage of marine ingredients in fish feed to about 25 percent of farmed salmon diets, and projections are that this will drop below 10 percent by 2025.

“They’ve figured out that the key to being successful and profitable and sustainable is not necessarily to catch more fish, it’s to extract as much value as possible out of the right amount of fish,” says Tim Fitzgerald, Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Impact Division.

These improvements have made farming fish one of the most sustainable forms of protein production, experts tell Saving Seafood.

“When you’re growing chickens or pigs or cattle, the transformation between the feed and the [farmed product] is much more inefficient than with fish,” says Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “So if we have to feed any animal for us to eat, it makes sense to do that with fish. It’s more efficient.”

The video is the second in a series, Aquaculture Today, in which Saving Seafood interviews leading aquaculture experts on the latest advances in farmed fish, and its role in the world. Saving Seafood released a video yesterday on aquaculture’s role in feeding the world’s growing population.

In addition to Mr. Jackson, Mr. Lee, Mr. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Barange, the video also features Julien Stevens, Researcher at Kampachi Farms, and Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director at IFFO.

Interviews for Aquaculture Today were conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

 

How Aquaculture is Feeding a Growing World: Saving Seafood Takes a Closer Look

June 5, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Global poverty and malnutrition are falling worldwide, and the availability of affordable, healthy protein is a key reason why. Aquaculture, as one of the world’s fastest growing sources of food production, has been an essential part of this development.

Saving Seafood is taking a closer look at the role that aquaculture plays as a source of food, nutrition, and employment for millions of people around the world in a new series, Aquaculture Today. We interview leading aquaculture experts on the latest breakthroughs and developments in farmed seafood, and the role it plays in the future of human health and the global food supply. 

Worldwide, protein consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years, going from 9 kg per person per year to nearly 20 kg per person per year. Fish, as a cheap and readily accessible food source, has made up a large share of global protein consumption. As the demand for affordable sources of protein grows along with the world’s population, these fish are increasingly being produced through aquaculture.

“Aquaculture has been the fastest [growing] food production industry in the world for the last four decades,” says Manuel Barange, Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “We need to make sure that is maintained, perhaps not at the same growth, but that it is maintained because it provides not just nutrition, but actually livelihoods and economic opportunities in places where there are not many other opportunities for economic development.”

The importance of aquaculture to global seafood production is only expected to increase, with the production of farmed seafood expected to dwarf that of wild-caught seafood in the next 15 years.

“The projections are that we’ll reach 62 percent of food fish coming from aquaculture by around 2030,” says Dan Lee, Standards Coordinator for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices Program.

This growth presents an opportunity for fishing communities, which have a chance to diversify to meet the needs of the global seafood market.

“One thing that I would really like to see the industry support [NOAA] stepping up with is dealing with this sort of issue, trying to help these communities start to either diversify their fisheries or thinking more about how they can move into aquaculture,” says Richard Merrick, former Chief Scientist at NOAA Fisheries.

Aquaculture Today comes from interviews conducted by Saving Seafood at the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington.

View the video here.

 

Oceana calls for IUU fishing to be made an environmental crime

June 5, 2018 — NGO Oceana has urged national governments to make illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing a punishable environmental crime.

The call for governments to establish measures to be able to take legal action against pirate fishing comes amid an international awareness campaign by the United Nations on June 5 – also World Environment Day – to tackle the magnitude of the problem.

“On World Environment Day and International Day for the Fight Against IUU Fishing, we’re sending out an SOS to call on governments around the world to make illegal fishing an environmental crime,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana in Europe.

“Countries need to recognize that large-scale illegal fishing is organized crime and should be dealt with as such. Pirates should be behind bars, not sailing free on the world’s oceans.”

Globally, IUU fishing is estimated to account for 20% of total fish catches, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Conservative evaluations of illegal and unreported fishing put the annual cost in loses to the global economy at between €9 billion and €20bn, which in terms of fish, is 11 million-26m metric tons.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Friend of the Sea overtakes MSC as world’s largest wild catch eco-label by volumes

May 29, 2018 — The Friend of the Sea (FoS) certification has become the single largest source of certified-sustainable wild catch on the global market, according to the last United Nations (UN) State of Sustainability Initiatives review, FoS said in its annual report published last month.

Its certified volumes have “grown at a rate of 91% per annum between 2008 and 2015, reaching 9.3 million metric tons of FoS certified wild catch seafood in 2015”, it said, referring to data from the last UN State of Sustainability Initiatives, which dates back to 2015.

Of total global wild catches, about 14% is certified, according to the UN. FoS accounted for 6.2% of certified volumes, while Marine Stewardship Council for 5.7% (see table).

About 770 companies are now certified under FoS, including both farmed and wild species. One hundred and fifty commercial species, 44 approved fisheries and fleets and 3,000 products have been certified by FoS.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

When Big Data meets overfishing

May 11, 2018 — Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and overfishing deplete fish stocks and cause billions of dollars in losses a year, experts say.

But new technologies offer opportunities to combat IUU, particularly for countries with limited means to patrol their waters or enforce legislation, said the London-based think-tank the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Here are some facts about the issue.

– Much of the world’s fish stocks are overfished or fully exploited, the United Nations has said, as fish consumption rose above 20 kilograms per person in 2016 for the first time.

– Global marine catches have declined by 1.2 million tonnes a year since 1996, according to The Sea Around Us, a research initiative involving the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia.

 – IUU is not confined to the high seas; it also takes place in exclusive economic zones, and in river and inland fisheries, and is committed by both national and foreign vessels.

– Initiatives to tackle IUU are run by for-profit and non-profit groups, and use satellite, data and other technologies.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

U.S. Shark Fin Ban “Will Not Work,” Would Likely Hurt Shark Conservation Efforts, Expert Tells Rep. Doug Lamborn

May 2, 2018 — WASHINGTON — In response to a question from Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), shark expert Dr. Robert Hueter wrote that a U.S. ban on the trade of shark fins would not work and would potentially lead to more unsustainable or finned shark fins in the global market.

Dr. Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, previously testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans on April 17 in favor of a sustainable shark trade bill and against a fin ban. His most recent comments came in response to a follow-up question from Rep. Lamborn about the message a fin ban would send to other nations.

“U.S. fishers do not fin their sharks,” Dr. Hueter wrote. “So the consequences of this action will be to punish the fishers doing it right—U.S. shark fisheries—and reward the foreign fisheries doing it wrong. That is a terrible message to send the world.”

John Polston, a fisherman and representative of the Sustainable Shark Alliance, also testified in April in support of the Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act and in opposition to the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act. The Sustainable Shark Alliance is a member of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities.

The full text of Rep. Lamborn’s question and Dr. Hueter’s response is reproduced below:

Question from Rep. Doug Lamborn for Dr. Robert Hueter, Director of the Center for Shark Research, Mote Marine Laboratory

  • Supporters of H.R. 1456 have argued that such a ban on shark fin sales would send a message to other countries. What message do you think this ban would send?

RESPONSE FROM DR. HUETER [emphasis added by Saving Seafood]:

The supporters of H.R. 1456 are hoping the message the U.S. will send to other nations with a domestic fin ban is that shark fins should no longer be tolerated as a consumable product.  This U.S. leadership, they hope, would end the global fin market, eliminate all shark finning, and recover shark populations worldwide.  Analogies are made to past U.S. leadership in the elephant ivory trade and in commercial whaling.  But as explained in Dr. David Shiffman’s and my 2017 peer-reviewed paper in the journal Marine Policy, this approach is flawed and will not work, for several reasons.  Unlike in the case of elephant ivory where the U.S. was the world’s major consumer, we are only a 1% player in the world shark fin market, and thus our withdrawal from that market will not have the same type of direct effect on world trade of fins as happened with the ivory trade.  In fact, it’s reasonable to conclude that the small market share of shark fins that U.S. fishers currently supply will be taken up by nations fishing sharks unsustainably, probably even finning the sharks.  Recall that U.S. fishers do not fin their sharks—that is, they do not remove the fins and discard the rest of the animals at sea, because American fishers are required to land all their sharks with the fins still “naturally attached” (with the exception of the northeast dogfish fishery, which is allowed to remove the fins at sea to begin processing the meat and fins on the fishing boat).  So the consequences of this action will be to punish the fishers doing it right—U.S. shark fisheries—and reward the foreign fisheries doing it wrong.  That is a terrible message to send the world.

Furthermore, our position at the international negotiating table where shark conservation issues are discussed will be compromised if we withdraw from the fin market.  The message we will be carrying to that forum is, no matter what other nations do to create sustainability in their shark fisheries, it will never be enough to allow them to harvest the fins, in our view.  This loss of leverage will backfire for U.S. attempts to advance shark conservation around the world.  In addition, consider today’s realities with elephants and whales: elephants are still being poached as the ivory trade has been driven underground, meaning we can no longer track this commodity through world trade routes, and elephants are still declining.  And whales are still being hunted commercially by those nations who do not share our preservationist beliefs about marine mammals.  Along these lines, a domestic fin ban also sends a message to Asian cultures that even if they are using the entire shark, even if the sharks are not being finned and the level of fishing for them is sustainable, their use of fins to make soup is unethical.  This creates a clash of cultural values, both internationally and domestically, and our moral position will be difficult to defend.

Finally, by focusing our legislative efforts solely on the fin trade in the U.S., we send a message to American citizens that we are solving the worldwide problem in shark depletion by banning the fins here. Conservation groups then declare victory to their supporters, Congress moves on to other issues, and the U.S. public thinks the problem has been solved.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as sharks will continue to be caught by other nations for their meat and fins and suffer unsustainable levels of bycatch mortality in foreign fisheries.  This is where H.R. 5248 represents an evolution of thinking in how to address the issue, by not simply focusing on the fins and also including the rays, which are in as serious trouble as the sharks worldwide.

Therefore, in my view the message we will be sending the world if we implement a nationwide, domestic ban of the shark fin trade is this:  The U.S. does not believe in sustainable fishing for sharks, we do not subscribe to the full use doctrine for marine resources as laid out by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, we condemn Asian cultures for their consumption of shark fins even from sustainable shark fisheries, and we are okay with damaging our own domestic fisheries to construct a purely symbolic but misguided and ineffective message for shark conservation.   

 

MSC discusses future of certification program during conference at Seafood Expo Global

April 26, 2018 — A panel of key industry members, NGOs, and Marine Stewardship Council officials met on 25 April to discuss what the future has in store for the MSC.

MSC CEO Rupert Howes was on hand to discuss the future of the program and the challenges it will need to face – and is already facing – after over 20 years of existence. Key to the discussion was the United Nation’s framework known as Sustainable Development Goals, and how MSC has had to adapt to a changing climate. Warming oceans have led to challenges for the environment, and in turn for fisheries that have seen drastic changes in the patterns of fish they harvest.

“Are our oceans in trouble? I think they are. You look at the impacts of acidification and climate change devastating coral reefs,” Howes said. “A number of MSC fisheries have lost their certificate as fish change their migration patterns.”

A theme throughout the discussion was the idea of striking a balance between pushing sustainability in response to new science and environmental challenges, without raising the bar so high that industry leaders decide the cost isn’t worth it.

Read the full story at the Seafood Source