Saving Seafood

Second UN session negotiating global plastic pollution treaty emphasizes ghost gear

August 2, 2023 — The second of five planned meetings hosted by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to discuss global plastic pollution ended with greater emphasis and discussion on marine debris, including abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) – also known as ghost gear.

The INC sessions aim to negotiate an international, legally binding plastics treaty, as global plastics pollution – including ALDFG throughout the world’s oceans and microplastics now found in such remote places as Mount Everest – has continued to proliferate mostly unabated on an international level.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Can the United Nations help save Pacific salmon?

April 25, 2023 — The high seas — the ocean waters that begin 230 miles offshore — cover 43% of the planet’s surface and are home to as many as 10 million species, yet remain one of the least understood places on Earth. Among the region’s many mysteries are how Pacific salmon, one of the West’s most beloved and economically important fish, spend the majority of their lives — and why many populations are plummeting. Combined with how little we know about what climate change is doing out there, such questions make the area an international research and conservation priority.

These sprawling waters, though, are a mostly lawless zone, beyond the reaches of any national authority and governable only by international consensus and treaties. They face tremendous challenges that no nation can address alone: Climate change is causing marine heat waves and acidification, while overfishing and pollution are crippling ecosystems, even as pressure grows from companies and nations eager to drill and mine the ocean depths. In early March, negotiators representing nearly 200 nations came to a historic agreement aimed at protecting the ocean’s creatures and ecosystems. When the new United Nations High Seas Treaty was announced, marine scientists and conservationists around the globe rejoiced.

But what will the treaty actually mean for conservation in a region about which humanity knows less than the moon? When it comes to Pacific salmon, will the new treaty’s tools — and the international symbolism and momentum involved in agreeing to them — aid efforts to manage and protect them? Do the provisions go far enough? Here’s what the experts say.

The treaty’s protective tools may not be what salmon need

The treaty’s top provision establishes a road map for creating marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters. Like national parks for the ocean, MPAs are zones that typically limit fishing or other activities to preserve ecosystems and species. When adequately enforced, they are widely considered to be a powerful tool for ocean and coastal conservation. They are also seen as key to reaching the U.N.’s goal to protect 30% of the planet’s oceans by 2030 — a goal the world is woefully behind on, with just 3% to 8% currently protected.

But when it comes to Pacific salmon, it is unclear whether MPAs can do anything at all. Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future MPAs there will not reduce fishing. And while boosting enforcement of fishing bans may benefit other species, many believe illegal salmon fishing on the high seas is extremely low.

Still, some salmon experts believe that high-seas marine preserves could provide indirect protection: By limiting other fishing, they could prevent salmon from being caught accidentally. They might also help preserve important marine food webs, though such ecosystems are vast, mobile and hard to monitor.

“If salmon used those [protected areas] as part of their migration and ocean habitat, then, yes, it could be beneficial,” said Brian Riddell, retired CEO and current science advisor to the Canadian nonprofit Pacific Salmon Foundation. “But to associate changes in marine survival to [an MPA], I think would be very, very difficult.”

MPAs also don’t address climate change or the marine heat waves that many researchers believe are a key factor in recent salmon declines. Matt Sloat, science director at the Oregon-based Wild Salmon Center, said that limiting global emissions would do more to protect salmon.

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Although much remains unknown, recent research suggests that salmon ranges in the ocean are shifting or shrinking because of temperature changes. Salmon are also getting smaller, suggesting there may be more competition for fewer resources. “And then [hatcheries] are putting billions more hungry mouths into that smaller area,” Sloat said, referring to the sometimes-controversial state, federal and tribal hatcheries in the U.S. and other countries that raise and release quotas of juvenile salmon each year to maintain local fisheries. He believes that improving international coordination of the scale of those releases, rather than governing remote ocean habitats, might also improve salmon survival in the ocean.

Read the full article article at Crosscut

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