Saving Seafood

Earth is likely just a decade a way from hitting 1.5°C of global warming — and scientists say it will be “catastrophic” for coral reefs

February 4, 2022 — The United Nations has warned the continued use of fossil fuels is hurtling the planet to 1.5°C of global warming, relative to 1850-1900 levels, a threshold that will result in “unprecedented” extreme weather events. According to new research, climate change will also result in coral bleaching that will be “catastrophic” for reefs, and potentially, the marine life that live around them.

Bleaching can occur from a change in ocean temperature, pollution, overexposure to sunlight and low tides. Any of these influences can stress coral and causes it to release the algae that live in its tissues. The loss of algae, corals’ primary food source, causes the coral to turn white and makes it more susceptible to disease.

Reefs are “among the most biologically diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth,” serving as a vital resource for an estimated 25% of all marine life, which depend on reefs for their life cycles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Roughly half a billion people also depend on reefs for food, coastal protection, tourism and fisheries’ income.

But as climate change continues to negatively impact the planet, it will “overwhelm” those reefs, researchers said, and almost none of them will be able to escape a grave scenario.

Read the full story at CBS News

In Scotland, Serving Halibut for a Better Planet

November 30, 2021 — Inver restaurant is but a speck on the longest sea loch in Scotland. From its windows, a diner can see the remnants of a 15th-century castle and the rolling hills of the Highlands, but the breakout star is not the view. It’s a meaty halibut head that the chef Pam Brunton grills over wood and finishes with melted homemade ’nduja and a tangle of grilled green onions.

The small halibut she butchers have been raised in sea-fed pens on the Isle of Gigha, a nearby community-owned island whose farmed halibut have become the darling of people who care a lot about where their fish and shellfish come from.

Ms. Brunton, who could be Alice Waters’s Scottish niece, runs Inver with her partner, Rob Latimer. The tiny restaurant and inn is about 70 miles from Glasgow, where in November heads of state, including President Biden, thousands of diplomats and a flood of environmental activists like Greta Thunberg gathered for COP26, the United Nations global climate conference.

Ms. Brunton’s halibut heads may not seem like much of a hedge against the catastrophic effects of fossil fuel and methane gas emissions, but a group of cooks and diners here say that putting sustainable Scottish seafood on the plate is at least one tangible (and delicious) move toward a better planet. The shift is away from fin and shellfish whose populations are threatened by climate change or harvesting practices.

Read the full story at The New York Times

How the Pacific Protects Its Fisheries

November 3, 2021 — The challenge of achieving sustainable ocean governance is growing in the 21st century, as the negative impacts of environmental destruction, over-exploitation, and climate change place a high degree of stress on marine ecosystems.

The framework convention for ocean governance, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), was negotiated in the 1970s and ‘80s. At the time, its provisions on environmental protection, common resource ownership, and the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) were novel and radical additions to global commons governance. The so-called “Constitution for the Oceans” established the basic rights and obligations of different groups in the international community, including coastal states, flag states, port states, and landlocked states. UNCLOS covers all major ocean activities, and divides ocean space into global commons and national zones of control. The negotiation and entry into force of UNCLOS represented a major accomplishment for the international community, and the larger project of global governance. The principles, norms, rights, and duties enshrined in UNCLOS serve as a guide for the collective management of common resources by states.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

New Global Biodiversity Agreement: China to Host a Two-Part Summit on Nature

August 18, 2021 — The following was released by the Convention on Biological Diversity:

Decisive in-person meetings on a highly-anticipated new UN agreement on biodiversity have been paused for a few more months by the coronavirus pandemic.

Host country China and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) today announced dates for the UN Biodiversity Conference, which includes the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15), www.cbd.int/meetings/COP-15, to be convened in two parts, the 10th meeting of Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CP-MOP 10) and the 4th meeting of Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (NP-MOP 4).

From Monday 11 to Friday 15 October 2021, an official opening will take place online, followed by final negotiations on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework during face-to-face meetings in Kunming, China, Monday 25 April to Sunday 8 May 2022.

The opening meeting will address agenda items essential to the continued operations of the biodiversity convention and its two Protocols. It will also include a High-Level Segment to be held on 12 and 13 October and expected to produce a Kunming Declaration adding political momentum to the Framework negotiations.

Read the full release here

Somalia plans to streamline fishing permits to fight IUU

July 28, 2021 — Somalia, plagued with persistent incidents of piracy and rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, is aiming to tighten its fishing licensing regime in order to end loopholes that result in illegal activity.

Amid claims of deep-rooted corruption within Somalia’s fishing industry, the country’s Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR), under the leadership of Minister Abdillahi Bidhan Warsame, plans to eliminate uncertainty brought about by each federal state in the country issuing separate fishing permits that other federal states do not recognize – creating loopholes for IUU fishing operators to thrive along the Somalia’s 3,330-kilometer coastline.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ROSAMOND NAYLOR: Making blue foods central to global food systems

July 19, 2021 — A friend used to tell me “something’s a-fish” when things were off kilter. Today, the global food system is not just “a-fish”; it’s failing billions of people.

Hunger, malnutrition and obesity coexist in rich and poor countries alike, often in the same town or even in the same home. Diabetes, heart disease, coastal dead zones and other social burdens connected to our food system continue to rise. In recognition of this urgent challenge, the United Nations will hold a global summit in September for government, business, nonprofit organizations and civil society leaders to map a more sustainable, healthy and equitable food system.

Transforming our food system will require a new mind-set and more careful consideration of blue foods — aquatic animals, plants and algae cultivated and captured in freshwater and marine environments.

Until now, the movement to build productive and sustainable food systems has focused on transforming land-based crops and livestock, largely overlooking the critical role that fish and other aquatic foods play in nutrition, livelihoods and ecosystems around the world. That role will increase as food production becomes increasingly vulnerable to climate change.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

The WTO is negotiating to solve a global fisheries crisis. Here’s what’s at stake.

July 16, 2021 — Trade ministers are meeting virtually at the World Trade Organization this week seeking agreement to eliminate fisheries subsidies that contribute to overfishing. The 2015 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals identified such an agreement as an urgent international priority. Amid a global fisheries crisis, many experts feel a successful agreement would be a “triple win” for trade, development and the environment.

The WTO originally planned to reach a fisheries pact by the end of 2020, but that deadline passed without agreement. Sharp divisions among countries and a lack of leadership have hampered negotiations.

Fisheries subsidies is one of the few active areas of multilateral negotiations within the WTO, and many experts see securing an agreement as a key test of the organization’s ability to deliver new global trade rules.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Global Deal on Harmful Fishing Subsidies Could Be in Reach

July 1, 2021 — The world cannot afford to further delay action to protect the ocean, governments and conservationists agreed this month at a series of UN conferences. They called for “transformative” and actionable solutions following delays and cancellations caused by the pandemic last year.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14) lists targets to reduce pollution, protect marine ecosystems, tackle illegal fishing and overfishing, and oversee sustainable resource use. But progress so far has been limited.

Only eight percent of the ocean is currently protected, a third of fish stocks are overexploited, and climate change is increasing ocean acidification and deoxygenation. This not only threatens marine biodiversity, but also the livelihoods of millions of people who rely on ocean resources.

“Clear transformative actions to address the ocean crisis must be found and must be scaled up. Our relationship with our planet’s ocean must change,” Volkan Bozkir, president of the UN General Assembly, said at a high-level debate on the ocean and SDG 14 in New York on June 1.

The event sought to maintain momentum ahead of the 2nd UN Ocean Conference, which was postponed due to the pandemic and is now expected to take place next year in Lisbon, Portugal. Bozkir said the pandemic revealed an “appetite for change” as people do not want to live in a world of “one crisis after the next.”

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

From Maine’s warming waters, kelp emerges as a potentially lucrative cash crop

June 28, 2021 — One bright, brisk morning last month, Colleen Francke steered her skiff a mile off the coast of Falmouth and cut the gas. A few white buoys bobbed in straight lines on the water. Francke reached down and hoisted a rope.

She has been lobstering for a decade and a half, she says, but as climate change warms local waters and forces lobsters northward, she’s been finding it harder to envision a future in that industry.

So, for the last two years, she’s been developing a new source of income. Heaving the rope aloft, she showed off her bounty: ribbons of brown, curly sugar kelp, raised on her 10-acre undersea farm.

Kelp, a seaweed more often thought of as a nuisance by fishermen, is emerging as a potentially lucrative crop, hailed for its many uses as a miracle food to an ingredient in bioplastics to a revolutionary way to feed beef cattle. And Maine officials, confronting a likely decline of the state’s iconic lobster fishing industry in coming decades, are now looking to kelp farming as a possible economic and environmental savior.

The state is working with local institutions to support training and grants for entrepreneurs such as Francke willing to move into kelp farming or other aquaculture ventures. It also labeled kelp a “natural climate solution” in its recently-released Climate Action plan. The goal, officials say, is to dramatically expand kelp farming as part of a reinvention of Maine’s seafood industry — and imagining a future in which kelp from Maine is held in something akin to the esteem that Maine lobster is now.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Aquaculture advocates want to bring more Oregon-grown fish from farm to table

June 22, 2021 — While the word “farm” might conjure visions of corn planted in neat rows, Luke Fitzpatrick’s acreage looks, feels and functions more like wetlands. Chirps and squawks emanate from the ponds covering his patch of land just a short drive from Salem.

Fitzpatrick called out avian creatures by name as he maneuvered an off-road vehicle around the farm on a sunny Thursday this spring. Stilt sandpiper. Cinnamon teal. Western meadowlark, Oregon’s state bird.

He pulled to a stop, got out and dipped into a duck blind filled with decoy mallards and rolling desk chairs to gaze out over his crop growing beneath the glassy surface of the water.

“I’m tied to the land,” he said. “I love it out here.”

Fitzpatrick is a fish farmer. He raises and sells warm-water species like bass, bluegill, crappie and catfish through a practice called aquaculture. It’s basically just farming in water, and it’s used to grow a variety of finfish, shellfish and aquatic plants.

Aquaculture has become a much bigger part of the global food system in recent years. The world now produces more seafood on farms than it catches wild, by volume, and the fish farming industry is still growing rapidly.

Read the full story at OPB