Saving Seafood

US State Department bars import of wild-caught shrimp from China, Venezuela

April 30, 2020 — In a public notice posted to the Federal Register on 30 April, the U.S. Department of State announced that it is suspending the certification of wild-caught shrimp from China and Venezuela, making it ineligible to enter the U.S. for sale.

The suspension was in accordance with Section 609 of Public Law 101-162, which requires countries harvesting wild-caught shrimp in areas that contain sea turtles prove they have adequate laws regarding turtle excluding devices (TEDs). China’s certification was suspended due to “the use of methods of harvesting shrimp that may adversely affect sea turtles,” while Venezuela was suspended “due to the inability to confirm whether methods of harvesting shrimp may adversely affect sea turtles.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Pirates Preying on Venezuelan Fishermen as Industry Unravels

December 8th, 2016 — The pirates had killed Flaco Marval’s brother and two cousins, and word was they were coming for the rest of the family.

So the skinny 17-year-old and the other Marval men ran to grab the guns they’d soldered together from kitchen pipes, smoked an acrid-smelling drug to boost their energy, and went out into the night to patrol the sandy village streets. Flaco was flying high.

“We just have to kill these thugs, and then we can go back to fishing like we always did,” he said.

Pirates are terrorizing the coastal state of Sucre, once home to the world’s fourth-largest tuna fleet and a thriving fishing industry.

That trade has collapsed, along with virtually every industry across Venezuela. Gangs of out-of-work fishermen prey upon those who still venture out into the open sea, stealing their catch and motors, tying them up, throwing them overboard, and sometimes shooting them. The robberies have taken place daily this year, and dozens of fishermen have died.

“People can’t make a living fishing anymore, so they’re using their boats for the options that remain: smuggling gas, running drugs and piracy,” said Jose Antonio Garcia, leader of the state’s largest union.

Read the full story at The New York Times 

Closing In on Where Eels Go to Connect

December 7, 2015 — Eels hold tight to their biological secrets, so much so that Aristotle mused that they must be sexless creatures spontaneously emerging from the “earth’s guts.” Now, at least one eel enigma is finally a step closer to being solved.

For the first time, scientists have tracked American eels migrating to their legendary spawning grounds in the Atlantic Ocean.

“For a very long time, circumstantial evidence has pointed to the Sargasso Sea as the breeding grounds of eels, but like crime novel detectives, scientists have wanted conclusive proof,” said David Cairns, a research scientist at Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who was not involved in the work.

The search for that proof, he added, “has preoccupied eel scientists for more than a century.”

American eels spend their adult lives, which range from three to 20 years, in rivers and estuaries from Greenland to Venezuela, but those far-flung populations share a single reproductive site in the Sargasso Sea. Their migration to the sea is perhaps one of the most impressive animal journeys in the world, but no one has ever caught an adult in the open ocean — much less observed them reproducing.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Canadian eel tracked on 2,400-kilometre migration to Sargasso Sea

October 27, 2015 — It’s a mystery that has puzzled scientists for a century — how swarms of baby eels appear in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda when adults have only been found in faraway places like Canada’s St. Lawrence River.

For the first time, Canadian researchers have tracked an adult female eel from Nova Scotia all the way to the northern edge of the Sargasso Sea with a satellite tracker — a 45-day journey of about 2,400 kilometres, described in a new paper published today in Nature Communications.

If they can confirm the path taken by that eel is the typical migration route used by Canadian eels, that may help scientists figure out measures that could be taken to conserve the endangered fish.

American eels, known by the scientific name Anguilla rostrata, are found in watersheds from Venezuela in the south to Greenland in the north, says Julian Dodson, a University of Laval researcher who co-authored the new paper.

In Canada, they historically lived throughout the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes, although their populations have fallen dramatically in the past 20 years, largely because of fishing and hydroelectric dams that they have trouble crossing.

Males typically live further south than females.

Read the full story at CBC News