Saving Seafood

Dozens of countries just agreed to shut pirate fishermen out of their ports. Here’s why.

June 9, 2016 — Indonesia has a ruthless strategy for dealing with pirates: blow up their boats.

Over the past two years, the Indonesian Navy has seized more than 100 vessels flagged from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines — all accused of fishing illegally in Indonesian waters. Whenever this happens, authorities detain the crew, load the empty boat with explosives, and let it burn as a warning to others:

Except it doesn’t work. Or at least it’s not nearly enough. There are always more boats, more desperate fishermen looking for work. And the oceans are vast; it’s impossible to board every last pirate ship out there. Last year, New Zealand’s navy spent two weeks chasing illegal fishing vessels at sea before running out of fuel and giving up.

Worldwide, illegal fishing vessels now catch some 26 million tons of fish a year, worth $23.5 billion, or one-fifth of the entire world’s annual wild catch. It’s one of the biggest problems in marine policy. Experts say these catches undermine fishing limits that nations put in place to prevent fish stocks from getting depleted too rapidly and collapsing. Illegal fishing also undercuts the legal fishermen trying to earn a living. And many of these ships end up killing protected species, like sharks.

Read the full story at Vox

Toxic Fish in Vietnam Idle a Local Industry and Challenge the State

June 8, 2016 — NHAN TRACH, Vietnam — Since a devastating fish kill blighted the waters along 120 miles of coastline in central Vietnam, hundreds of people are believed to have fallen ill from eating poisoned fish. Here in the fishing village of Nhan Trach, the squid that sustain the local economy have virtually disappeared. And a fishing ban has left hundreds of traps sitting unused on the beach and dozens of small fishing boats idle.

“We are so angry,” said Pham Thi Phi, 65, who operates a fishing boat in Nhan Trach with her husband and three grown sons. “If we knew who put the poison in the ocean, we would like to kill them. We really need to have an answer from the government on whether the ocean is totally clean and the fish are safe to eat.”

While the immediate cause appears to have been toxic waste from a nearby steel mill, fury over the episode has exploded into a national issue, posing the biggest challenge to the authoritarian government since a spate of anti-Chinese riots in 2014. Protesters demanding government action have marched in major cities and coastal communities over the past six weeks, escalating what had been a regional environmental dispute into a test of government accountability and transparency.

But two months after the fish started washing up on beaches here, the government has yet to announce the cause of the disaster or identify the toxin that killed marine life and poisoned coastal residents.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Vietnamese Police Break Up Protest Over Fish Deaths

June 6, 2016 — HANOI, Vietnam — Police in Vietnam’s capital have broken up a protest over what critics charge is the government’s delayed response to massive fish deaths which they believe are linked to industrial pollution.

A protester, Le Hoang, said more than 30 people marched peacefully in downtown Hanoi for about 15 minutes on Sunday before most were taken to police stations in two buses. He said they were held for several hours and then released without charge.

Thousands of dead fish began washing ashore along more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) of shoreline in four central provinces in early April. Protesters and state media speculated that a steel complex owned by a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastic Corp. may have been linked to what was an unprecedented environmental disaster for the Southeast Asian country.

The fishing and tourism industries in the provinces have been badly affected by the incident.

Hoang said the protesters held banners and placards reading “No Formosa” and “Sea dead, fish dead and people dead.” The protest Sunday was the latest in a series that are unusual under the tightly controlled Communist regime.

Read the full story at The New York Times

How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea

April 13, 2016 — TANMEN, China — In the disputed waters of the South China Sea, fishermen are the wild card.

China is using its vast fishing fleet as the advance guard to press its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, experts say. That is not only putting Beijing on a collision course with its Asian neighbors, but also introducing a degree of unpredictability that raises the risks of periodic crises.

In the past few weeks, tensions have flared with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam as Chinese fishermen, often backed up by coast guard vessels, have ventured far from their homeland and close to other nations’ coasts. They are just the latest conflicts in China’s long-running battle to expand its fishing grounds and simultaneously exert its maritime dominance.

See the full story at The Washington Post

China’s Island Building Hurts Environment, U.S. Report Says

April 13, 2016 — China’s reclamation work in the South China Sea may have destroyed coral reefs, damaged fisheries in a region heavily dependent on seafood and breached international law on protecting the environment, according to a report to U.S. Congress.

“The scale and speed of China’s activities in the South China Sea, the biodiversity of the area, and the significance of the Spratly Islands to the ecology of the region make China’s actions of particular concern,” an April 12 report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said.

China reclaimed about 3,000 acres of land on seven features it occupies in the Spratly islands of the South China Sea between December 2013 and October 2015, the report said. Vietnam has reclaimed about 80 acres, Malaysia 70 acres, the Philippines 14 acres and Taiwan eight acres, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

See the full story at Bloomberg

Indonesia Sinks 23 Foreign Fishing Boats

April 5, 2016 — JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities on Tuesday blew up 23 foreign vessels that were captured for fishing illegally in the country’s waters.

The boats, 13 from Vietnam and 10 from Malaysia, were blown up simultaneously in seven ports from Tarakan in northern Kalimantan to Ranai on the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea.

Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti witnessed the destruction, which was coordinated by the navy, coast guard and police, via live-streamed Internet video at her office in downtown Jakarta.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Vietnam Shrimp Farmers Suffer from Uncontrolled Expansion, Gov’t Vows Enforcement on Antibiotics

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [ Vietnam News Brief Service] January 5, 2016 — Authorities in the Mekong Delta, the biggest aquatic pond in Vietnam, are striving to tighten control over local shrimp farming toward sustainable way amid rising concerns on antibiotics contamination, disease outbreak and polluted environment.

Tran Quoc Tuan, director of the Industry and Trade Department of Tra Vinh province, said he supported efforts to tighten the management of antibiotic use in shrimp farming and boost dissemination of information to farmers and processing companies.

He said state management agencies still have to make farmers aware of the risks, and companies must change their way of doing business by co-operating with farmers to build clean material areas. In doing so, the seed, farming methods, feeding and medicines will be strictly controlled in order to produce quality products, he said.

Profitable shrimp farming produced a rapid transformation in the quality of life for Vietnamese people in the Mekong Delta region, but the unplanned expansion in production has also had negative effects on the environment and domestic shrimp trade.

Due to its favorable natural conditions, farmers in coastal communes of many Vietnamese southern provinces started to switch from rice cultivation to shrimp farming 15 years ago. The rapid success and high income that the industry ushered in pushed many local people to invest in this sector.

Due to attractive profits, farmers in other areas of unfavorable natural conditions also did whatever it took to raise shrimp. Farmers spontaneously drilled wells to bring in salt water and made ponds to raise shrimp.

The rapid growth of shrimp farming and poor infrastructure has led to disease outbreaks, massive shrimp death and huge losses for farmers in many places.

Many farmers in Ben Tre, Bac Lieu, Kien Giang and Tra Vinh have been forced to give up shrimp farming as shrimp disease broke out.

Meanwhile, a large volume of Vietnamese seafood, including shrimp, has been rejected by importing countries. According to statistics of relevant agencies, in the last two years, 32,000 tons of Vietnamese seafood, mainly shrimp were not allowed to enter foreign markets because of antibiotic contamination.

In the first nine months of 2015, 38 foreign countries returned 582 batches of seafood products to Vietnamese providers for the same reason, stating that they would tighten the inspection of shrimp shipments from Vietnam.

There are various types of antibiotics displayed for sale, but farmers are mostly unaware of their toxicological effects. On the other hand, processing factories keep buying shrimp without proper inspection, so farmers become negligent in utilizing antibiotics.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

Pangasius water content causes uproar

November 30, 2015 — It seems as though the Vietnamese government’s decision at the end of last year to delay implementation of the regulation to limit glazing and humidity (added water) levels on pangasius exports could hit sales to the EU hard.

In mid-November, a leading Dutch newspaper Telegraaf picked up on a television program shown in the Netherlands in which it was claimed that pangasius fillets imported from Vietnam on sale in Dutch supermarkets were found to contain up to 30 percent water.

Comments from 140 consumers who had purchased pangasius reacting to the article ranged from “nothing you would eat” to something that cannot be politely translated into English.

As reported in SeafoodSource on 6 January, pangasius exporters had objected to the regulation, Decree No. 36, which was due to come into force on 1 January, saying it would cost them business.

Decree 36 would have restricted glazing on frozen pangasius fillets, to no more than 10 percent and humidity to 83 percent of the product weight. As a result of their petition, the introduction of the regulation was postponed for a year.

While the exporters agreed that these restrictions would help to increase the quality and image of Vietnam’s pangasius abroad, they said they wanted more time to measure the impact on their customers. They were adding water to the fish in order to meet their customers’ requirements for prices below the then quoted USD 3.40 (EUR 3.18) per kilogram.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Palau Burns Illegal Fishing Boats From Vietnam

June 15, 2015 — VIETNAM — On June 12, authorities in Palau burned four Vietnamese “Blue Boat” vessels caught engaged in illegal fishing off the Pacific island nation’s Kayangel Island. Among their 17,000-pound haul were protected sea turtle, sea cucumber, and reef fish species.

The strong response comes amid a wave of increased illegal fishing activity from Asia in Palau’s waters. The 77 men aboard the vessels were loaded onto two unburned boats with enough fuel and provisions to return to Vietnam.

Pew is working with Palau to create a marine sanctuary in its waters that will be one of the largest fully protected areas of ocean in the world when the legislation is approved. In April, Pew co-hosted a three-day workshop with Palau’s president, Tommy E. Remengesau, Jr., and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to develop a comprehensive enforcement plan for the proposed sanctuary.

Read the full story from The Pew Charitable Trusts