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2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit packs a sustainable, newsy punch

June 19, 2017 — The 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which took place 5 to 7 June in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., brought together more than 580 global representatives of the seafood industry, the conservation community, academia, government, and the media for in-depth discussions, presentations and networking around the issue of sustainable seafood.

Here’s a review of the news that was made at this year’s summit:

A major topic of discussion at the conference was pre-competitive collaboration, with several panels and keynotes approaching the issues from different angles. In the pre-conference on Sunday, 4 June, attendees heard from Nira Desai, the director of strategy and learning for the World Cocoa, a key player in the development of CocoaAction, a sustainability movement in the cocoa industry:

Cocoa industry offers seafood a crash course in pre-competitive collaboration

Pre-competitive collaboration will also play a key role in the future of global aquaculture, according to experts at the conference:

Success of “blue revolution” will depend heavily on pre-competitive collaboration, seafood experts say

In other big news for aquaculture, on Monday, 5 June, Seafood Watch upgraded farmed salmon certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council to its “Good Alternative” rating, marked “a watershed moment for the sustainability credentials of farmed salmon”:

Seafood Watch upgrades ASC-certified farmed salmon to “Good Alternative”

Later on Monday, 5 June, the 2017 Seafood Champion Awards were handed out at a ceremony in Chihuly Gardens in Seattle. SeafoodSource profiled each of this year’s winners:

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ray Hilborn, others launch I-FIN, a new fisheries data network

June 7, 2017 — A new scientific advisory group called International Fisheries Information Network (I-FIN) is refuting a commonly held belief that all fisheries are in decline.

I-FIN believes that there are highly sustainable fisheries in the developed world and that lessons from those fisheries can be used to improve fisheries in the developing world, according to Saving Seafood, a news and advocacy organization for the U.S. domestic seafood industry.

The group is headed by internationally recognized marine scientists, economists, and fisheries managers and launched ahead of this year’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

I-FIN has set an ambitious goal of being a global clearinghouse for information concerning how fisheries are managed, which management styles are successful and how those successes can be adopted to create a more sustainable global fishery, according to its mission statement.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Seafood Champion Awards – global winners announced!

June 6, 2017 — The following was released by SeaWeb Seafood Summit:

A fearless fisheries minister who’s led a high-profile campaign against harmful fishing practices, a collective effort to combat large-scale illegal fishing in East Africa, two chefs who step far outside their kitchens to promote sustainable seafood, and a foundation breaking new ground in preemptive protection of Indian Ocean tuna are SeaWeb’s 2017 Seafood Champions.

The annual Seafood Champion Awards, presented at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit, recognize individuals and organizations for excellence in promoting ocean health and responsible practices with honors in four categories: leadership, innovation, vision and advocacy.

“The 2017 Seafood Champions demonstrate that courage and creativity can drive progress on seafood sustainability worldwide,” said Mark Spalding, president of SeaWeb and The Ocean Foundation. “These Champions have made smart use of strategies and tools tailored to their unique situations. Some employed teamwork and diplomacy to patiently overcome resistance. Others took bold actions. All have shown the determination and leadership that are the core qualities of Seafood Champions.”

The Seafood Champion Award for Leadership went to Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia’s Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries since 2014. She has banned the use of bottom trawlers and other unsustainable catching devices; led the fight against illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in her geographically dispersed island nation; and fought against the use of forced labor on fishing vessels.

FISH-i Africa, a partnership of eight East African countries, received the Seafood Champion Award for Innovation for sharing information and taking collective enforcement action to combat large-scale illegal fishing. FISH-i’s string of investigations and prosecutions has created a strong deterrence to illegal activity and promoted legitimate operators.

Matthew Beaudin, executive chef of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, earned the Seafood Champion Award for Vision for leading the shift to local and sustainable seafood within the Monterey Bay restaurant scene. In 2016, Chef Matt visited more than 20 cities to promote Seafood Watch and responsible sourcing. He is a regional and cross-border leader, having also developed aquaponics programs to support HIV-positive orphans in Mexico.

Sharing the Seafood Champion Award for Advocacy were the International Pole & Line Foundation and Ned Bell, Ocean Wise executive chef at the Vancouver Aquarium and founder of Chefs for Oceans. IPNLF earned its place at the top for spearheading Indian Ocean tuna fisheries reform, most notably the adoption of a precautionary harvest strategy by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission—a huge leap forward for global tuna management. Chef Ned has made sustainable seafood his mission. In 2014, he rode his bike 8,700 km across Canada, hosting 20 events alongside some of the country’s best chefs to raise awareness of sustainable seafood.

“This year’s Seafood Champions show an important trend: providing practical and affordable solutions for small-scale fishers and developing nations is now a priority,” said judge Katie Miller, sustainable seafood project lead for UK-based ClientEarth. “I’m looking forward to seeing how these play out on the water.”

The judges chose winners from a group of 16 finalists doing remarkable work in their home waters or in multinational coalitions. They winnowed the finalists from an outstanding group of 115 nominees working in 43 countries, reflecting a sector that is increasingly global, collaborative and distributed throughout the supply chain.

The Seafood Champions were honored June 5 at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit kickoff reception, sponsored by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. Seafood sustainability leaders from around the world attended the event, which was held at Chihuly Garden and Glass.

For more information on the awards, go to www.seafoodchampions.org.

About SeaWeb

SeaWeb accelerates the adoption of sustainable practices and products in the global seafood industry through communication, convening and facilitation. SeaWeb is a project of The Ocean Foundation, and produces the Seafood Summit in partnership with Diversified Communications.

Read the full release here

F/V America’s Finest, Largest Catcher Processor Built in US in 30 Years, May Need Jones Act Waiver

May 24, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Fishermen’s Finest Inc. and the Dakota Creek Shipyard in Anacortes, WA, have run into a Jones Act issue with the construction of F/V America’s Finest, which is the largest catcher processor to be constructed in the US in nearly 30 years.

Fishermen’s Finest operates F/V Amerca No. 1 and the F/V Interprid. These two catcher-processors are part of the Amendment 80 fleet, focusing on flatfish in the Bering Sea. Fishermen’s Finest recently celebrated their 30th anniversary, and with the America No. 1 they were the pioneer American company producing H&G flatfish from the Bering Sea.

The flatfish fleet, along with the cod longlining fleet, has seen a series of new vessel investments. The O’Hara corporation, also fishing flatfish, took delivery of the new freezer trawler Araho in January of this year. That vessel is 194 feet, and takes a crew of 54. It was built by Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Florida.

The F/V America’s Finest, scheduled for delivery in November 2017, is a larger version of similar design, being a Skipsteknisk AS (ST-116) vs the 115 model which was built for O’Hara. The America’s Finest is 261 ft vs. the 194 feet of the F/V ArahoA, and is being built by the Dakota Creek shipyard. It is about 86% complete, and is scheduled for delivery in November 2017. It has 49 births.

The issue involves some very complex rules under the Jones Act for what constitutes American built vessels. The Jones Act prohibits vessels not built in the US from participating in either US fisheries within the EEZ, or in the coastal trade between US ports.

Dakota Creek, according to documents circulated industry and congressional offices and provided to SeafoodNews, made an inadvertent mistake in interpreting the regulations.

The US Coast Guard allows the use of foreign steel in basic hull materials for US vessels. However, they only allow steel sheets, plates, beams and bars that are not fabricated or worked on in any way abroad before being imported. If a foreign worker so much as drills a hole in a plate, that disqualifies it, and it becomes a fabricated major component.

Foreign fabricated components are limited to 1.5% of the vessels total steel weight. If they exceed this level, the vessel is disqualified as a US-built vessel.

Dakota Creek bought some hull shell plating that was subject to bending and cutting in Holland, which the company did to take advantage of new cold forming technology for those sections of the bow and stern that used precisely shaped designs to reduce drag and fuel consumption. That technology is not yet available in the US.

Dakota Creek’s representatives say they thought this cold forming technology would be allowed because the bow and stern plates were subject to a great deal of additional cutting bending, fitting, beveling and other work all done in the US at Seaport Steel. It turns out that Dakota Creek’s understanding was not correct as per the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard has calculated that the percentage of fabricated foreign steel to be greater than 1.5%, because of a small piece of work done on many separate plates. This is the case even though the total weight of foreign steel is less than 7%, which is the total allowance by the Coast Guard.

If the vessel cannot get a waiver, it cannot be used in a US fishery. Such an outcome would force a sale of the vessel to foreign interests, most likely Russia, at a very steep discount, and would likely bankrupt both Fishermen’s Finest which has already paid most of the cost of the vessel, estimated to be between $60 and $80 million, and the Dakota Creek Shipyard.

Both companies are major employers and vital to the economy of Washington State.

The waiver is something that must be granted by Congress through a legislative fix. Draft language is already being circulated for insertion an a suitable bill that would allow the vessel to be completed and fish in the US fishery as planned.

The vessel meets all other requirements for US fishing vessels, having been built and assembled in Anacortes, Washington, with 375 people working on the vessel over the past three years, spawning another 1200 indirect jobs.

Lawyers believe that the only two options are the grant of a Congressional waiver, or a sale of the vessel to a foreign buyer at a loss that would be catastrophic for Washington State and the US Fishing Industry.

Undoubtedly Dakota Creek will have questions to answer, although this might be simply an embarrassing mistake. It seems to us that granting a waiver is the correct and only suitable choice, and we expect that view will also be widely shared in the West Coast fishing industry and the Amendment 80 fleet, once the full details are known.

The waiver would also allow Dakota Creek to complete a commitment to Seaport Steel to bring the new cold forming technology to the US, where it will benefit future vessel construction.

Dakota Creek has requested industry and congressional support for this waiver.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

2017 SeaWeb Sustainability Summit taking place 5 to 7 June in Seattle

May 4, 2017 — The 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, the international seafood sustainability conference, will take pace in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. from 5 to 7 June.

The summit aims to connect the industry’s environmental, social, and economic stakeholders and give them a forum for productive dialogue, partnerships, and solutions, according to a press release from Diversified Communications, which produces the summit in partnership with The Ocean Foundation [Editor’s note: SeafoodSource is owned by Diversified Communications].

The site of this year’s summit will be the Westin Seattle. The program includes a main keynote and daily plenary presentations as well as six breakout sessions, with topics ranging from traceability and transparency to business and management, aquaculture, IUU, and FIPs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Not Just a Boys’ Club: Women Hooking Into Fishing Industry

April 28, 2017 — “At the beginning of my fishing career, all the world told me that the trade was for men,” says Chrifa Nimri, “but now all my colleagues respect and call me captain.”

The 69-year-old Tunisian fisherwoman is one of a very small female minority in a very male-dominated profession – commercial fishing.

Around the world, the dangerous work of hauling in the catch at sea is overwhelmingly performed by men. But if you expand the definition of fishing to include processers and marketers of seafood, workers in small-scale and artisanal fisheries, and collectors of clams and other shellfish, women account for a substantial part of the global industry.

Sara Skamser has worked in or around commercial fishing for nearly her entire adult life. In her early 20s, she arrived on the Oregon coast and collected her first paychecks salmon fishing and crabbing in local waters. Then Skamser asked for jobs on bigger boats home-ported in Newport — better pay and bigger adventure and all. But, she recalls, none of those skippers would hire her.

“No. They said no.” She mimics them. “’Uh, I know you could do the job. Gosh, you’re probably stronger than me. Uhhh, but I don’t think my wife would like it.’ Or, ‘Uhhh. I would feel terrible if you got hurt on my boat.'”

Read the full story at Voice of America

US legislators push for fisheries disaster relief in federal spending bill

April 28, 2017 — Congressional and White House negotiators made progress Tuesday on a must-pass spending bill to keep the federal government open days ahead of a deadline as President Donald Trump indicated that U.S. funding for a border wall with Mexico could wait until September.

“We’re moving forward on reaching an agreement on a bipartisan basis,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said, adding that he hoped that an agreement to fund the government through September can be reached in the next few days.

But a big stumbling block remains, involving a Democratic demand for money for insurance companies that help low-income people afford health policies under former President Barack Obama’s health law, or that Trump abandon a threat to use the payments as a bargaining chip. Trump’s apparent flexibility on the U.S.-Mexico wall issue, however, seemed to steer the Capitol Hill talks on the catchall spending measure in a positive direction.

Arriving in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, California 2nd District Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said he will not be leveraged into supporting “bad policies” such as funding for a border wall, increased military spending and cuts to Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies.

“I am not going to vote for a government funding bill that includes overreaching poison pill provisions,” Huffman told the Times-Standard. “If we have a clean government funding bill, I will support it. But I am not going to be bullied into supporting bad policies in a sort of hijacking exercise with government funding.”

Huffman and a bipartisan group of 16 other legislators are urging congressional appropriation committees to include fisheries disaster funding in the spending bill for fishing fleets in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California, which includes the California crab fleet and the Yurok Tribe salmon fishing fleet.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Eureka Times-Standard

Congress working to prevent government shutdown; fishery disaster funds up in the air

April 26, 2017 — Congressional and White House negotiators made progress Tuesday on a must-pass spending bill to keep the federal government open days ahead of a deadline as President Donald Trump indicated that U.S. funding for a border wall with Mexico could wait until September.

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

West Coast Sardine Fishery Closed for Third Straight Season for Low Abundance

April 13, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Pacific Fishery Management Council announced the continued closure of the Pacific sardine directed fishery through June 30, 2018. This is the third annual closure in a row for this fishery.

Council members heard from scientists that the abundance forecast for the 2017- 2018 season, scheduled to start July 1, was significantly below the 150,000 metric ton threshold for a directed fishery. They also considered testimony from fishery participants and environmental groups before reaching a decision to close the directed fishery.

Small amounts of sardines may be taken incidental to target fishing on other stocks, and a small harvest amount was allocated to the Quinault Indian Nation along the mid-Washington coast.

“This represents a real hardship for coastal communities that depend on sardines and other coastal pelagic species. However, there are signs that the sardine population is increasing, so we’re hopeful there will be some fishing opportunity for next year,” said Council Chair Herb Pollard.

Sardines are subject to large natural population swings associated with ocean conditions. In general, sardines thrive in warm water regimes, such as those of the 1930s, and decline in cool water years, like the 1970s. After reaching a recent year peak of about one million metric tons in 2006, the sardine biomass[1] has dropped to an estimated 86,586 metric tons in 2017.

The Council takes a precautionary approach to managing Pacific sardines. When the fish are abundant, more fishing is allowed; but as the stock size declines, the amount of allocated to harvest decreases. When the biomass is estimated at or below 150,000 metric tons, directed commercial fishing is shut down.

Although directed commercial fishing will close, the Council will allow up to 8,000 tons of sardines to account for small amounts taken as incidental catch in other fisheries (such as mackerel), live bait harvest, Tribal harvest, and research.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

PACIFIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL VOTES TO CLOSE PACIFIC SARDINE FISHERY FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW

April 11, 2017 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council today announced the continued closure of the Pacific sardine directed fishery through June 30, 2018. This is the third annual closure in a row for this fishery.

Small amounts of sardines may be taken incidental to target fishing on other stocks, and a small harvest amount was allocated to the Quinault Indian Nation along the mid-Washington coast.

Sardines are subject to large natural population swings associated with ocean conditions. In general, sardines thrive in warm water regimes, such as those of the 1930s, and decline in cool water years, like the 1970s. After reaching a recent year peak of about one million metric tons in 2006, the sardine biomass has dropped to an estimated 86,586 metric tons in 2017.

Background

The sardine biomass is assessed annually, and the fishing year runs July 1 through June 30. Although sardine fishing hasn’t generated the money that some other fisheries have in recent years, it is an important source of income for communities up and down the west coast. The allowable harvest in recent years has been as high as 109,000 metric tons (2012), but has dropped as the biomass has dropped. In 2013 the harvest guideline was 66,495 mt, and in 2014 it was 23,293 mt. Since July 2015, the harvest guideline has been zero.

Council Role

The Pacific Fishery Management Council is one of eight regional fishery management councils established by the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 for the purpose of managing fisheries 3-200 miles offshore of the United States of America coastline. The Pacific Council recommends management measures for fisheries off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. All Council meetings are open to the public.