Western Pacific Archives - Saving Seafood

Illegal shark finning probe nets criminal charges against ten international fishermen

November 12, 2018 — HONOLULU — Federal investigators have charged ten fishermen with trying to smuggle nearly a thousand shark fins out of Hawaii.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they are all Indonesian nationals and worked on the Kyoshin Maru, a longline fishing vessel from southern Japan.

“They have no clue what they were doing here. All they could tell me was ‘ikan,’ which means fish in Indonesian,” said Gary Singh, an attorney for one of the fishermen.

This comes eight years after Hawaii became the first state to ban possession of shark fins. The following year, the federal government strengthened its existing ban and the trade largely went underground near Hawaiian waters.

Read the full story at Hawaii News Now

Protecting Paradise: Marine Debris Team Does the Heavy Lifting

The team removed more than 160,000 pounds of lost or abandoned fishing nets and plastics from the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, an ecologically and culturally significant area, part of the Papahānaumokuāea Marine National Monument.

November 12, 2018 — Stretching 1,200 miles northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands, a chain of remote islands and atolls known as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are hundreds of miles from the nearest human populations. Yet, these beautiful coral reefs and uninhabited shorelines are centrally located in the North Pacific Gyre, where currents gather marine debris from all around the Pacific Ocean.

NOAA’s marine debris team travels from island to island by ship and small boat, carefully pulling derelict “ghost” fishing gear off of underwater reefs and collecting plastic debris from shorelines. They clean up nets and other debris that damage coral reefs and threaten wildlife, including endangered Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles. Hauling debris is often a dirty, exhausting, and sometimes fly-filled task, but the team loves its work.

Read and view the full story at NOAA Fisheries

Using Artificial Intelligence to Identify Humpback Whales

November 9, 2018 — Artificial Intelligence has been used for everything from teaching computers to play chess to helping speed ride-sharing services on their way. And now one government agency is using it to track humpback whales in the Pacific.

For more than a decade, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been tracking whales by recording them.

But there are challenges – like the sheer volume of data. Researchers have to sift through years of audio. Literally. Years.

“So far we’ve collected over 170,000 hours of data. Let’s put that in real terms. If you were to sit and listen straight, not sleeping, not eating, taking no breaks, it would take you 19 years to listen to all that data,” says Ann Allen, a research oceanographer with NOAA’s Cetacean Research Program at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full story at Hawaii Public Radio

US, others make commitments for sustainability at Our Ocean

November 8, 2018 — At the Our Ocean 2018 conference held last week in Indonesia, the United States pledged its support for 15 initiatives that would affect fishing communities across the globe.

In addition, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Indonesian Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti during the two-day conference in Bali to reaffirm their nations’ commitment to encourage sustainable fisheries management worldwide.

Kerry, who also served as a conference presenter, commended Indonesia for its role in combating illegal fishing.

“I believe there is big crime committed in relation to [illegal, unreported and unregulated] fishing and this should be addressed by countries around the world,” he said. “To ensure sustainability, one of the ways is to maintain the volume of catch, making sure there is no overfishing.”

Another way the U.S. will work to combat illegal fishing is by working with The Waitt Foundation to hold a February 2019 summit in San Diego, California, U.S.A. with leaders from other countries to identify pilot projects that can be implemented online.

Peter Horn, who heads the Ending Illegal Fishing Project for The Pew Charitable Trusts, said he’s looking forward to the summit.

“We welcome the broadening of the debate of the governance issues behind current levels of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, and its second and third order consequences,” he told SeafoodSource in an email. “IUU fishing is often seen as purely an environmental crime with any absence of compliance with the rules countering it a management issue rather than what it really is: The tip of an iceberg of criminality which is directly linked to maritime safety and security.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Industry launch large-scale squid project at China Fisheries Expo

November 7, 2018 — The following was released by Ocean Outcomes:

Four leading seafood buyers, Chinese seafood industry groups, retailers, fishermen, and sustainable seafood enterprises came together today at the China Fisheries and Seafood Expo to celebrate the much anticipated launch of the East China Sea and Yellow Sea Squid FIP.

The fisheries improvement project—or FIP for short—is a precompetitive project aimed to improve the management and fishing practices of Chinese trawl, purse seine, and gillnet vessels targeting Japanese flying squid. JFS are one of the most commercially lucrative species of squid, and in the Chinese side of East China Sea and Yellow Sea alone, annual production can approach 30,000 metric tons.

“Squids are one of the most loved seafoods, but compared with many species, squid sustainability efforts are lagging,” said Songlin Wang who is leading the project. “Given squid account for about 5% of global fishery landings, it’s encouraging to see that change.”

In the East China and Yellow Seas, China has important domestic fisheries which target migratory JFS stocks. These supply both a booming domestic market and are exported to the Europe Union, United Kingdom, United States, Japan, and South Korea, among many others, by global seafood companies such as those involved in the project.

However, JFS fishing practices and management need improvement in a number of ways to ensure a continued supply of squid products. For example, China lacks a JFS-specific harvest strategy outside of a summer fishing moratorium banning the use of motorized fishing vessels, and it’s difficult to verify the exact catch locations for some squid products from the region.

“Around a third to half of all squid passes through a Chinese seafood supply chain, whether caught, processed, traded, or consumed,” said Dr. He Cui, who heads CAPPMA, a Chinese national seafood industry group with thousands of members. “Given CAPPMA’s commitment to both domestic and global seafood sustainability, it’s in our interest to ensure a future where all squid stocks are healthy. This project will help us explore a path forward.”

The FIP will work to address areas of concern through implementation of a five year improvement work plan designed, in part, to establish science-based stock assessments and bycatch monitoring protocols, harvest rules fit to JFS 1-year lifecycles, and traceability systems to verify and track locations of harvest.

Since its inception, the FIP has grown beyond founding members Ocean Outcomes, Sea Farms, and PanaPesca to include support from a number of industry stakeholders, including, Quirch Foods, Seachill, China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA), Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and local Chinese suppliers Genho, IG and the Zhejiang Industry Group.

The success and growth of the project were due, in part, to the collaborative forum of the Global Squid Supply Chain Roundtable, facilitated by Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, which heavily featured the East China Sea and Yellow Sea Squid FIP in recent meetings at the North America Seafood Expo in Boston, MA.

“We couldn’t have envisioned the enthusiasm and support for this work when this project began three years ago,” said Dick Jones, who has been working to improve seafood industry practices for decades. “Precompetitive industry collaboration is key to ensuring durable and positive change. This project demonstrates that message is catching on.”

Fishery Council Announces Recommendations for Hawaiʻi Fisheries

November 5, 2018 — After a four-day meeting last week, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council announced their recommendations for nearshore fisheries in Hawai’i and Guam. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, the council has authority over fisheries throughout Hawai’i, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and the US Pacific Remote Islands.

During the meeting, the Council prepared an amendment to the Hawai’i Fishery Ecosystem Plan (FEP) to revise the precious corals essential fish habitat (EFH) document. The council specifically recommended revising existing seabeds and designating new seabeds as EFH for deepwater precious corals. The council also decided that the geographic extent and habitat characteristics for shallow-water precious corals should be updated.

The council recommended that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) set the MHI non-Deep 7 bottomfish ACL at 127,205 pounds and MHI deep-water shrimp ACL at 250,773 pounds for fishing years 2019-2021. The council also recommended that the NMFS set the MHI Kona crab ACL at 3,500 pounds for fishing year 2019.

For precious corals, the council recommended that the ACLs for 2019-2021 be set to 5,512 pounds for ‘Au’au Channel black coral, 2,205 pounds for Makapu’u Bed pink coral, 55 for Makapu’u Bed bamboo, 489 pounds for 180 Fathom Bank pink coral, 123 pounds for 180 Fathom Bank bamboo coral, 979 pounds for Brooks Bank pink coral, 245 pounds for Brooks Bank bamboo coral, 148 pounds for Ka’ena Point Bed pink coral, 37 pounds for Ka’ena Point Bed bamboo coral, 148 pounds for Keahole Bed pink coral, 37 pounds for Keahole Bed bamboo coral, and 2,205 pounds for precious coral in MHI exploratory area.

Read the full story at Maui Now

JOHN FIORILLO: A Retraction is Not Enough

November 1, 2018 — The following editorial was originally published by IntraFish. It was written by IntraFish Executive Editor John Fiorillo:

Patience may be a virtue but how long must we wait for a scientific journal to decide if it is going to retract a controversial paper that the US government, eminent fisheries scientists and industry executives say is a bunch of crap?

It has been more than a year – yes, I said a year – since US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Chris Oliver requested a retraction of the controversial scientific paper published in the journal Marine Policy that alleges a significant portion of Alaska salmon, crab and pollock is entering the Japanese market from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fisheries.

Last October, Oliver challenged the veracity of the scientific paper and asked that it be retracted to avoid damaging the reputation of the US fishing industry and its fisheries management. In December, a team of top US fisheries scientists, led by preeminent fisheries researcher Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, joined the US government in demanding a retraction of the paper. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), under which the fisheries are certified sustainable, also came out in support of the industry.

In June, Hance Smith, editor of the journal Marine Policy, told IntraFish: “The status is simply that we have been waiting for additional reviews of the paper. I expect we shall be able to progress shortly.”

Shortly?

On Monday, I asked Smith again for an update on the status of the paper and its possible retraction. I was told: “We are still waiting for a response from the corresponding author.”

Umm. OK. What?

Anyway, this is about more than getting a retraction. This is a scientific paper, that critics — bonafide critics, not crackpots — say is fundamentally flawed. And if that is not bad enough, it is eerily similar to a 2014 paper by the same researchers — Tony Pitcher, Katrina Nakamura, and Ganapathiraju Pramod — that provided estimates for IUU fish entering the US market. This report has been cited at least 59 times in academic reports and countless times in government and NGO reports. In other words, repeat the story enough times and it becomes unquestioned gospel.

The 2014 study was cited regularly by those supporting the creation of the US Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), which was indeed launched in January and requires a new level of record keeping by US importers aimed at eliminating IUU fish from the US seafood supply chain.

Made up

Hilborn, in December, said the paper at the heart of the current controversy cites several dozen published papers as sources yet none have any mention of IUU fishing. “The paper also lists a number of ‘sources’ of IUU such as ‘unreported catch in artisanal fisheries’ which do not exist,” said Hilborn. “As near as we can tell, the paper made up all of its results without any data on IUU fishing.”

NOAA’s Oliver, in his October 2017 letter to the report’s authors, said the “allegations made in the paper, are absent of transparency regarding the data, and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions.”

The Japan study claims that an estimated 15 percent of the US pollock entering Japan is from IUU fisheries. Further, the study says between 10 and 20 percent of the salmon and crab coming from Alaska fisheries is IUU. In the paper, Pitcher and the other authors argue for the creation of a seafood traceability program in Japan to thwart what they claim is the importation of seafood produced by IUU fishing activity.

The paper was funded by the Walton Foundation, which has largely skirted the fray. “Independently, we are reaching out to talk with all of the parties to ensure we fully understand the issues,” Barry Gold, director of Walton’s Environment Program, said a year ago.

But Pitcher told me Tuesday in an email that “neither the Walton Foundation nor the Marine Stewardship Council has been in touch with us to ascertain the truth of the matter.”

He also said he has a revised table showing “only 2 percent IUU from that US pollock fishery,” and he says that the revised table “has been waiting to be inserted [into the paper] for almost a year now.” In other words, the original 15 percent IUU estimate is wrong.

“The editor wants us to retract and then resubmit to include the new table, and despite our arguing that is not necessary as they can easily insert a correction, Ray Hilborn in Seattle has queered the pitch by a ridiculous letter accusing us of data fraud and absurd unprofessional threats that the journal will be ‘exposed on his blog,'” Pitcher said in his email to me.

“My co-author has been travelling extensively (earning his living!), and so have I, so neither of us have had the time required to deal with this. We are aiming to get it done before Xmas.”

What a mess.

Look, we need to be able to trust science, especially in this Trumpian era where science is dismantled, devalued and dismissed.

It’s time for the editors of the Marine Policy journal to settle this issue so we don’t allow flimsy science to contribute to the potentially unnecessary creation of another new traceability program in Japan, as it did for the new SIMP program in the US market.

Marine Policy editors need to retract the report, and while they are at it they need to look at the authors’ 2014 report. And stop being careless with fisheries science.

Read the editorial at IntraFish

A Coalition of Global Participants Pledge to Protect Five Million Square Miles of Ocean

November 2, 2018 — Global participants in the fifth Our Ocean Conference have pledged the highest amount of funding yet for new initiatives and commitments on the protection of a combined expanse of ocean eight times the size of Alaska.

The event, hosted by the Indonesian government on the island of Bali, generated 287 pledges in bilateral and multilateral agreements between governments, the private sector, civil society organizations, and philanthropic foundations. The pledges were valued at more than $10 billion to protect some 5.4 million square miles of the world’s oceans, according to Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for maritime affairs.

To date, the Our Ocean Conference has raked in commitments totaling $28 billion and covering 10.2 million square miles of ocean.

“These numbers are beyond our expectations,” Luhut said in his closing remarks on October 30th. “We are thankful for your collective contributions and making our ocean healthier and (more) sustainable.”

The impacts of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and climate change on the world’s oceans were the key focuses during the two-day conference. Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showed that the value of fish captured illegally was about 26 million tons, or up to $23 billion annually. The world’s maritime resources are valued at around $24 trillion.

“Illegal fishing globally still decimates fisheries at an unsustainable pace,” said former United States Secretary of State John Kerry in his speech on October 29th.

“Illegal fishing continues on an unmitigated, unsustainable pace and almost one-third of the world’s fisheries are still overexploited,” he said. He added that the remainder of fisheries “are either at peak or nearly at peak with more and more people in the middle class, more and more people with money, more and more people demanding fresh fish on their table in their restaurants in their country.”

Read the full story at the Pacific Standard

Federal Managers Make Recommendations for Guam, Hawaii Fisheries

October 30, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council wrapped up its four-day meeting in the Mariana Archipelago last week in Guam with the following recommendations regarding Guam and Hawaii nearshore fisheries and other matters.

For Guam fisheries, the Council recommended bottomfish annual catch limits (ACLs), and made recommendations about the Guam Ocean Fishery Management Council and marine reserve areas, among other items.

The Council recommended the National Marine Fisheries Service set an bottomfish ACL of 66,000 pounds for fishing year 2019. Currently, Guam harvests 29 percent of that recommended bottomfish ACL. The next benchmark assessment, scheduled for review in February 2019, will provide new information to set the ACLs for fishing year 2020 to 2022.

The Council also encouraged the Government of Guam to expedite the appointment of the members of the Guam Ocean Fishery Management Council and reduce the paperwork requirements for the community and the public to serve in it.

With respect to marine preserve areas in Guam, the Council directed staff to communicate with the federal Marine Protected Area Advisory Committee regarding the findings of the “Fishing Community Perceptions on Marine Preserve Siting Process” report, including procedural justice, transferred effects, safety, etc., and to provide the final report to the local federal agencies for use in their management objectives.

The Council also made recommendations regarding the ACLs for Hawaiian fisheries.

For main Hawaiian island (MHI) non-Deep 7 bottomfish, deep-water shrimp, Kona crab and precious corals, the Council recommended NMFS set the MHI non-Deep 7 bottomfish ACL at 127,205 pounds and MHI deep-water shrimp ACL at 250,773 pounds for fishing years 2019-2021 and the MHI Kona crab ACL at 3,500 pounds for fishing year 2019. For precious corals, the recommended ACLs for 2019-2021 are Auau Channel black coral 5,512 pounds; Makapuu Bed pink coral 2,205 pounds; Makapuu Bed bamboo coral 551 pounds; 180 Fathom Bank pink coral 489 pounds; 180 Fathom Bank bamboo coral 123 pounds; Brooks Bank pink coral 979 pounds; Brooks Bank bamboo coral 245 pounds; Kaena Point Bed pink coral 148 pounds; Kaena Point Bed bamboo coral 37 pounds; Keahole Bed pink coral 148 pounds; Keahole Bed bamboo coral 37 pounds; and precious coral in MHI exploratory area 2,205 pounds.

The Council also directed staff to evaluate options for improving conservation and management of the Hawaii bottomfish fishery, including an assessment of data collection, consistency of federal and state regulatory measures and harvest controls, and monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.

The Council also considered other matters, such as marine monuments, aquaculture and habitat.

The Council directed staff to communicate to the administration that the fishing prohibitions be removed for the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument and allow only Guam and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-registered vessels to fish there. It also directed staff to write to the Okeanos-Foundations for the Sea in New Jersey and cc the governors of Guam and the CNMI, noting that the Council commends the development of the Okeanos Marianas vessel as a traditional method for addressing climate change impacts and encourages the Foundation to keep the vessel in the CNMI and transfer its ownership to the local Okeanos Marianas organization in Saipan.

Habitat issues also got attention, as the Council directed staff to convene a regional workshop of experts to discuss habitat-related issues, including non-fish impacts on essential fish habitat (EFH) and habitat areas of particular concern, prior to the convening of the national workshop on habitat to be convened by the Council Coordination Committee.

Staff was also directed to look at the current regulatory regime in place in federal waters to determine the needs for developing offshore aquaculture, determining the best sites for aquaculture and obtaining funding to assist local interests to develop aquaculture in the Western Pacific Region. Furthermore, staff will the Plan Team to include in its research priorities the impacts of climate and ecosystem changes to pelagic fisheries and coral reef ecosystems.

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

Western Pacific Council Makes Recommendations to Keep US Pacific Island Fisheries Viable

October 26, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council concluded its two-day meeting in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) this week with recommendations regarding pelagic, international and American Samoa fisheries.

Council discussion centered around keeping healthy, sustainable U.S. Pacific Island fisheries viable amid an accumulation of U.S. regulations and international negotiations.

Billfish Conservation Act and Bigeye Tuna

The Council expressed dismay over the recent amendment to the Billfish Conservation Act of 2012, which bans the interstate commerce of billfish (excluding swordfish) landed by U.S. fishermen in Hawaii and the US Pacific Islands. The billfish stocks caught by Hawaii and U.S. Pacific Island fisheries are healthy, unlike the billfish in the Atlantic, the Western Pacific Council said in a press release.

The bill to amend the Act was introduced and promoted by Congressional delegates and sports fishing organizations from Florida. Recent guidelines from the National Marine Fisheries Service say the billfish landed in the US Territories and Hawaii are also prohibited from being sold in foreign markets. The Council directed staff to develop a list of questions and issues associated with amendment compliance and send them to NMFS for a response.

The Hawaii deep-set longline fishery catches billfish incidentally when targeting bigeye tuna. The amount of bigeye in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) the fishery may retain annually is developed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), an international regional fishery management organization to which the U.S. is a party.

The Council endorsed recent WCPFC’s Permanent Advisory Committee to advise the U.S. commissioners (PAC) majority recommendation to obtain a longline bigeye quota of 6,000 metric tons (mt) at the upcoming WCPFC meeting in December in Honolulu. This amount is slightly less than the amount of bigeye caught in the WCPO in 2016 by Hawaii longline vessels, including those vessels operating under agreements with U.S. Participating Territories. The Council said it will communicate this recommendation to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The Hawaii longline fleet is the sole fishery that utilizes the U.S. quota, which is currently set at 3,554 mt.

South Pacific Albacore

The Council also endorsed the PAC recommendation that the U.S. position generally be in support of adopting a South Pacific albacore target reference point. The reference point is a catch target that supports economically viable operations and healthy stock biomass. The American Samoa longline fishery, which harvests this stock, has been in decline since 2011. The Council asked NMFS to provide economic evaluations of the fleet’s performance at various target reference points in advance of WCPFC15.

Hawaii Longline Fishery

Among other pelagic and international fishery matters, the Council recommended initial action be taken that would require electronic reporting in the Hawaii longline fishery. The Council will ask NMFS to continue to develop electronic reporting in the Hawaii longline fishery and to work with Hawaii longline participants and Council staff to address several implementation issues and report back to the Council at its March 2019 meeting.

The Council intended to take action regarding the management of loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles in the Hawaii shallow-set longline fishery, which targets swordfish. However, action was postponed as a draft biological opinion due from NMFS on Oct. 1 has not been completed. The Council will reconvene its Scientific and Statistical Committee Working Group when the draft opinion is available. The Council may convene an interim Council meeting, if needed, to review the draft opinion and consider revisions to its June 2018 recommendations, including a possible specification of individual trip limits for leatherback sea turtle interactions.

American Samoa Fisheries

Regarding American Samoa fisheries, the Council recommended an annual catch limit (ACL) of 106,000 pounds for the American Samoa bottomfish species complex for fishing year 2019. The Council noted the next benchmark assessment, which is scheduled for review in February 2019, will provide new information to set the ACLs for fishing years 2020 to 2022. The Council also directed its staff to work with the Council’s American Samoa Advisory Panel to develop a plan for outreach and education, preferably in cooperation with Territory’s Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, to educate communities on various fisheries and fisheries-related issues.

The Council will reconvene at 11 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 26, at the Hilton at Tumon, Guam.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

News for the Western Pacific Region