October 20, 2017 — National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Chris Oliver has called for the retraction of a scientific paper that draws the conclusion that illegal and unreported seafood caught in the United States is entering the Japanese market.
The paper, “Estimates of illegal and unreported seafood imports to Japan,” was published in Marine Policy, a scientific journal covering ocean policy. The paper made estimates that between 10 and 20 percent of Alaska pollock, salmon, and crab being exported to Japanese markets comes from illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
In a letter to Marine Policy Editor-in-Chief Hance Smith, Oliver questioned the methodology of the study and asked for an immediate retraction.
“While NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service generally agrees with the value of catch documentation and traceability as one of many tools available to combat IUU fishing, it strongly objects to authors’ claims regarding U.S. seafood exports to Japan and doubts the validity of the methodology used to makes such estimates,” Oliver wrote. “The allegations made in the paper absent any transparency regarding the data and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions. Without significantly more information and transparency regarding data sources and methodologies applied, the paper should be retracted in its entirety.”
Read the full story at Seafood Source