Saving Seafood

Conservation & Environment

Meet Diana Kramer, Regional Marine Wildlife Response Coordinator

December 29, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

What do you do at NOAA Fisheries?

I am the Regional Marine Wildlife Response Coordinator for the NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Regional Office.

My role is to coordinate response to stranded marine mammals in the Pacific Islands region, including in the territories. How we have it structured here in Hawaiʻi is that we have island-specific coordinators on Maui, Hawaiʻi Island, and Oʻahu. I work as a coordinator not just for marine mammals, but also for my colleagues. I help make sure that they have what they need to do their jobs and that our response in the Hawaiian Islands as well as the U.S. territories is coordinated and supported.

A response to a marine mammal might range from working with our great teams and partners to setting up perimeters around resting monk seals. And doing outreach and education for the public so they understand what’s going on and what they’re seeing on the beach. Or, we might work collaboratively with the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and our partners to engage in a hands-on response if a marine mammal is in need of assistance.

In the territories, we are working to continue and expand partnerships in these areas to do similar things. We have fewer strandings in the territories, but we want to make sure that we can respond as best as possible to any dolphin or whale that might strand.

One of the amazing aspects of my job is the great team I work with. I love how we are working together to support each other and it is a great feeling to work with those colleagues, both here and with our external partners. We are lucky to have such a dedicated team of people here in the Pacific Islands region who share the same goals of conservation and recovery of protected species.

How did you get interested in marine mammals?

I’ve loved marine mammals and the ocean from before I can even remember. My mom had me learning to swim before I could walk, and as soon as I was old enough, I was volunteering at aquariums. For example, when I was younger, I lived for a period of time in the Chicago area. I spent a lot of time volunteering at the Shedd Aquarium, where they have all kinds of great marine wildlife care, conservation, and education programs. I did everything from preparing fish for the marine mammals there to helping with summer education programs for young people. When I lived in California, I spent every chance I had viewing marine mammals in the wild, swimming in the ocean, and doing beach cleanups!

From there, I studied marine biology at the University of Miami in Florida. I had the opportunity to gain exposure to the research side of marine science, both through regular coursework, which included snorkeling trips in the Florida Keys, and extra work volunteering in the lab of one of the University’s top shark researchers. It’s been a lifelong passion and I just feel so lucky that I have been able to pursue a career in something I have loved my whole life.

Read the full release here

In barrier to Pebble mine, Alaska Native corporation and groups set aside land for conservation

December 28, 2022 — An effort involving an Alaska Native corporation and land conservation groups will permanently protect 44,000 acres in Southwest Alaska and block a key transportation route to the embattled Pebble copper and gold project, the groups announced.

The land, owned by the Pedro Bay Corp., is located off the northeastern shores of Lake Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska, in an area where project developer Pebble Limited Partnership had favored an access road to the mineral deposit from Cook Inlet.

The Conservation Fund and Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust worked with the Native corporation on the agreement. The Conservation Fund will purchase the easements for $20 million while the Bristol Bay land trust will hold the easements and work with the corporation to enforce their terms.

“They are perpetual easements and this is important primarily because this is prime salmon habitat,” said Tim Troll, executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust.

The mineral deposit is located about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage near Bristol Bay and the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Pebble Limited has pursued development of a mine in the region for more than a decade, but the project has faced strong opposition from tribes, conservation groups and fishermen. Pebble Limited insists the mine can operate safely without damaging the fishery.

The mine faces stiff headwinds from the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed blocking the mine under a special agency action, something mine opponents say could permanently doom the project. The agency is expected to make a final decision by February. A different agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has rejected the project as well. Pebble is appealing that decision, but the EPA decision would trump whatever the Corps decides.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

With deadline looming, environmental groups push Florida to oppose expanding Gulf drilling

December 19, 2022 — To win support from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin for its climate-fighting Inflation Reduction Act earlier this year, the White House included a perk for the oil and gas industry: expanded new drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now environmental groups in Florida want Gov. Ron DeSantis to fight to kill the deal. The deadline for states to submit comments is later this month.

“Governors have a unique role in influencing policy at federal agency level. They’re really strong, highly regarded stakeholders,” said Hunter Miller, the senior Florida field representative for the ocean conservation nonprofit Oceana. “So that’s where we need Governor DeSantis to really step up.”

Read the full article at WLRN

New Research Could Help U.S. Fishing Communities Adapt to a Changing Climate, Fishermen and Conservationists Say

December 19, 2022 — The following was released by UC SANTA BARBARA:

Fishermen and conservationists are praising a new paper from the University of California-Santa Barbara that provides recommendations for helping U.S. fisheries and fishing communities adapt to the effects of climate change. The paper, published this week in Fish and Fisheries, identifies actionable steps fishing managers can take to adjust the rules that guide how much of a stock can be fished, known as Harvest Control Rules (HCRs). “While climate change is undoubtedly affecting fishing communities across our coasts, new management approaches can help reduce these impacts,” said Eric Schwaab, senior vice president at Environmental Defense Fund. “UCSB’s research and recommendations lay out the concrete actions for more resilient management.”

Fisherman Chris Brown, president of Seafood Harvesters of America, said this is the kind of work that will help create climate-resilient fisheries and protect fishermen’s livelihoods. “We are the canary in the coal mine—we are already seeing the impacts of climate change out on the water every day. Black sea bass and fluke have moved north,” said Brown. “We are alldeck hands on planet Earth. We need unconventional thought that leads to reasonable solutions.”

The recommendations laid out in the paper include using catch limits based on stock population size, accounting for potential impacts of climate change in the rules, and evaluating which management approaches are best for a specific fishery. They were developed by a team of researchers led by Chris Free at UCSB, who evaluated the management of over 500 fisheries across the United States with a specific focus on the HCRs.

“The recommendations in our paper will help fisheries managers improve the climate resilience of the nation’s fisheries in the short and long term,” said Free.

Read the full study here and see a summary of the recommendations below.

● Adjust fishing rates based on stock status. Too often, managers will allow a certain percentage of a fish stock to be caught regardless of the current size of the population. But use of what’s known as “ramped harvest control rules” aligns the percentage that can be caught with the current size of the stock. This helps avoid overfishing and makes harvest levels more responsive to changing conditions.

● Better buffers. Managers need to fine tune and adapt the precautionary buffers that are used when calculating catch limits. Precautionary buffers essentially set the catch limits lower than the maximum that could be caught before the stock is overfished. This helps avoid overfishing, given increasing uncertainties due to climate change.

● Some rules are better than none. Even when budgets don’t allow for full stock assessments, managers can use indicators of stock health — like information from an ecosystem monitoring survey — to create harvest control rules that take current stock size into account, maintain profits and reduce the risk of overfishing.

● Consider climate change in the management of data-limited stocks. Multiple tools, including climate vulnerability assessments, can be used to determine catch limits that consider climate change for even the most data-limited stocks.

● Deprioritize rules that explicitly incorporate environmental factors. Some species are known to do better under certain environmental conditions (like water temperature), which makes it tempting to adjust harvest strategies based on those conditions. But ecosystems are complicated, and relationships between stock size and environmental condition are often more challenging to account for than anticipated. In most circumstances, it is more effective to base harvest rules on stock abundance data.

● Explore ecosystem-based catch limits. Instead of HCRs that are specific to a single species, managers can consider catch limits that account for the interactions between many species within an ecosystem.

● Compare strategies. A tool known as Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) can help managers and stakeholders transparently compare how different harvest strategies can meet the goals of the fishery and the comparative risks associated with each.

New England council’s new cod rebuilding plan

December 16, 2022 — A new 10-year rebuilding plan for Gulf of Maine cod has a 70 percent probability of rebuilding the beleaguered stock by 2033, according to the New England Fishery Management Council’s latest changes to Northeast groundfish management.

Under Framework 65 to the rebuilding plan, the strategy is to set a fishing mortality rate at 60 percent what would produce maximum sustainable yield, and low fishing mortality that will force low annual catch limits during the 10-year rebuilding period, according to a summary from the council after its Dec. 5-8 meeting in Newport, R.I.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Tech companies work to make fishing, aquaculture more sustainable

December 15, 2022 — For people who fish for a living, removing bycatch from nets is a tedious task. It’s expensive, labor-intensive and causes wear to the fishing vessel and gear. For marine animals unintentionally captured, the results are more debilitating — mostly fatal. From an ecological point of view, killing too many animals unintentionally can disrupt entire marine ecosystems and the food chains that keep them balanced. And yet, bycatch comprises as much as 40% of the global fishing catch.

U.K.-based startup SafetyNet Technologies is attempting to find a technological solution. The company deploys LED lights of varying colors and intensities that fishers can attach to their gear to attract certain species. They can change the lights depending on the fish species they want to target.

“Different species can see different lights and are attracted to that,” Tom Rossiter, head of precision fishing and sales lead at SafetyNet Technologies, told Mongabay in a video interview. “It’s those triggers we use to get particular species to move towards the net.”

Surveys with fishers in the U.K. and U.S. who have trialed the lighting technology indicate that it does reduce bycatch, according to Rossiter, but larger trials are needed to show the technology’s effectiveness conclusively. “We need to increase the size of the trial further to build statistical confidence,” he said.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

Thai Union ranked first in Dow Jones Sustainability Indices rating

December 14, 2022 — Thai Union has topped the food industry rankings on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI), the company announced 13 December.

The seafood giant has been on the DJSI, a set of indices assessing the sustainability performance of thousands of publicly traded companies, for nine years in a row. This year, Thai Union ranked first in the Food Products Industry Index of the DJSI, which it was also granted back in 2018 and 2019.

Read the full article SeafoodSource

Pacific Nations Are Bracing To Lose Tons Of Tuna From Their Waters

December 14, 2022 — Pacific leaders are developing a new warning system, not against hurricanes, tsunamis or even erupting volcanoes but rather the looming departure of vital tuna from their territorial waters in the years to come.

That so-called “advanced warning system” is part of a larger, $70 million proposal currently moving through the United Nations to help Pacific Island countries better react to the changing global climate. Their communities are already bearing much of the brunt of that crisis even though they’re among those least responsible for it.

Now, 14 of those Pacific nations aim to better understand the full extent of the upheaval that they’ll face as climate change pushes significant masses of tuna out of their waters and farther east. Most depend heavily on fishing access fees, paid by foreign purse seine fleets, in order to sustain their economies.

Read the full article at Civil Beat

Ocean Stewardship Fund halfway to US$10million funding goal

December 14, 2022 — The following was released by Marine Stewardship Council:

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has today announced that its Ocean Stewardship Fund which supports sustainable fishing globally, is more than halfway to its goal of mobilising US$10 million. 

The MSC, the not for profit responsible for the world’s leading programme for sustainable seafood certification and the bluefish tick label, launched its Ocean Stewardship Fund in 2018.  The Fund is a special funding vehicle which to date has been primarily supported by the MSC’s allocation of 5% of annual royalties received from sales of seafood with the MSC blue label.

In 2021-22, with support from the environmental investment company, Clarmondial, the MSC sought to more than double the funds available for the Ocean Stewardship Fund through third-party funding.

Third-party funders supporting the Ocean Stewardship Fund include the MAVA Fondation Pour La Nature which has given US$791,000 for projects in West Africa and the Mediterranean, the Walton Family Foundation which has contributed a US$1 million grant to establish a Loan Guarantee Facility for fisheries certified or working towards the MSC’s globalstandard for sustainable fishing, and $US1.05 million unrestricted funding from the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation.

The MSC also received US$100,000 from the Global Environment Facility, via the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) which will boost US$243,000 already awarded by the Ocean Stewardship Fund for a project on climate change.

In 2022 the Ocean Stewardship Fund awarded US$854,000 towards projects including research which focuses on helping to safeguard marine biodiversity. At least half of the grants will support fisheries in developing economies, such as Indonesia, Mexico and India. The Fund has awarded around US$4.4 million in total grants.

This month, the Ocean Stewardship Fund also allocated funds for a new project to support Portuguese fisheries – 90% of which are small-scale – to improve their sustainability practises.

The MSC is calling on funders that want to secure the future of a thriving and healthy ocean, while also safeguarding seafood supplies and livelihoods, to help reach the milestone of US$10 million.

Rupert Howes, Chief Executive of the Marine Stewardship Council, said: “The Ocean Stewardship Fund is helping toaccelerate vital progress in understanding of and commitments to sustainable fishing. Grants awarded so far range from research into new technologies that reduce the impacts of fishing on wildlife, through to projects to rebuild fish stocks, tocommunity programmes to assess and identify opportunities for improvement. We are extremely grateful for the generous contributions made by the MAVA Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and Hans Wilsdorf Foundation who share our vision of healthy oceans teaming with life and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations. By scaling upthe Ocean Stewardship Fund we hope to accelerate progress in sustainable fishing, supporting greater collaboration and understanding between the fishing industry, governments, scientists and conservationists, for the benefit of us all.”

Could trawler cams help save world’s dwindling fish stocks?

December 7, 2022 — For years, Mark Hager’s job as an observer aboard New England fishing boats made him a marked man, seen as a meddling cop on the ocean, counting and scrutinizing every cod, haddock and flounder to enforce rules and help set crucial quotas.

On one particularly perilous voyage, he spent 12 days at sea and no crew member uttered even a single word to him.

Now Hager is working to replace such federally-mandated observers with high-definition cameras affixed to fishing boat masts. From the safety of his office, Hager uses a laptop to watch hours of footage of crew members hauling the day’s catch aboard and measuring it with long sticks marked with thick black lines. And he’s able to zoom in on every fish to verify its size and species, noting whether it is kept or flung overboard in accordance with the law.

“Once you’ve seen hundreds of thousands of pounds of these species it becomes second nature,” said Hager as he toggled from one fish to another.

Read the full article at the Associated Press