International & Trade

April 21, 2015 — The EU gave Tuesday (21 April) a "yellow card" over illegal fishing to Thailand, one of the EU’s main suppliers of cheap fish products.

"As a result of a thorough analysis and a series of discussions with Thai authorities since 2011, the Commission has denounced the country's shortcomings in its fisheries monitoring, control and sanctioning systems and concludes that Thailand is not doing enough," said the EU commission in a statement.

A procedure of dialogue is now open with Thailand, which has six months to take measures or face a EU ban of its products.
"As a minimum, control and monitoring measures and enforcement measures should come into place," said EU fisheries commissioner Karmenu Vella at a press conference in Brussels.

If Thai authorities are not cooperative enough, the EU will "move to further drastic measures like trade sanctions," he said.

Read the full story from EU Observer

April 22, 2015 — Thai officials said they were rushing to crack down on illegal and unregulated fishing in a bid to avoid the European Union's threat to ban seafood import from the country.

The EU on Tuesday gave Thailand, the third-largest seafood exporter, six months to drastically combat illegal and unregulated fishing or face a seafood import ban.

Thailand is a major exporter of seafood, with yearly revenues of almost 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion), and an EU ban — a "red card" — would seriously affect the industry. Annual exports to the EU are estimated to be worth between 575 million and 730 million euros.

The EU lifted the threat of similar action against South Korea and the Philippines.

Thailand's Agriculture Minister Petipong Pungbun Na Ayudhya said the ministry was seeking a shortcut to speed up the enforcement of the recently passed law regulating the country's fishing. The law has been passed by the junta-appointed legislature but has not taken effect.

"We are considering either to issue a decree, or to exercise the power under Article 44 to speed up the enforcement of the (new) law because we only have 180 days to work on this," Petipong told reporters at a news conference.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — April 22, 2015 — A well organized and well attended MSC Global Commercial Meeting at the Brussels Seafood Expo this morning showed the full range of successes and challenges currently facing the MSC.

First, Nicolas Guichoux, Global Commercial Director, Highlighted the continued growth of the volume of fisheries in the MSC.  He said currently about 12% of the global catch is certified by the organization, and about another 3% is either in assessment or on the road to assessment.  However, the bulk of this volume still represents the major large volume fisheries, such as cod, pollock, other whitefish and salmon.
 
There were several comments from the industry panelists and the audience that even at 15%of global catch, the volume of certified fish still would not meet requirements from buyers that all their fish be certified.
 
 Peter Hajipieris, Director of Sustainability & External Affairs at Birds Eye Iglo, said that one reason Iglo could make a committment to 90% of its seafood in Europe being MSC is that they sell a limited range of fish.
 
Constant Mulder, Founder and Non-executive Director, Anova Seafood, suggested that there was a lot of work to be done with smaller scale tropical fisheries, and that many tools were needed.  However, he said that his committment to sustiainability as a core value of his company, begining in 2002, allowed him to be proud to be in the fish business.  He no longer had to hide what he did at social events in the Netherlands.
 
Guichoux reported that according to their surveys, there is a 14% increase in buyers seeking sustainable seafood.
 
The meat of the discussion was sparked by a question on how MSC could deal with labor issues such as possible slavery on tuna vessels. 
 
Rupert Howes said that at the very beginning of the MSC, there was consideration of a 4th principle that would deal with social responsibility.  However, this was dropped because the stakeholders made a decision to focus on environmental standards, and because it was hard to measure or come up with agreed standards on labor issues.
 
Despite some in the MSC supporting a social component, Howes said that such a certification was beyond the capability of the MSC, and that the MSC could not be all things to all people.  He recommended that companies needed a social certification look into a separate audit mechanism.
 
Krishan Kent, Purchasing Director, Orkla Foods, suggested that knowing in detail your suppliers, being familiar with their fishery, and avoiding places and fisheries that are at high risk of problems was another key to avoiding the reputational risk of selling tainted seafood.
 
He said that when WWF first made charges of IUU fishing on cod, purchasing of cod dropped 40% in Sweden.  His customers are extremely sensitive to these issues.
 
A second question that came up was whether the MSC should more forcefully lobby governments on fishery management issues.  Should they become an advocacy organization?
 
In the coffee break before the meeting, Brian Perkins, the new America's commercial director, said that the organization was a measurment organization, not a management organization. 
 
In the role of measurement, the MSC does not lobby governments.  Hajipieris cautioned that fisheries were national soverign resources..they did not belong to Iglo or the buyers, and that it was a government decision how to manage its fisheries.  He said he would be uncomfortable coming in to a region and telling a government how to manage its fisheries.
 
The consensus seemed to be that major issues that will help such as Port State ratification and rules about labor and vessel flagging will have to come from advocy outside of the MSC.
 
The meeting was well run, well organized, and showcased the maturity of the MSC as an organization, acting in a multi-polar world with a range of fisheries, social, and environmental issues, to which it may not have all the answers.

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

WASHINGTON (AP) — April 21, 2015 — In its first report on trafficking around the world, the U.S. criticized Thailand as a hub for labor abuse. Yet 14 years later, seafood caught by slaves on Thai boats is still slipping into the supply chains of major American stores and supermarkets.

The U.S. has not enforced a law banning the import of goods made with forced labor since 2000 because of significant loopholes, The Associated Press has found. It has also spared Thailand from sanctions slapped on other countries with weak records in human trafficking because of a complex political relationship that includes cooperation against terrorism.

The question of how to deal with Thailand and labor abuse will come up at a congressional hearing Wednesday, in light of an AP investigation that found hundreds of men beaten, starved, forced to work with little or no pay and even held in a cage on the remote island village of Benjina. While officials at federal agencies would not directly answer why the law and sanctions are not applied, they pointed out that the U.S. State Department last year blacklisted Thailand as among the worst offenders in its report on trafficking in people worldwide.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said the plight of about 4,000 forced laborers in Thailand's seafood industry can no longer go unheeded.

"There have been problems with systematic and pervasive human trafficking in Thailand's fishing fleets for more than a decade, but Washington has evidently considered it too hard to find out exactly what was happening and is not taking action to stop it," he said. "No one can claim ignorance anymore. This is a test case for Washington as much as Bangkok."

Hlaing Min, a 32-year-old migrant fisherman from Myanmar who worked around the clock for more than two years before he ran away, also begged the U.S. for help.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

April 17, 2015 — The crew of an Italian fishing boat turned the tables on armed Libyans who tried to seize their vessel at sea on Friday, the Italian Navy said, describing a confused episode that ended with the navy taking control of the vessel and of one of the Libyans.

The episode took place in the Mediterranean off the coast of western Libya, in a stretch of sea where thousands of migrants have been rescued in recent weeks from decrepit vessels as they tried to make their way to Western Europe.

According to the navy, the fishing boat was in international waters about 55 miles northwest of the port of Misurata, which is controlled by one of the most powerful of Libya’s warring militias. Armed Libyan men on a tugboat stopped and boarded the fishing boat, demanding that it go to Misurata, according to the Sicilian fishing cooperative to which the boat belonged. One of the Libyan gunmen was left on the boat and the rest departed.

The seven crew members then overpowered the Libyan gunman, retook the helm and set sail for Italy, the cooperative said. Officials confirmed that the boat was already on its way home when an Italian naval vessel intercepted it. Naval personnel “boarded the Italian ship and took control,” the navy said, and the gunman was taken into custody.

Read the full story from The New York Times

 

April 10, 2015 — An Oregon parks official says a roughly 25-foot-long chunk of fiberglass boat spotted drifting off the central Oregon coast is believed to be more debris from the deadly 2011 Japanese tsunami.

Chris Havel of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department said the debris was spotted Thursday morning and by evening was a few miles offshore.

Havel says biologists inspected the object and consulted with the state Fish and Wildlife Department, deciding that the attached organisms pose little threat to the Oregon coast ecosystem.

Read the full story and watch the video from KGW Portland

 

April 3, 2015 — Hundreds of fishermen raced to be rescued Friday from the isolated Indonesian island where an Associated Press investigation found that many were enslaved to catch seafood that could end up in the United States and elsewhere.

Indonesian officials probing labor abuses told the migrant workers they were allowing them to leave for another island by boat out of concern for their safety. More than 300 fishermen emerged from nearby trawlers, villages and even the jungle to make the trip.

‘‘I will go see my parents,’’ said Win Win Ko, 42, smiling to reveal a mouth full of missing teeth. ‘‘They haven’t heard from me, and I haven’t heard from them since I left.’’

He left impoverished Myanmar four years ago on the promise of getting a good job in neighboring Thailand, but like many others stranded in the island village of Benjina, he was instead duped into getting on a fishing boat that took him thousands of miles from home with no return. He said his four teeth were kicked out by a Thai boat captain’s military boots because he was not moving fish fast enough from the deck to the hold below.

The current and former slaves began getting news about the rescue as a downpour started, and some ran through the rain. They sprinted back to their boats, jumping over the rails and throwing themselves through windows. They stuffed their meager belongings into plastic bags and rushed back to the dock, not wanting to be left behind.

Read the full story from The Boston Globe

 

April 3, 2015 — Hundreds of fishermen raced to be rescued Friday from the isolated Indonesian island where an Associated Press investigation found that many were enslaved to catch seafood that could end up in the United States and elsewhere.

Indonesian officials probing labor abuses told the migrant workers they were allowing them to leave for another island by boat out of concern for their safety. More than 300 fishermen emerged from nearby trawlers, villages and even the jungle to make the trip.

"I will go see my parents," said Win Win Ko, 42, smiling to reveal a mouth full of missing teeth. "They haven't heard from me, and I haven't heard from them since I left."

He left impoverished Myanmar four years ago on the promise of getting a good job in neighboring Thailand, but like many others stranded in the island village of Benjina, he was instead duped into getting on a fishing boat that took him thousands of miles from home with no return. He said his four teeth were kicked out by a Thai boat captain's military boots because he was not moving fish fast enough from the deck to the hold below.

The current and former slaves began getting news about the rescue as a downpour started, and some ran through the rain. They sprinted back to their boats, jumping over the rails and throwing themselves through windows. They stuffed their meager belongings into plastic bags and rushed back to the dock, not wanting to be left behind.

A small boat went from trawler to trawler picking up men who wanted to go and was soon loaded down with about 30 men.

The Indonesian delegation began interviewing men on boats and assessing the situation on the island this week. They have heard of the same abuses fishermen told the AP in a story published last week, which documented a company graveyard in Benjina and eight fishermen locked in a company cage.

The fishermen described being beaten, kicked and whipped with stingray tails and given Taser-like electric shocks. Some said they fell ill and were not given medicine; others said had been promised jobs in Thailand but were instead issued fake seafarer documents and taken to Indonesia, where they were made to work 20- to 22-hour days with no time off for little or zero pay. Their catch is then shipped back to Thailand, where it enters global markets, the AP story documented.

Read the full story and watch the video from the Associated Press

BENJINA, Indonesia — April 2, 2015 — Officials from three countries are traveling to remote islands in eastern Indonesia to investigate how thousands of foreign fishermen wound up there as slaves and were forced to catch seafood that could eventually end up being exported to the United States and elsewhere.

A week after The Associated Press published a yearlong investigation into the problem — including showing men locked in a company cage — delegations from Thailand and Indonesia visited the island village of Benjina. Officials from Myanmar are scheduled to visit the area next week to try to determine how many of their citizens are stuck there and what can be done to bring them home.

"No one seemed to be aware of the problem, and now that they are, they want to do something as quickly as possible," said Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission at the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, in Indonesia, which is working with authorities to assist the fishermen.

Read the full story from The New York Times

March 31, 2015 — What do you get when the world’s leading marine conservation group, a digital mapping non-profit and a data-storing giant team up? Global Fishing Watch (GFW), a free online tool that will allow anyone to track movements of fishing fleets around the world.

GFW uses data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a tracking system used by over 100,000 vessels, to identify behavior consistent with fishing. It represents the next step in transparency within the seafood supply chain.

The creation of Global Fishing Watch comes at an exciting time for the world of marine conservation and seafood sustainability. On March 15, at Seafood Expo North America in Boston, Massachusetts, the Presidential Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Seafood Fraud unveiled its action plan. The plan lays out ambitious steps that the federal government will take to put an end to seafood fraud and illegal fishing, both domestically and internationally.

Read the full story from Oceana's International Blog