International & Trade

December 19, 2013 — Even for an imperiled species, the Mangarahara cichlid was on its last fins. The colorful fish was thought to have vanished from the wild, and only two individuals remain in captivity—both aging males. But thanks to a serendipitous chain of events, a small population was discovered in Madagascar last month, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) announced.

“This is a very exciting discovery,” says Michele Thieme, a conservation biologist with the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., who didn’t participate in the discovery. “It’s rare to find a fish species that was feared extinct in the wild.”

The Mangarahara cichlid (Ptychochromis insolitus) is one of several species of cichlids native to Madagascar. They are interesting from an evolutionary perspective because they retain many ancestral traits of cichlid forbears, says Melanie Stiassny, an ichthyologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. When she revised the species’ taxonomy in 2006, she dubbed it “insolitus,” which means unusual, because of its fine-toothed scales and other features.  

To survive in the wild, this cichlid needs clear, deep pools and swift, shallow water. But its habitat—the Mangarahara and Amboaboa river systems—are mostly dry now, their water diverted for rice and other crops. And deforestation has added to silt to streams that feed into the rivers. “This is clearly an endangered species,” Stiassny says. Previous searches had come up empty-handed, says Brian Zimmerman, the curator for fishes at ZSL’s aquarium at London Zoo. “We thought it was likely the fish was extinct in the wild.”

Read the full story at Science

December 18, 2013 — The amount of fish that can be caught in Europe within scientifically recommended levels inched upwards under a deal made in Brussels on Wednesday, but campaigners said the agreement still marked only "tepid" progress towards sustainable fishing.

European ministers who have been negotiating since Monday on fish quotas agreed that 27 of the 50 stocks that scientists provide advice on would be fished at sustainable yields in 2014, up from 25 in 2013. It is the last time quotas will be agreed in this way, with new reforms coming into force next year.

The EU's fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, said the meeting had pre-emptively adopted the conservationist spirit of the reforms that will guide quotas from 2015 onwards.

"I would like to say to you that I'm really very happy, because this year the ministers they have decided to implement the reform in advance," said Damanaki. "So the new fisheries policy is already here. All the components of the new reform are already here.

"When the [population] trend is stable or positive, we will be able to have small increases [in catch limits]. When the trend was going down I have insisted that we need to reduce the quotas and the council has done that."

Green groups said the results from the meeting showed improvement, but there was little to indicate member states had voluntarily embraced sustainability.

Read the full story at The Guardian

December 17, 2013 — Few countries have as solid a national brand recognition in China as that enjoyed by Canada, yet the country may not be able to capitalize on demand in the country.

Cyr Couturier, director at the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance told SeafoodSource that while his members are “getting a lot of interest” from Chinese buyers “a big problem is we can’t produce enough” to meet the demand. Canada’s aquaculture industry has “plateaued” at CAD 900 million (USD 848 million, EUR 616 million) per year. He blames an “antiquated regulatory regime” and said “this has meant we can’t grow the industry.”

Crucially, it remains difficult to get new sites for aquaculture. In British Colombia, opposition from the wild salmon lobby and anti-farming groups have stalled aquaculture growth. “The big challenge with salmon is we have to grow it…demand is there, salmon has gone from a top ten to a top three most consumed seafood product in a remarkably short space of time.”

As Couturier explains it, the Canadian seafood industry was valued at CAD 1 billion (USD 942 million, EUR 684 million) in 2001 and 2002 “but now we lost 40 percent of the salmon market because production has remained the same.” Rising Chinese demand for seafood is timely given the seafood market in North America has dipped in the past years, said Couturier, explaining that 2012 numbers were down a few years in a row. “Overall seafood consumption is down.” Marketing efforts by Canadian authorities in China means the Maple Leaf brand logo is instantly recognizable in China. But while China is proving a big customer but supplying the quantities required can be a challenge. “You can never supply what they want…it’s a volume challenge, particularly as we have existing customers also to supply.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source 

December 13, 2013 — After almost three-and-a-half years of difficult negotiations, the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform package has been approved. The policy is now tasked with returning European fish stocks to sustainable levels and to put an end to wasteful fishing practices.

The new fisheries legislation was given the final green light in a final plenary vote by European Parliament (EP) on 10 December and will start to take effect on 1 January 2014. The basic regulation includes measures to halt overfishing and to reduce the controversial practice of discarding unwanted fish at sea.

EU fisheries chief Maria Damanaki, who initiated the CFP reform process in July 2011, was relieved to see the official adoption of the new legislation, stating that Europe now has “a policy which will radically change our fisheries and will pave the way for a sustainable future for our fishermen and our resources.”

She added that the new CFP is “a driver for what is most needed in today's Europe: a return to growth and jobs for our coastal communities.”

According to EP, currently 88 percent of Mediterranean stocks and 39 percent of Atlantic stocks are overfished due to surplus fleet capacity, excessive catches and patchy compliance with the previous rules. Under the new CFP, member states will have to set sustainable fishing quotas from 2014, and only in clearly defined, exceptional cases, by 2020. At the same time, fishermen will have to respect the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) of stocks. In other words, they will be prevented from catching more than a given stock can reproduce in a given year.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

SEAFOODNEWS.COM  by John Sackton — Dec 13, 2013 — China's food inspection service, AQSIQ, has banned imports of geoducks and other bivalve mollusks from the West coast of the U.S. following a finding that two shipments of geoducks contained PSP levels higher than the Chinese allow, and also higher than allowed levels of inorganic arsnic.

This is a potentially huge blow to the geoduck industry, primarily based in Puget Sound.  Washington harvests about 5 million pounds of geoduck annually, and another 2 million lbs are grown through aquaculture. This ban comes before the Chinese New Year, the season of heaviest demand.

Jerry Borchert of the Washington Department of Health said on NPR that he's never encountered such a ban based on the Chinese government's assertion that these U.S. safeguards failed to screen out contaminated seafood.

“They’ve never done anything like that, where they would not allow shellfish from this entire area based on potentially two areas or maybe just one area. We don’t really know yet,” Borchert said.

The problemis that so far, China has not identified which area the problematic clams came from.

In the letter to US officials, AQSIQ said:

"Recently, two shipments of geoducks originated from the 67 Northeast Pacific sea region in the United States were found to have above standard residue of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) above the maximum level 30.2 MU/g permitted by China standard,  and inorganic arsenic (0.5mg/kg by China standard) during the inspection/quarantine conducted by China Inspection and Quarantine Agencies.

AQSIQ would like to notify the following:

1. Based on  this notification, please conduct investigation on paralytic shellfish poisoning and inorganic arsenic monitoring records, and information for geoduck catch, transfer and packing and delivery, then, forward the investigation results to AQSIQ.

2. To ensure safety, AQSIQ has suspended tentatively importation of geoduck and other double shell aquatic animals from 67 Northeast Pacific in the USA, and intensified the inspection/quarantine rate for geoduck originated from other sea regions in the USA.

3. AQSIQ request the US side to take effective measures to ensure the safety of live aquatic animals for exports to China and prevent this incidents from happening again.

NOAA says that they cannot issue health export certificates until the suspension is lifted.

Also speaking on NPR, George Hill, the geoduck harvest coordinator for Puget Sound's Suquamish Tribe said “It’s had an incredible impact.  A couple thousand divers out of work right now.”

Bill Dewey, a spokesman for Taylor Shellfish, the largest shellfish supplier in Washington, is looking at other solutions.

"I was just talking to our geoduck manager and he’s got two harvest crews and three beach crews essentially doing makework," Dewey said. "He’s too nice a guy to lay them off during the holidays but there’s only so much you can be charitable about making work for people and eventually you’re going to have to lay them off."

Officials think it may take months to clear the ban, so the outlook is very uncertain.  The first step would be to try and identify specific areas where there might be problems, and then NOAA could try to persuade the Chinese to lift the ban on other areas.

However, producer options are limited as 90% of Washington's harvest goes to China.  Last year the total harvest was worth about $68 million.

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

 

AMSTERDAM (AP) — December 10, 2013 — The European Parliament has approved a fishing reform intended to ensure that overfished seas can repopulate.

The policy, which goes into effect in 2014, requires European countries to set quotas and fishermen to respect a ‘‘maximum sustainable yield.’’ That means catching no more of a particular species than it can reproduce.

The policy also bans the practice of catching and discarding unwanted fish along with commercial species, starting in 2019.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

December 10, 2013 — Following recent reports from ICES and HELCOM classifying several species of eel as critically endangered, Oceana says that aside from fishing, hydropower plants are also killing hundreds of thousands of eels every year.

The organisation says that dams supporting hydropower production have made migration in the majority of Sweden’s water streams impossible for fish, and that thousands of dams are permanent migration barriers which have decimated fish populations and forced species out of streams. Despite an EU directive telling countries to alter and enhance the migration routes of the fish, Oceana says that there has not been sufficient action.

Read the full story at World Fishing & Aquaculture 

 

December 7, 2013 — Dwindling stocks, an exclusion zone and patrolling Israeli gunboats all make life difficult for the fishermen of Gaza.

Photographer Gianluca Panella goes aboard for a terrifying experience

Read more and see photos here 

December 9, 2013 — Marine Farms Belize has successfully transported close to 170,000 cobia juveniles by air to a farm in Panama. There were two shipments which were sent by a specially chartered Boeing 727-200 from Belize City. The first shipment consisted of 92,000 juveniles and was sent on 6 September, and the second of 95,000 juveniles went on 1 November.

"I believe it was the first time live marine fish have been shipped out of Belize in such commercial quantities," said Jorge Alarcon, CEO of Marine Farms Belize. "Also, I think this was the first time so many cobia had been packed and shipped in a single day by air (in both instances). Normally, cobia juvenile shipments by air consist of a maximum of 20 or 30 large boxes at a time. Ours were 43 and 48 boxes."

The fingerlings, weighing an average 1g each, were selected from two juvenile production runs at the hatchery directed by juvenile production manager Willy Meresse and totaled close to 250,000 fingerlings combined.

"We aimed to produce 100,000 juveniles each time," Alarcon said, "but in the second cycle we obtained higher survival than expected (about 20 percent from newly hatched larvae to 1g). We would normally produce in excess of what is ordered and take out the smallest individuals to ensure we ship the best performing fish to our clients.

Read the full story at Seafood Source