International & Trade

February 6, 2013 — Fast food giant McDonald’s is not ruling out a return to using Russian pollock raw material, as it embarks on a major fanfare about its use of eco-labeled Alaska pollock.

In late January, McDonald’s announced it is to use the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo on its Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and Fish McBites, a new product. At the moment, McDonald’s uses Alaskan deepskin pollock as its primary raw material in the US.

This has caused speculation in the pollock business that McDonald’s, far from being entirely driven by green credentials, is setting up for a return to using Russian pollock, with the Sea of Okhotsk portion of the fishery close to being MSC-certified.

In a statement sent to Undercurrent News, McDonald’s did not rule this out.

“Our future use of Russian pollock depends on the outcome of the MSC certification process and future guidance from Sustainable Fisheries Partnership,” said a spokeswoman for McDonald’s.

She added that the use of the label is not a short-term thing.

McDonald’s is “proud to recognize this work by displaying the blue MSC eco-label on our packaging and in our marketing materials”, she said.

The chain has “no immediate plans to stop featuring the eco-label on our packaging”, she added.

McDonald’s sources its fish based on a standard which Jim Cannon, CEO of Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), helped it to develop while he was at Conservation International.

“The majority of our partners use SFP’s standard evaluations, but several of our partners have their own standards, which emphasize different issues or risks they are concerned about,” Cannon said.

 

Read the full story at Undercurrent News 

 

 

PARIS — February 6, 2013 — In an outcome hailed by environmentalists, European Union lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to overhaul the region’s troubled fisheries policy to end decades of overfishing.

Responding to widespread public dissatisfaction with the current policy, the European Parliament voted 502-to-137 to impose sustainable quotas by 2015 and end the wasteful practice of discarding unwanted fish at sea. The legislation also returns some management responsibility to E.U. member states.

“The fishermen back home were really determined to wrest control away from Brussels, where the micromanagers have been the absolute ruination of the fisheries policy,” and they will be pleased with the outcome, said Struan Stevenson, a Scottish member of Parliament for the European Conservatives and Reformists and the party’s spokesman on the issue.

Markus Knigge, policy and research director for Pew Environment, said the E.U. legislation was comparable to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the landmark U.S. law that in 1976 established modern American fisheries practices, widely seen as superior to European practices.

Under current policy, 63 percent of the E.U.’s Atlantic stocks and 82 percent of its Mediterranean stocks are overfished, according to the European Commission.

The vote Wednesday in Strasbourg was the first time the Parliament had shared responsibility for setting fisheries policy, formerly the domain of the European Fisheries Council. The council, dominated by national fisheries ministries with close ties to the industry, has been criticized for flouting scientific recommendations on catch limits and providing subsidies to fleets harvesting even the most vulnerable species.

Guy Vernaeve, secretary general of Europêche, which represents European fishing associations, expressed disappointment with the vote. Setting quotas at maximum sustainable yields by 2015 was “unrealistic,” he said, and the discard ban was a “radical obligation” that legislators had adopted without understanding that in many cases it would be impossible to implement.

 

Read the full story in the New York Times 

 

 

 

 

February 5, 2013 — A report released in Tokyo by the International Fund for Animal Welfare shatters the justifications used by the Japanese government and the whaling industry to continue the slaughter of whales.

Of all the statistics, culled from official sources, that are cited in the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW) study "The Economics of Japanese Whaling," Dr. Ralf Sonntag, director of the IFAW's operations in Germany, says the one that shocked him the most was the sheer amount of taxpayers' money that had been sunk into an industry for a product that so few people want to buy.

"That was perhaps the most surprising thing for me," said Sonntag, who was in Tokyo for the launch of the study. "It's a figure around 400 million US dollars over the last 25 years and that's a lot of money.

"Really, that sort of money could have been spent in a far better way than on supporting an industry that could not survive without government backing."

Thanks to the support of the conservative members of the Japanese government and bureaucrats within the Japan Fisheries Agency, the whaling fleet is presently exploiting a loophole within the rules of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to operate in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

 

Read the full story here

 

 

CALLAO, Peru (AP) — February 4, 2013 — The ocean off Peru boasts the world’s richest fishing grounds, but Taurino Querevalu is returning to port empty again after a hunt for Peruvian anchovy, cursing his empty nets and an increasingly stingy sea.

A little more than a decade ago, Querevalu’s 8-ton wooden boat rarely returned with an empty hold as it does on this day motoring back to Lima’s port of Callao, the low-slung clouds above as gray as the sea mirroring them.

‘‘There used to be fish for everybody,’’ the 48-year-old trawler captain laments, leaning on the rail as a stiff breeze buffets his leathery brow. ‘‘You'd run into immense schools.’’

Querevalu’s frustrated search for the silvery, stiletto-sized fish reflects a voracious, growing global demand for the protein-rich fish meal and oil into which nearly Peru’s entire anchovy catch is converted.

Not only has overfishing of the Peruvian anchovy, or anchoveta, battered the industry that makes Peru far and away the world’s No. 1 fish meal exporter, it has also raised alarm about food security in a nation that had long been accustomed to cheap, abundant seafood. The drop in the anchoveta population has over the years affected the delicate food chain, as stocks of hundreds of bigger wild fish and marine animals who eat it have also thinned out.

Anchoveta thrives in the cold, plankton-saturated Humboldt Current along the coast of Peru and Chile and accounts for about a third of the global fishmeal industry used to fatten farmed seafood and livestock, from salmon in Norway to pigs in China. Like other small ‘‘forage fish’’ that account for more than a third of the world’s wild ocean fish catch, nearly the entire anchoveta catch gets ground up into feed and rendered into oil.

It is the ‘‘the most heavily exploited fish in world history,’’ according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization.

 

Read the full story by the Associated Press in the Boston Globe

 

 

 

 

   

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — January 22, 2013 — The Costa Rican government says illegal fishing could be the cause of 280 sea turtles showing up dead in the Golfo Dulce off the Pacific coast.

Environment ministry official Jackelyn Rivera says her agency has launched an investigation and ordered the Coast Guard to patrol the area more heavily in search of those responsible.

Some 280 sea turtles showed up dead on Monday. They were Kemp’s ridley and black turtles, both endangered varieties.

 

Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe

 

 

BRUSSELS (AP) — January 18, 2012 — The European Union and fisheries nations say a deal with Norway on fish quotas in the North Sea is further proof of a move toward more efficient and sustainable fishing.

European Commission spokesman Oliver Drewes said the deal, on top of a December agreement on many other stocks within the EU itself, ‘‘is a win-win for everybody. You see this very seldom.’’

 

Read the full story by the Associated Press in the Boston Globe 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — January 11, 2013 — A New Zealand fishing company has been ordered to pay $2.4 million and sentenced to three years of probation for dumping oil waste into U.S. waters off American Samoa. The chief engineer on the company’s ship faces a month in prison for falsifying records in an effort to cover up the dumping.

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell imposed the penalties on Friday, directing Sanford Ltd. to pay a $1.9 criminal fine and to make a $500,000 community service payment to National Marine Sanctuaries, trustee for the nation’s system of marine protected areas. During the probationary period, Sanford is banned from fishing in U.S. waters unless it petitions the court and shows compliance with an environmental compliance program.

A federal jury returned guilty verdicts in a trial last summer against Sanford and the chief engineer, James Pogue. Pogue also was sentenced to 150 days of home confinement and two years of supervised release.

 

Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe

 

 

January 11, 2013 — As part of its overall efforts to ensure that the U.S. fishing industry isn’t undermined by unsustainable or illegal activities, NOAA today submitted a Congressionally mandated report identifying 10 nations whose fishing vessels engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in 2011 or 2012, or had ineffective measures to prevent the unintended catch of protected species in 2012.

IUU fishing undermines international efforts to sustainably manage and rebuild fisheries and creates unfair market competition for fishermen who adhere to strict conservation measures, like those in the United States. IUU fishing can devastate fish populations and their productive marine habitats, threatening food security and economic stability. Independent experts have estimated economic losses worldwide from IUU fishing to be between $10 billion and $23 billion annually.

“NOAA’s international fisheries work is critical to the economic viability of U.S. fishing communities and the protection of U.S. jobs,” said Russell Smith, NOAA deputy assistant secretary for international fisheries. “This is about leveling the playing field for fishermen around the world, and IUU fishing represents one of the biggest threats to the U.S. fishing industry. Seafood is a global business, and U.S. fishermen following the rules should not have to compete with those using illegal or unsustainable fishing practices.”

All 10 nations identified in this year’s report had vessels that did not comply in 2011 and/or 2012 with conservation and management measures required under a regional fishery management organization to which the United States is a party. Mexico was also identified for ineffective management of the bycatch of North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles, which travel between Japan and Mexico through Hawaiian waters, and are endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

 

Read the full release from NOAA

 

 

CUTLER, Maine — December 30, 2012 — A nautical “no man’s land” off the coast of Washington County sees Down East and Canadian lobstermen pulling traps side-by-side in waters that have been the focus of an on-again, off-again territorial dispute that dates to 1621.

Nearly 70 square miles of the Gulf of Maine that surround the treeless, 20-acre Machias Seal Island are claimed by both the U.S. and Canada. The so-called “gray zone” encompasses waters where lobster fishermen from both countries set traps, despite the fact that Maine and Atlantic Canada lobstering regulations differ significantly.

The territorial dispute is a contemporary artifact of the treaty that resolved the Revolutionary War. The 1783 Treaty of Paris gave possession of islands within 70 miles of America’s shoreline to the original 13 colonies. As Machias Seal Island is 10 miles southeast of what is now the Washington County community of Cutler, the area was presumed to be within the territorial boundaries of the United States.

The same treaty excluded any island that was once part of Nova Scotia, as defined by a 1621 British land grant that created the province, which was later divided to create New Brunswick. Machias Seal Island is located 12 miles southwest of New Brunswick’s Grand Manan Island, and the Canadian government established a lighthouse there in 1832 as a means of staking its territorial claim to the disputed area. That lighthouse still exists, with two keepers being ferried by helicopter from the Canadian mainland every 28 days. It’s the only Canadian lighthouse that hasn’t been automated.

 

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

 

BRUSSELS — December 20, 2012 — European Union fisheries said Thursday they are moving toward more efficient and sustainable fishing that should see the stocks of threatened species recover while securing the livelihood of fishermen.

After a marathon all-night negotiating session, EU fishing nations came up with dozens of new quotas next year on fish hauls in the areas around Europe where fishermen may freely ply their trade.

“A healthy level for almost all stocks” can be achieved by 2015, with four others reaching that target only two years later, EU fisheries chief Maria Damanaki said at the end of three days of negotiations.

Fishing nations like France and Britain said they were happy their fishermen were given enough leeway for profitable fishing. Environmentalists complained several member states still sought too much short-term gain for their industry but said that after decades of slumping stocks due to overfishing there were finally signs for a turnaround in EU policy.

“Certainly, this is a better end of the year than many that have preceded it,” said Saskia Richartz, Greenpeace fisheries expert.

 

Read the full story by the Associated Press in the Washington Post