International & Trade

PARIS — March 21, 2012 – Amid heated debates about ways to improve the management of Europe’s fishing fleet and the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy, owners of fishing boats in northwest France have set up a new organization to help prevent overfishing and ensure themselves a sustainable livelihood.

The group, Les Pêcheurs de Bretagne, or Breton Fishermen, formed in November by a merger of two existing groups, represents a third of the French fishing industry: 800 boats and 3,000 crew members, with an annual catch of 100,000 tons of fish — mainly hake, pollack, monkfish and langoustine, or spiny lobsters — worth €283 million, or $374 million.

Despite decades of regulation, an ever-increasing appetite for fish and indiscriminate industrial-scale fishing techniques have brought many fish species to the brink of extinction. According to the environmental activist organization Greenpeace, 80 percent of fish stocks globally are overexploited or at the brink of being so.

Read the complete story from The New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GUAM, March 23, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Decisions affecting the world's largest tuna fishery, its biggest fish, and the economies of some of the smallest countries will be made when representatives of more than 25 governments gather for the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) annual meeting from March 26-30.

"These governments will make decisions about important measures to divide the region's tuna resources, enact shark protection measures, and combat illegal fishing," said Sue Lieberman, the Pew Environment Group's director of International Policy.

According to the commission's Scientific Committee, bigeye tuna, used in sushi and as tuna steak, are being overfished; yellowfin tuna are being caught to the limit of sustainability; and skipjack, the variety commonly found in cans on supermarket shelves, must be watched closely. The number of industrial fishing vessels engaged in these fisheries is increasing, but scientific data indicates a need for catch limits.

Read the complete story from The Sacramento Bee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the familiar faces at Kenji Machida’s Yamayo booth at the International Boston Seafood Show last week were exporters, distributors, and fishermen from New Bedford, Gloucester, Portsmouth, N.H., and New Brunswick, Canada. They are Machida’s friends from the days when he worked in an office in Wakefield exporting their lobster, snow crabs, herring, tuna, and monkfish to Japan.

Machida had returned to Japan to export seafood to the United States. But the giant earthquake and resulting tsunami last year nearly wiped out his business in Hachinohe, 200 miles north of the quake’s epicenter. Because of efforts to get his $50 million-a-year firm up and running, the company founded by his grandfather in 1927 was the only earthquake survivor exhibiting this year.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 25, 2012 – Europe's largest eco-labelled fisheries are to lose their environmental accreditation this week after the Faroes and Iceland breached strict limits on quotas for mackerel, putting stocks at severe risk of over-fishing.

The Marine Stewardship Council confirmed that it would suspend its accreditation for eight mackerel fisheries on 31 March, after the European Union failed to persuade the Faroese and Icelandic governments to cut their catches last month.

The MSC's decision will mean that all the accredited North Sea and Atlantic mackerel fisheries will lose their "blue swoosh" eco-label, a measure that will affect 1,400 fresh, smoked, tinned and frozen eco-labelled products sold across Europe. Any mackerel landed in Europe from 31 March will not be allowed to use it.

Read the complete story from The Guardian.

 

 

 

 

 

March 20, 2012 – High-tech "electronic eyes" designed by a Victoria company are being installed today for testing on a tuna boat moored in the Seychelles but heading out shortly to the pirateplagued Indian Ocean.

The video-based electronic monitoring system, designed by Archipelago Marine Research, of Head Street, has been used for seven years to monitor fisheries on B.C.'s groundfish fleet. Now it's starting to make waves internationally with tests in areas too dangerous for human observers.

"The interest that we have in our equipment is very broad. It is across a wide range of fisheries," Howard McElderry, vicepresident of electronic monitoring for Archipelago, said Monday.

Read the complete story from Times Colonist.

 

 

 

 

 

General Secretary of Africa Federation of Environmental Journalists (AFEJ), Daud Abdi Daud, has said that a massive crackdown on illegal fishing is underway across the continent.

Africa, according to the federation, is home to some of the largest lakes in the world, both in size and volume. ''These lakes play a significant role in the political, social, economic and environmental life of many of the continent's people and their importance is set to increase'', the group said.

In an on-line statement to AkanimoReports on Monday, the AFEJ scribe pointed out thatAfrica is also a vast continent of incredible diversity, physical beauty and rich natural resources though extreme poverty and life-threatening diseases are very real threats currently.

Read the complete story from All Voices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRUSSELS — March 19, 2012 – European Union nations on Monday backed a complete ban on the practice of removing sharks' fins before throwing the fish back into the sea to die.

The EU nations said they want all boats in their waters and EU-registered boats anywhere in the world to land sharks with their fins attached. The proposals still need the support of the European Parliament before they can become law.

EU fisheries chief Maria Damanaki said the law would "ease control and help us eradicate shark finning," which she called cruel to the animals and a vast waste of resources.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 16, 2012 – Next Monday, March 19 2012, fisheries ministers from the 27 EU Member States will gather in Brussels to discuss the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy and in particular the discard ban proposed by the European Commission.

Because discarding unwanted catches poses both ethical and environmental problems, Oceana strongly supports a ban that includes the obligation to land all catches accompanied by technical measures to reduce and eliminate unwanted catches, as the best way to stop this waste of resources.

Despite years of policies aimed at improving the selectivity of fishing techniques in Europe, discards still represent 13% of European catches, amounting to 1, 3 million tonnes thrown overboard dead or dying each year, says Oceana.

Read the complete story from Fish Update.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the biggest challenges facing sustainable fishing in the Philippines is the prevalence of dynamite fishing, where fishers create an improvised bomb out of a rum or Coke bottle and ammonium sulfate. The sound wave created by the explosion stuns the fish, which float to the surface, but it also destroys corals and seagrass meadows that can take years to recover from a single blast.

Dynamite fishing has been a problem in Cortes, a town on the southern half of Lanuza Bay. There’s a lot of pressure to fish here no matter the cost, because the area produces no other local meat or fruit – everything except some coconuts is sold at the market in Tandag, a half-hour drive to the south. As a result, 80 percent of the residents are fishers, and much of the fish they catch is used to feed their families.

This makes Cortes a perfect location for a Rare campaign, and the mayor, Pedro Trinidad Jr., is an enthusiastic participant. Along with Rare Conservation Fellow Vincent Duenas, the mayor has upped enforcement of the local MPA – one of Cortes’ eight MPAs – with 24/7 volunteer guards. The mayor has even gotten approval to start a landmark program that would require families on welfare assistance to volunteer for shifts in the guardhouse, the first program of its kind in the country.

Read the complete story from Your Olive Branch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

True to the chants of Oceana’s campaign song, “We noh want no offshore drilling…,” a total of 28,208 registered Belize voters or 96% of electors who participated in The People’s Referendum on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, on the question: “Should there be oil exploration and drilling in offshore Belize?” said a resounding NO!, in line with the results of polls conducted by Belizean researcher Yasmine Andrews for the Coalition.

“The general conclusion is, Belizeans really do not want any offshore drilling. Now you can’t get any clearer than that,” said Andrews, pointing to the results of both the polls and the nationwide referendum.
  
She said the February 29 referendum results were in line with the results of two polls she recently conducted on the same question: one based on 4,000 respondents from the petition for an official referendum (which Government said could not be held because of 8,000 rejected signatures) and another involving 4,000 respondents from the wider population to compare the results of the first poll.

Read the complete story from Amandala Online.