International & Trade

July 13, 2011 – The European Commission has proposed an overhaul of the Common Fisheries Policy in an effort to preserve fish stocks. The fisheries commissioner expects to have a tough time convincing EU governments to back the plan.

The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled its proposals for a major reform of the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), aimed at preserving fish stocks in the waters around the bloc in the long term.

According to EU figures, currently 63 percent of the fish stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and 82 percent of the stocks in the Mediterranean Sea are overfished.

The plan is to stop the overfishing of depleted stocks and get to what is known as a "maximum sustainable yield" by 2015. This would be done in part by reducing fishing in over-exploited stocks for a few years in order to allow them to recover.

Read the complete story from Deutsche Wella.

 

 

 

 

 

In a move that has made the country a new leader in shark protection, Chile yesterday banned the practice of shark finning from its national waters. After months of discussions since the bill on the ban was drafted and presented by the conservation group Oceana to the Chilean National Congress in January, the vote to approve the bill passed unanimously.

The ban effects 30 shark species that cruise the Chilean coastline, which covers an extensive stretch of the eastern Pacific all the way to the Southern Ocean. Of those sharks, 15 are specific targets for finning, including the near threatened Blue sharks (Prionace glauca) and the vulnerable Shortfin Mako sharks (Isurus oxyrinchus).

Read the complete story from Discovery News.

 

 

 

 

 

07 July, 2011 – New research shows that retailers in the UK are achieving a price premium of more than 14 percent, and obtaining higher sales, for products bearing the Marine Stewardship Council eco-label.

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural Economics, is the first to show not only what factors make it more likely for consumers to buy eco-labeled seafood products but evidence that consumers value the positive environmental attributes of MSC-labeled products highly enough to pay a premium for them.

The study examined scanner data for sales of 24 frozen pollock products in a selection of London metropolitan area supermarkets over a period of 65 weeks from 2007 to 2008. Twelve of those products displayed the MSC label. After adjusting for differences arising from other product attributes such as branding, product form and size, the study identified a price difference of 14.2 percent between MSC products and non-labeled pollock products.

Sales of the MSC products were also high, at 3.3 million units, during the period, more than non-labeled products at 3.03 million units.

Read the complete story from Seafood Source.

 

 

 

 

 

A total ban on shark fishing, along with the import, export or any other sale of shark products, has been introduced by the Bahamian Government.

The legislation, which was finalised on Tuesday to immediate effect, applies to all territorial waters of the Bahamas, amounting to some 630,000 sq km (243,244 sq miles).

Long-line fishing for sharks was outlawed in 1993, but other forms of shark fishing continued.

Read the complete article from Diver Net.

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — The nation's largest scallop company, Eastern Fisheries, is expanding in China with a scallop farming initiative to keep pace with the growing worldwide market.

Roy Enoksen, co-founder of Eastern Fisheries, told The Standard-Times that while farm-raised scallops are already being produced in large numbers, Eastern wanted to raise its own for a basic reason: "Our whole plan has always been to take it from ocean to the plate," Enoksen said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, which featured Enoksen in a recent article about the scallop business in New Bedford, scallop prices have continued to rise even in the recession because demand continues to increase while the allowable catch in the U.S. fisheries has been capped at about 50 million pounds a year.

Producers have responded by establishing farms off the coast of China and Japan, where 90 percent of farm-raised scallops are produced.

Read the complete story from The Standard-Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, told a meeting yesterday of the European Parliament's 'Fish for the Future' group that 91% of stocks would be endangered within a decade if we carried on with the current CFP.

She is planning next month to announce radical plans for reform to prevent an inevitable loss of fish stocks and further decline of the fishing industry.

The Greek Commissioner, described as "gutsy" by Chris Davies, Liberal Democrat MEP and founder of the ‘Fish for the Future’ group, warned that prospects were grim and that a reduction in employment was inevitable until fish stocks could recover.  She said that without change, the decline in fish would lead to an even greater loss of jobs.

And she blasted a declaration by six countries, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Belgium, who this week called for the continuation of subsidies for new fishing vessels.

Read the complete story from Fish News EU.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW YORK (June 23, 2011)—Fish communities in the 21st Century live fast and die young. That's the main finding of a recent study by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society who compared fish recently caught in coastal Kenya with the bones of fish contained in ancient Swahili refuse heaps in order to understand how to rebuild the current fisheries.

Of course, modern fish communities are not victims of reckless living, but of overfishing which has caused an ecosystem-level transition that may not be easily reversible, according to the study. Over the centuries, human fishing has greatly reduced or eliminated larger and longer-lived species that were more commonly caught in the Middle Ages. The remaining fish communities today contain more species with shorter life spans, faster growth rates, smaller average sizes, and fewer top predators.

The study—which utilized more than 5,475 samples of ancient fish remains dating between 1250 and 600 years before the present (approximately AD 750—1400)—appears in the current online edition of the journal Conservation Biology. The authors are Tim R. McClanahan and Johnstone O. Omukoto of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"The ancient Swahili middens represent a time capsule of data, containing information on the composition of the region's fish assemblages and how human communities influenced the marine environment," said McClanahan, WCS Senior Conservationist and head of the WCS's coral reef research and conservation program. "The historical data suggest that fishing removes the slower-growing, longer-lived species over time and that marine protected areas are only partially successful in recovering the fish communities of the past."

Read the complete story from Eurek Alert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EU environment ministers yesterday (21 June) failed to endorse concrete measures proposed by the European Commission to protect biodiversity, with some expressing reservations even on the proposed targets of the EU 2020 biodiversity strategy until more clarity is found on actions and funding.

EU environment ministers yesterday adopted conclusions on the EU 2020 biodiversity strategy, tabled by the Commission on 3 May, but were unable to endorse 20 concrete measures accompanying six headline targets proposed by the EU executive.

After a lively public debate on the draft conclusions, ministers rubber-stamped the strategy, together with its targets, as "a key instrument to enable the EU to reach its overall 2020 headline target" (see 'Background').

But instead of backing the 20 measures, the Council conclusions stress "the need to further discuss the actions in order to ensure the effective and coherent implementation of the strategy".

Some countries, including Italy and Denmark, even refused to endorse the strategy's targets and said they would table unilateral statements making clear their delegations' views on the matter.

Read the complete story from EurActiv.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The adoption of the draft policy for small-scale fisheries would only benefit non-fishing individuals such as political leaders, who were the only people who had made money out of the industry, fishing communities complained to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Parliament yesterday.

This concern was raised on the first day of public hearings on the draft policy for small-scale fisheries, which proposes to allocate fishing rights to co-operatives.

The fishing communities said co-operatives were often led by mayors and councillors who had no knowledge of, or interest in, the fishing industry.

The communities also proposed that the department adopt a fishing charter to protect individual fishers. Communities also said big companies would continue using black fishermen for fronting and would not reward them if there was no immediate intervention from the department.

Read the complete story from Business Report.

 

 

 

 

 

Sainsbury’s is offering shoppers free portions of lesser-known fish in a drive to increase consumption and take the pressure off stocks of more popular fish.

On Friday, Sainsbury’s shoppers who ask for cod, haddock, tuna, salmon or prawns – the ‘big five’ – on fish counters, will be offered a portion of one of six lesser-known species, including coley, megrim, hake, pouting, mackerel or rainbow trout, for free. They will not be required to 'switch' it for the fish they have in their basket.

Read the complete story from The Grocer.