International & Trade

After a long debate on Monday (25 May), EU fisheries ministers agreed that the bloc’s fishing policy must change but came no closer to taking tough decisions on cutting fleets.

The ministers discussed a green paper that was published by the European Commission in April in the run up to an overhaul of the EU’s much-criticised common fisheries policy in 2012.

The document highlights the sorry state of the EU’s fish stocks – 88 percent currently suffer from over-fishing – and notes that the solution lies in a reduction in the EU’s fishing capacity.

But while member states agree this status quo cannot continue, agreement on a reduction in national quotas is likely to be less forthcoming.

Read the complete story at EU Observer.

European fisheries ministers have concluded a meeting in Brussels with a consensus to effectively scrap current rules that decide fishing quotas.

Environmentalists and fishermen alike have long argued the existing system – set annually – has failed the industry.

Fish caught over quota are dumped back in the sea even if dead, and in the UK alone numbers of fishermen have fallen by a third over the decade.

The European Union has until 2012 to draw up a new Common Fisheries Policy.

Read the complete story and watch the video at The BBC.

According to Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at the University of York: "What politicians should be deciding is how the catch is allocated within different nations. That is politics. What they shouldn’t be deciding is how big the catch should be in the first place. That is science."

In Norway and the US, "they respect the advice of scientists", he adds – the best example being New England, where stocks of ground fish were in serious decline in the mid-1990s, but enlightened management brought them back. "At Georges Bank, they created a closed area of 20,000 square kilometres that was off-limits to mobile fishing gear [such as trawl nets]," Professor Roberts explains. They also cut fishing effort by a draconian 50% – putting many fishermen out of business. In the past 10 years, however, there has been "a spectacular recovery" of key economic species, Roberts says. "The haddock has bounced back, the flounder has bounced back, the scallops have bounced back, so it has been a great success story."

What this demonstrates is that, where there is political will, the tide can be turned on overfishing. In the US, a piece of 1976 legislation called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has recently been reauthorised, requiring the industry to end overfishing in all federal waters by 2011. There is no such legislation in Europe. Under the existing Act, fisheries in Alaska and the North Pacific are already well managed – which is why wild Pacific salmon, Pacific cod and pollock from Alaska were prime candidates for certification by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the international NGO that created a standard for sustainable fisheries in the late 1990s and upholds it. Why do these US fisheries tick all the boxes?

Read the complete story at Blueflipper Diving.

Would a catfish by any other name taste as sweet? Maybe, but a protectionist battle brewing in America over fish imports from Vietnam sure stinks like yesterday’s catch.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is weighing whether to classify the Vietnamese pangasius as "catfish" when applying the 2008 Farm Bill, a regulatory process mandated by the law. This isn’t just semantics. Under the farm bill, catfish are subject to more stringent inspections than pangasius. Since Vietnam would not be able to implement the inspections cheaply or quickly, it would effectively amount to an import ban. Domestic U.S. producers are lobbying the Department of Agriculture for a broad definition of "catfish."

This is protectionism at its worst. Vietnamese pangasius is a different species from the catfish raised in the Mississippi River and China. The U.S. inspection requirement ostensibly is meant to ensure the safety of fish from China. There are no serious concerns about the safety of Vietnamese fish imports.

Read the complete story at The Wall Street Journal.

Though it has long been regarded as one of the more sustainable fisheries on the planet, Maine’s lobster industry is considering whether it should try to make itself look even greener.

To ensure that Maine lobster keeps up with changing consumer demands, some lobster industry representatives hope to have the fishery certified as sustainable by the London-based Marine Stewardship Council.

Wal-Mart is one of the driving forces behind this interest. In 2006, the retail giant said that by 2011 it would buy all of its wild-caught fish only from fisheries that have been MSC-certified. If Maine’s lobster industry wants to include Wal-Mart among its buyers, certification advocates say, it will have to get its fishery management methods officially endorsed by MSC.

Read the complete story at Bangor Daily News.

Scottish fishing firms are to share almost £3m of European money aimed at helping them invest in new markets and safeguard 600 jobs.

The European fisheries fund cash will be split among 39 companies. The fishing sector is worth more than £1bn to the Scottish economy.

The funding was announced by Scottish ministers before a visit to a major seafood show in Brussels on Tuesday.

Last year’s event created £2.8m in new business for Scotland.

Read the complete story at BBC.

The European Commission today proposed a radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which would reduce the EU fishing fleet in the face of diminishing fishing grounds.

The European Fisheries Commissioner has confirmed that ‘double or triple’ the sustainable amounts of fish are being taken from many fishing grounds and that the ‘excess fleet capacity’ has to be reduced.

According to Brussels, nine out of every ten species are being overfished and 30% are ‘now have no chance of recovery’, including the eel, the Bay of Biscay achovy and the red tuna.

Read the complete story at ThinkSpain.

French fishermen protesting against EU fishing quotas have lifted their blockade of three Channel ports.

Ferry traffic is resuming between Britain and Calais, Dunkirk and Boulogne. The fishermen said they would continue protesting in different ways.

The French government has rejected demands to renegotiate the quotas. But the fisheries minister has offered 4m euros in aid to the fishermen.

Ferry operator P&O has condemned the government for "rolling over".

Chris Laming, director of communications for P&O, said he feared it was "very likely" the strikes could return because of how the French government had handled the situation.

Read the complete story at the BBC.

WASHINGTON, DC (March 21, 2009) – A bill that would help prevent depletion of dwindling stocks of fish by strengthening enforcement against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing has been endorsed by industry groups and the Coast Guard, which would be charged with enforcing its provisions.

Their testimony came Thursday at a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing.

"Unsustainable fishing practices by foreign fishing fleets adversely affect stocks that migrate" between the high seas and U.S. waters, said Guam Delegate Madeleine Z. Bordallo, who introduced the legislation last month.

Read the Standard-Times story in full

 

SANTIAGO, Chile (February 16, 2009) – For the third time in less than a year, the prestigious New York Times has turned its attention to Chile’s struggling farmed salmon industry, placing renewed focus on its alleged overuse of antibiotics and sparking a war of words between environmental groups and SalmonChile, the industry trade association.

The article, entitled “Chile Takes Steps To Rehabilitate Its Lucrative Salmon Industry,” explains how the once-booming industry now finds itself now in the midst of a prolonged slide that was first triggered in 2007 by a yet-to-be-contained outbreak of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA). A highly contagious virus, ISA can be lethal to fish but does not affect humans.

ISA isn’t the only problem plaguing the US$2.2 billion industry, according to the New York Times. The article, published Feb. 4, suggests that the industry’s use of pesticides and antibiotics is beginning to draw critical attention from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which last April conducted a series of on-site inspections of Chilean salmon companies (PT, April 17, 2008).

Read The Patagonia Times story in full