Opinion

December 5, 2014 — Retailers are about to be hit with two major campaigns by NGO’s urging them to revise their seafood purchasing. The tuna campaign is a legitimate response to a real failure of basic fishery management. The salmon campaign is not.

SEAFOODNEWS.COM (News Analysis) — Don’t buy tuna. Don’t buy salmon.
 
Retailers are about to be hit with two major campaigns by NGO’s urging them to revise their seafood purchasing. The tuna campaign is a legitimate response to a real failure of basic fishery management.
 
The salmon campaign is not. It is an end run around a scientific and regulatory process that is actively engaged with the issue, but the NGO’s are unwilling to allow the regulatory process to play out.
 
First tuna.
 
As we suggested may happen yesterday, the Western and Central Pacific regional fisheries management body failed to take any action to reduce fishing pressure on bigeye tuna.
 
Their management area accounts for 60% of global tuna catches, and the science shows bigeye stocks are both overfished and experiencing overfishing. Current bigeye stocks may be around 16% of their target level.
 
The cause of the overfishing is that the preferred purse seine fishing method for other tunas, using Fish Aggregating Devices, has a high rate of bycatch of juvenile bigeye. This is now impacting the entire stock, including fish caught by longliners.
 
The US, Pacific Island nations, and many NGO’s including the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation representing the tuna canners, all urged the WCPFC to take action to reduce fishing pressure on bigeye, either through expanding closed seasons or setting enforceable harvest limits.
 
Yet nothing happened. The WCPFC is a multinational body where decisions are only reached when all the nations involved agree. As a result, opposition by China and Taiwan, protecting their distant water tuna fleets, scuttled any chance for an agreement.
 
This is one of the clearest possible cases where market intervention by NGO’s and changes by buyers is justified. Many of the major tuna canners that sell skipjack and yellowfin heavily participate in this fishery. Buyers will have to develop means to hold them accountable, or take steps to reduce sales of canned tuna. The ISSF could help by identifying the fleets and nations that are most recalcitrant, and imposing voluntary agreements not to purchase tuna from these fleets.
 
The science of tuna stocks is very clear, and the management system has publicly been an abject failure.
 
What about salmon?
 
But another campaign is gathering steam, particularly in the US, where the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership is convening meetings with retail buyers to urge them not to purchase salmon from Prince William Sound in Alaska.
 
The reason for this campaign is the claim, by many in the NGO community including SFP, the Marine Stewardship Council, and Monterey Bay Aquarium, that the production from salmon hatcheries is interfering and possibly weakening wild salmon stocks.
 
Is this true? Salmon hatcheries are a technology that has been in use for over 150 years. One of the first mandates of the 19th century US bureau of fisheries – the precursor to the National Marine Fisheries Service- was a widespread program to encourage hatchery production of fish species from lobsters and cod to salmon.
 
The original purpose of hatcheries was often to replace a wild population that had been lost due to habitat destruction and dams. In some cases, the hatchery production was the only thing that saved particular salmon runs from extinction.
 
However, the idea of replacing a wild run with hatchery fish was no longer consistent with goals of the endangered species act, and other national conservation goals.
 
As a result, 15 years ago Congress established the hatchery scientific working group to look at West Coast hatcheries in Washington and Oregon, and determine best practices and reforms needed in hatchery management.
 
The latest report of this group can be found here (hatcheryreform.us). It makes a series of recommendations for hatchery management to preserve and enhance wild stocks, while at the same time boosting salmon harvest levels through hatchery augmentation.
 
This work did not cover Alaska, which has its own history of salmon hatchery management. The fisheries most dependent on hatcheries are in Prince William Sound, where some hatchery runs have replaced wild runs in particular creeks and rivers.
 
This is not an issue in an of itself. When a farmer clears a field to grow crops, he destroys one habitat in order to create another. I don’t think any NGO can argue to retailers that changes in habitat for food production should be universally condemned.  Rather the question is whether the scope and nature of these changes are sustainble.
 
The ongoing and permanent sustainability of wild salmon populations is a real concern for everyone including salmon harvesters and processors and retailers.
 
For that reason, as the scientific understanding of hatchery impacts has changed, the State of Alaska through the ADF&G started a $5 million dollar project to look at the impact of Prince William Sound hatcheries on wild salmon stocks. The five year project is now in its second year.
 
When SFP first identified hatcheries as an issue they wanted to bring before retailers, they went to the State of Alaska and suggested they be hired for a fisheries improvement program. The state refused, saying there was no need to hire SFP to do what it was doing already as part of its ongoing management responsibility.
 
SFP is now unwilling to recognize that the State of Alaska is taking steps to address the impact of hatcheries, because they are not a paid part of that project.
 
So this brings us back to the issue of these two campaigns.
 
On Hatcheries, there is clear concern that a true sustainability and conservation issue may exist. But the federal and state governments have been spending millions of dollars studying the issue, revising hatchery practices, and moving towards best management practices for hatcheries within the context of current scientific understanding.  There is anything but a lack of action.
 
In contrast to the situation with bigeye tuna, the responsible managers are throwing everything they have at the issue, and there is an established public regulatory and scientific review process that is underway.
 
In our view, the contrast could not be more clear: The tuna issue is a genuine failure of managers to apply even basic conservation principles, and a market led reaction is an important tool to force governments to adopt the needed conservation measures.
 
In salmon, there is a huge effort already underway, funded with millions of dollars, to examine the very issues around hatcheries that SFP, the NGO’s, and all of us interested in preserving wild salmon care about.
 
Why would the SFP be organizing meetings at this point to urge buyers to boycott salmon from Prince William Sound? There is not an emergency. These practices have been ongoing for many years, and a two or three year timeline for changes is not unreasonable.  SFP says that due to the precautionary principle, there should be no further increases in hatchery capacity.  But this is just part of a larger question – how to manage interaction with wild stocks – that is currently being addressed.
 
The unreasonable part of the campaign is the 'my way or the highway' approach. Retailers who care about long term outcomes should recognize this campaign for the self-serving business it is. We hope they urge SFP in these meetings to not stand outside, but to be willing to participate in the public regulatory and scientific process, and submit to the same give and take that all other government, academic scientists and regulators agree to.
 
We all know there may be changes needed in hatchery management. Since that process of recognizing and responding to this is well underway, why does a boycott make any sense, except to those who benefit by promoting it?
 
Nearly 20 years after the original founding of the Marine Stewardship Council, it is time for retailers to develop some sophistication about ‘fisheries emergencies’, and ask just when an emergency is so severe they must boycott a product, rather than urge all parties to continue with their ongoing management and review processes.

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

December 4, 2014 — The controversy, questions, and misinformation about the number of cod in the Gulf of Maine won’t go away until we do what the successful Pacific groundfish fishery does — monitor every fishing boat to see what is caught and what is thrown back.

Currently, only about 20 percent of New England fishing boats include human observers, compared with 100 percent in the waters off the West Coast. Not only are roughly 80 percent of New England boats unmonitored, but the way we monitor that small percentage is expensive and inadequate. We pay these human observers to go out on boats for days at a time, a system that would cost us $25 million a year to expand to the whole fleet.

Read the full letter to the editor at the Boston Globe

SEAFOODNEWS.COM (EDITORIAL COMMENT) December 3, 2014 — So far the measures taken by the Western and Central Pacific regional management council have been ineffective.

The Western and Central Pacific management area accounts for about 60% of global tuna supplies, mostly skipjack and yellowfin. But Bigeye tuna, with a catch of 146,00 tons in the region, is overfished and overfishing continues, and in this region it is in the worst shape of any of the large global tuna stocks.
 
The reason overfishing continues is that the preferred fishing method, use of unregulated fish aggregating devices, captures a high proportion of juvenile bigeye, and appears to be having a direct impact on the stock.
 
So far the measures taken by the Western and Central Pacific regional management council have been ineffective.
 
This year, at the current meetings, NOAA and others are proposing a 36% reduction in bigeye harvest from the average of the past few years, and the ISSF has called for a series of simple, enforceable measures like total seasonal closures, to control effort.
 
However, it looks like the council is going to punt, and not take further action.
 
This should call forth a major reaction by tuna buyers, and a frenzy of activity among NGO’s who will urge market based measures in the face of management inaction.
 
Even the ISSF, which was started by international tuna canners to enable effective tuna management, has said in the past their members could call for economic sanctions and boycotts if a management body manifestly failed to act to end overfishing.
 
In the past we have been very critical of market-based NGO campaigns to steer buyers to certified fisheries, when the buyers were choosing from a range of fisheries that all had demonstrably good management.
 
Our view is that once a fishery has a record of success and sustainability, further NGO involvement is often due to a desire to stay relevant by raising the bar, not by solving the original problems of overfishing and lack of sustainability.
 
But the reverse is also true. When fishery managers fail to act to end overfishing when they have a legal framework to do so, they lose their moral authority to determine what actions will best preserve the fishery.
 
The WCPFC regional management organization is on the verge of such a failure. Because it is a consensus based organization, Asian distant water fleets, along with some American distant water longliners, are pushing for delay and no changes to current bigeye management.
 
If they do punt, in our opinion the tuna industry in the Western Pacific will be fair game for whatever pressures NGO’s and buyers can throw at them.
 
A lack of action will inevitably tarnish the major ISSF members like Chicken of the Sea, Tri-Marine, Starkist, Dongwon and Bumblebee, all of whom have extensive interests in other fisheries, and have longstanding retail relationships. It is fair to ask the question as to why ISSF members will not agree to put economic pressure on those fishing vessels and nations opposing management action.
 
One upshot will be the continued decline in tuna sales as the reputation of canned tuna takes another hit for being environmentally irresponsible.
 
Lets hope that our fear of failure here is wrong, but if not, then we will not criticize the NGO campaigns against tuna in the Western and Central Pacific, nor would we criticize buyers who insist on MSC certification for their tuna. In this case, they will have ample justification of management failure.

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

December 2, 2014 — Fisheries observer program achieves acceptance as boats make money and some species recover.

In a tribute to personal flexibility on all sides and good program design, the concept of physically stationing biologists aboard fishing vessels has achieved wide acceptance, while clearly playing a role in helping some imperiled species recover to healthy, fishable levels.

This isn’t all a feel-good situation. One deck boss faces charges for allegedly assaulting an observer at sea. Fishing can be a stressful, high-pressure business with perhaps a higher than usual percentage of participants who zealously guard their independence and perquisites. Even those committed to obeying the law may occasionally resent the presence of an outsider on deck.

Nor is the fisheries reform that the observers are linked with — catch shares — universally popular. These individual and group fishing quotas run under auspices of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council have eliminated the old “derby” style fishing seasons for many deep-sea fish species. (The exciting scramble to catch as much as possible as soon as the season starts continues for Dungeness crab.)

Read the full opinion from The Daily Astorian

 

November 27, 2014 — Trust lies at the foundation of every food label, most importantly in the accuracy of the information. Unfortunately, as more and more food-testing studies surface revealing food fraud, consumers are realizing they cannot always trust what they are eating. This is a particularly acute problem with seafood, where often a diner is getting a completely different species than the one ordered.

Seafood fraud is any misrepresentation of seafood: Falsified documents, too much ice added to packaging, species substitution and products that are mislabeled as species of higher value. Last year, Oceana found that one-third of over 1,200 fish samples tested nationwide were mislabeled according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. Most often, that practice is done to sell a less desirable species as a more desirable one, ensuring the sale of the product for a much better price.

Same taste, different fate

So if it tastes the same, why does species substitution actually matter? For one, Oceana found fish that carry health advisories are being sold as safer choices. King mackerel, one of four species of fish the FDA recommends children and pregnant women avoid, was found sold as grouper in Florida. Escolar, a species of fish that Japan and Italy have banned and against which other nations have issued health advisories due to it causing mild to severe gastrointestinal problems, is often labeled as "white tuna" in U.S. sushi bars. [Shrimp-Labeling Fails Mean Mystery Meal Origins (Op-Ed)]

Read the full story from Live Science

November 24, 2014 — It was certainly good to see the New England Fisheries Management Council vote last week to reject a NOAA move to uniformly and concurrently institute spawning closures in four prime fishing areas that surround Gloucester — and to instead look toward seasonal closures that should at least give Gloucester’s endangered groundfishing fleet some alternatives to stay afloat.

It’s also good that the same council also opted to remove the current April closings for prime haddock fishing grounds.

“As long as we can get the quota situation straightened out, (fishermen will) have the ability to keep working and keep fishing,” noted Gloucester’s Vito Giacalone, who serves as policy chief of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. “This at least balances the needs of the inshore fleet with the concerns about cod spawning.”

But neither fishermen nor anyone who cares about this proud industry should be celebrating. For these changes do not address the core problem — that the industry-threatenoing emergency measures put in place by NOAA and Gloucester’-based Northeast administrator John Bullard, and the new, dire cod cuts put in place by the council for the 2015 fishing year remain based on an “unscheduled” — read that as “secret” or “covert” — stock assessment that grossly betrays the industry’s and lawmakers’ calls for a seat aboard NOAA’s research vessels.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

November 19, 2014 — Fish are tangible objects, and Congress was right to criminalize the destruction of tangible objects when the intent is to obstruct a criminal investigation. The problem isn't with the law, but with the way the government used it against John Yates.

John Yates was piloting a commercial fishing boat through the Gulf of Mexico seven years ago when a Florida conservation officer boarded the ship, noticed Yates had dozens of red grouper smaller than the legal limit and instructed Yates to return to port.

Yates complied, but on the way back to port, he instructed his crew to toss the incriminating fish overboard. As one would expect, this led to additional criminal charges — including one that carried a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars.

Yates was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail. He has appealed his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the law under which he was convicted was intended to thwart white-collar criminals, not peddlers of red grouper.

That's true — to an extent.

There's no question that the law was written to address the actions of Enron company officials who began shredding corporate documents when they realized the company's impending collapse would quickly lead to a federal investigation.

Read the full story at the Des Moines Register

November 19, 2014 — If you depend on fishing for a living, you’ve noticed a rapidly changing ocean ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine in recent years — the effects of climate change and the consequences of decades, if not centuries, of overfishing.

The effects are devastating for fishermen who rely on traditional, cold-water Gulf of Maine species such as cod and shrimp. Shrimp are off limits for the second year in a row as stocks fail to recover to healthy levels. And regulators on Tuesday slashed cod catch limits 75 percent from last year’s levels, a week after they closed off large swaths of the Gulf of Maine to cod fishing.

Maine’s prize crustacean is plentiful, but where lobstermen are landing their catch is changing as lobsters seek cooler waters up the coast and baby lobsters’ natural predators disappear. Lobstermen in Washington County hauled in 18.8 percent of the state’s lobster landings in 2013, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. That’s double the figure from 1998, when Washington County accounted for 9.3 percent of the catch.

Knox and Waldo counties, by contrast, accounted for more than 35 percent in 1998, but their share was down to 27.2 percent in 2013. Farther south, the lobster fisheries in Connecticut and Rhode Island have collapsed over the past 15 years.

Meanwhile, Gulf of Maine fishermen are increasingly noticing species that traditionally sought out warmer waters, including Maryland blue crab, red hake, turbot, squid, black sea bass, dogfish and others. Some prey on shrimp, partially explaining that crustacean’s decline.

The shock of shutting down a fishery is real, but the Gulf of Maine’s fishing history has been building up to this moment of uncertainty over the future of Maine’s fishing economy.

Read the full opinion from Bangor Daily News

 

November 17, 2014 — In his Saturday visit to Gloucester, Governor-elect Charlie Baker clearly delivered what his audience wanted to hear. He told the fishermen and their backers that he would indeed be an advocate for the industry, and he said he would make fisheries a high priority issue for his administration.

But after meeting with and clearly listening to fishermen, and other advocates, such as state Sen. Bruce Tarr, Baker's comments in a hastily assembled press conference on the newly remodeled pier outside the restaurant showed that he has already focused on the most important issue that must be challenged if fishermen are to be spared NOAA's and administrator John Bullard's latest measures: That's NOAA's science, and the manner in which the agency covertly carried out the "unscheduled" stock assessment that has triggered the new area closures.

"There are questions I want to ask — and questions I want answers to," Baker said. "On one hand, we have the federal government telling us there are no fish, and then you see fishermen go out, and within no time, they've landed 5,000 or 10,000 pounds. Obviously, there are serious differences of opinion, and we need to find out what is happening."

Read the full opinion from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

November 15, 2014 — "If the council and its members truly want to make a difference, they should indeed hear and heed the concerns if fishermen and fishing advocates and confront Bullard’s new mandates for what they are — unilateral regulations."

Despite the significant sound of its name, the New England Fishery Management may not be able to do much about the drastic new area closures that NOAA Fisheries, through Northeast administrator John K. Bullard, slapped upon the Gloucester’s already-embattled groundfish fleet this week.

That’s because, while the management council — one of eight such regional panels across the country — is supposed to be viewed as a body giving fishermen, the environmental community, and New England’s state governments very real input into setting regulatory policies and catch limits, that’s sadly not the case.

You see, even if all of the regional councilors — none of whom hail from Gloucester — decide at next week’s meetings in Newport, R.I., that Bullard and NOAA are dead wrong to impose strict new guidelines under the cloud of an “unscheduled” and basically secretive new stock assessment, only one voice will really determine Gloucester fishermen’s future.

Read the full opinion from the Gloucester Daily Times