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Environmental NGOs, fishing companies split on health of Antarctic krill fishery

November 15, 2021 โ€” The recent meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) heightened divisions between commercial krill-fishing companies and environmental non-governmental organizations claiming the Antarctic krill population is facing an existential threat.

Oslo, Norway-based Aker Biomarine, the worldโ€™s largest krill-fishing and -processing company, said the CCAMLR meeting resulted in the continuance of sustainable management practices for the fishery, pointing to a one-year extension of a krill-conservation instrument, CM 51-07, to allow more time to finalize a comprehensive krill-management strategy.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Global Deal on Harmful Fishing Subsidies Could Be in Reach

July 1, 2021 โ€” The world cannot afford to further delay action to protect the ocean, governments and conservationists agreed this month at a series of UN conferences. They called for โ€œtransformativeโ€ and actionable solutions following delays and cancellations caused by the pandemic last year.

The UNโ€™s Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14) lists targets to reduce pollution, protect marine ecosystems, tackle illegal fishing and overfishing, and oversee sustainable resource use. But progress so far has been limited.

Only eight percent of the ocean is currently protected, a third of fish stocks are overexploited, and climate change is increasing ocean acidification and deoxygenation. This not only threatens marine biodiversity, but also the livelihoods of millions of people who rely on ocean resources.

โ€œClear transformative actions to address the ocean crisis must be found and must be scaled up. Our relationship with our planetโ€™s ocean must change,โ€ Volkan Bozkir, president of the UN General Assembly, said at a high-level debate on the ocean and SDG 14 in New York on June 1.

The event sought to maintain momentum ahead of the 2nd UN Ocean Conference, which was postponed due to the pandemic and is now expected to take place next year in Lisbon, Portugal. Bozkir said the pandemic revealed an โ€œappetite for changeโ€ as people do not want to live in a world of โ€œone crisis after the next.โ€

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

Krill industry seeks to preempt MPAs with own conservation initiatives in Antarctic

June 21, 2021 โ€” The krill-fishing industry wants acknowledgement of its voluntary conservation and data-collection efforts before any agreement is reached on new marine protected areas in the Antarctic.

The U.S. recently renewed its support for the declaration of new marine protected areas (MPAs) as part of a broader push to delineate 30 percent of global marine space as protected. However, China and Russia have in recent years objected to the establishment of further MPAs by the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which regulates fishing in the Antarctic region under a treaty signed in 1959.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Frustration as Antarctic conservation summit fails to declare marine sanctuaries

November 6, 2020 โ€” The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a governing body of 25 member states and the European Union, missed an opportunity to establish a network of three marine protection areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean, according to conservation experts who attended the commissionโ€™s recent meeting.

Each year, the CCAMLR meets in Hobart, Tasmania, to discuss matters related to the management and protection of the Southern Ocean and its rich marine life. Conservationists hoped that this yearโ€™s meeting would address a proposition to form three new MPAs in East Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Weddell Sea, and that CCAMLR members would reach a consensus to bring these plans into fruition. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission met online instead of in-person during the last week of October, which didnโ€™t provide ample time for proper negotiations and discussions, according to attendees. By the meetingโ€™s end, the MPA proposals had not been approved.

Rodolfo Werner, a wildlife conservationist who attended the CCAMLR as an official observer and scientific representative of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), said this yearโ€™s meeting was โ€œfrustrating for several reasons.โ€

Read the full story at Mongabay

JOHN KERRY: Chinaโ€™s Chance to Save Antarctic Sealife

October 26, 2020 โ€” Even as the United States and China confront deep disagreements, there is a global challenge that simply wonโ€™t wait for the resolution of our differences: climate change.

While some have decided that we are entering a new Cold War with China, we can still cooperate on critical mutual interests. After all, even at the height of 20th-century tensions, the Americans and the Soviets negotiated arms control agreements, which were in the interests of both countries.

Climate change, like nuclear proliferation, is a challenge of our own making โ€” and one to which we hold the solution. We have an opportunity this month to make clear that great power rivalries aside, geopolitics must end at the waterโ€™s edge โ€” at the icy bottom of our planet in the Southern Ocean, which surrounds the entire continent of Antarctica.

The first post-World War II arms limitation agreement โ€” the Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959 at the height of the Cold War โ€” banned military activities, created a nuclear-free space, set aside territorial claims and declared the continent a global commons dedicated to peace and science. Now we have the opportunity to extend that global commons from the land to the sea.

Read the full opinion piece at The New York Times

US removes South Korea from potential IUU list

January 30, 2020 โ€” The United States has removed South Korea from a preliminary list of countries that had potential for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU)  just four months after it was put on the list, according to a report in Business Korea.

The country had been listed back in September, and was identified in NOAAโ€™s โ€œImproving International Fisheries Managementโ€  report as a country that had failed to sufficiently combat known IUU incidents. That listing was coupled with a first-ever complaint by the U.S., which consisted of a request for environment consultations under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SFP releases 2019 reduction fisheries report

October 28, 2019 โ€” The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership:

A review of the management of the leading European and Latin American fisheries used for fishmeal and fish oil has concluded that 88 percent of the volume comes from fisheries that are at least โ€œreasonably well-managed.โ€

The report, which analyzes 26 reduction fishery stocks worldwide, also identified an increase of 2 percent in the volume of fish from fisheries that are considered โ€œpoorly managed.โ€

โ€œAll of the fisheries already have relatively good management schemes in place; continued efforts in addressing the remaining management issues, and also in complying with the scientifically advised measures, would likely contribute to a faster recovery of the respective stocks to healthy levels,โ€ the reportโ€™s authors wrote.

Other key findings from the report include:

  • Three percent of the total catch volume of the reduction fisheries in the analysis comes from stocks classified as โ€œvery good condition.โ€ As in the four previous editions of this report, this corresponds to a single fishery: Antarctic krill โ€“ Atlantic Southern Ocean. This stock is managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and has had MSC-certified fisheries since 2010.
  • Eighty-eight percent of the total catch volume in the analysis comes from stocks that are considered to be โ€œreasonably well-managed (or better),โ€ (i.e., that score 6 or above on all five criteria outlined by SFPโ€™s FishSource database), a three-percent decrease compared to last year. The stock with the largest contribution to this category continues to be the Anchoveta โ€“ Peruvian northern-central stock, which represents approximately 32 percent of the total catch, compared to 33 percent in the previous overview.
  • Twelve percent (1.1 million tonnes) of total reduction fisheries catch comes from fisheries classified as โ€œpoorly managed,โ€ a rise of 2 percent compared to last year. The volume coming from poorly managed fisheries is still, however, considerably lower than that observed prior to 2017.

There is a critical need to develop and expand improvement efforts in Southeast Asian fisheries, which are not included in the reportโ€™s analysis. These fisheries likely represent close to half of the global catch for this sector, yet are poorly understood and plagued by persistent environmental and social issues.

โ€œFish meal and fish oil are important feed ingredients that provide key nutrients to farmed shrimp and fish,โ€ said Dave Robb, sustainability director, animal nutrition and health, at Cargill. โ€œBut itโ€™s important they are sourced responsibly. Fishery improvement projects (FIPs) provide an important opportunity to drive sustainable development in areas like Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa, helping to improve fisheries management and activities for the long-term benefit of all participants. Cargill is already engaged in some FIPs and encourages other actors in this sector to also engage in such schemes, to help secure a sustainable future for fishmeal and oil. Collaboration is key: together, we can help achieve environmentally and socially sustainable fisheries.โ€

The ecological impacts of reduction fisheries on the wider marine ecosystem are not fully understood. A guest article by Birdlife International in the report highlights the vulnerability of seabirds to restrictions in the availability of forage fish that result from fishing.

Commenting on the results, Dave Martin, deputy programs director at SFP, said, โ€œDespite a minor drop in performance this year, the fishmeal and fish oil industry in Europe and Latin America has built a good track record of responsible sourcing, although there is inevitably still room for improvement. Given this, it is urgent that global industry turn its attention squarely to Southeast Asia.โ€

The full report is available for download by clicking here

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