Saving Seafood

We May Know Less About The Deep Sea Than The Moon. Should It Be Mined?

October 21, 2021 — Much remains unknown about the long-term effects of deep-sea mining in the Pacific and its role in the greater climate crisis. Given that, activists, governments and the private sector support a 10-year moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Yet the Republic of Nauru has made its intentions clear: Within two years, it will start mining the deep sea of the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

The CCZ — between Hawaii and Kiribati, extending eastward towards Mexico — is just one area of interest for mining outfits, covering 4.5 million square kilometers of the Pacific.

The area is filled with seamounts and deep-sea mountains, home to minerals including manganese, cobalt and several other elements integral to batteries that power smartphones and electric vehicles, among other things.

Governments, such as the Cook Islands, along with private mining outfits, are also looking to do exploratory work in their own waters, which has caused concern due to the unknown fallout.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Climate change is causing tuna to migrate, which could spell catastrophe for the small islands that depend on them

August 2, 2021 — Small Pacific Island states depend on their commercial fisheries for food supplies and economic health. But our new research shows climate change will dramatically alter tuna stocks in the tropical Pacific, with potentially severe consequences for the people who depend on them.

As climate change warms the waters of the Pacific, some  will be forced to migrate to the open ocean of the high seas, away from the jurisdiction of any country. The changes will affect three key tuna species: skipjack, yellowfin, and bigeye.

Pacific Island nations such as the Cook Islands and territories such as Tokelau charge foreign fishing operators to access their waters, and heavily depend on this revenue. Our research estimates the movement of tuna stocks will cause a fall in annual government revenue to some of these small island states of up to 17%.

This loss will hurt these developing economies, which need fisheries revenue to maintain essential services such as hospitals, roads and schools. The experience of Pacific Island states also bodes poorly for global climate justice more broadly.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Liancheng seeks market niche with MSC-certified bigeye tuna

April 12, 2019 — Last month, a Chinese-operated longline fishery in the Federated States of Micronesia became the first fishery to achieve Marine Stewardship Council certification for a bigeye tuna fishery. The fishery, owned by three interconnected Chinese fishing companies, Liancheng Overseas Fishery (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd. (SZLC), China Southern Fishery Shenzhen Co. Ltd. (CSFC) and Liancheng Overseas Fishery (FSM) Co. Ltd. (FZLC), previously achieved MSC certification for its yellowfin fishery in October 2018. 

Liancheng is also responsible for the Cook Islands South Pacific albacore and yellowfin longline fishery, which achieved MSC certification in 2015. Its yellowfin and bigeye tuna fisheries in the Republic of Marshall Islands are also undergoing an MSC assessment, which should conclude by the end of 2019.The largest Chinese fleet to achieve MSC certification, Liancheng has said it is dedicated to achieving MSC certification for all its fisheries.

Liancheng Senior Vice President of Marketing Joe Murphy talked to SeafoodSource about the firm’s aim to market MSC-certified bigeye catch in China, Japan, Asia, the United States, and Europe. 

SeafoodSource: Where does Liancheng sell its products?

Murphy: Liancheng markets our catch globally including the U.S., Canada, Japan, China, other Asian nations, and Europe. Our company has been involved in tuna from the Pacific Islands and other locations for almost three decades.

SeafoodSource: How important is the MSC accreditation for the domestic Chinese market? Are Chinese consumers very familiar with MSC?

Murphy: While MSC is well-recognized and very important to the European market, there is definite increasing interest in the MSC eco-label use from major retail and foodservice operators in China. The Chinese market has many international hotels committed to offering sustainable foods, so the consumer is seeing the MSC blue eco-label. The Chinese buyers seeking MSC are familiar with the eco-label and what it signifies through their parent companies, as they are major high-end hotel chain restaurants and retailers.

The huge and important use of internet marketing in China also provides exposure to products carrying the MSC logo. This same trend is occurring in the U.S. and now in Japan for the [upcoming 2020 Tokyo] Olympics.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Despite Many Threats, Some Coral Reefs Are Thriving

September 10, 2018 — RAROTONGA, Cook Islands — Twenty-one degrees, 12 minutes south of the equator, 2,771 miles south-southeast of the southern tip of the island of Hawaii, 30 feet below 4-foot swells, Nicole Pedersen swims slowly, wearing a wetsuit, headband, and full scuba gear and carrying a custom-built plexiglass-and-PVC case the size of a tackle box. Within it, twin DSLR cameras automatically photograph a reef a quarter-mile off the coast of Rarotonga. It’s the last of 12 dives she and colleagues from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have made over three days of their research expedition here.

Pedersen, 25, is a staff researcher at Scripps, part of the University of California, San Diego, and the image digitization coordinator for a natural experiment called the 100 Island Challenge, launched in the summer of 2016. The images she’s gathering—4 billion pixels comprising 70 to 80 gigabytes of data, just from today—will ultimately help the team build a three-dimensional model of the 100-square-meter (1,076-square-foot) plot of reef Pedersen is swimming over in a lawn mower pattern.

As she gently flaps her black-and-yellow fins, maintaining as constant a speed as is possible underwater where waves and currents can toss her off course, marine ecologists Stuart Sandin and Brian Zgliczynski swim alongside her, counting every fish in the plot and marking on a waterproof data sheet each one’s species and approximate size. The more than 4,000 dives the team will make over five years are the data-collection component of an unprecedented attempt to characterize five examples of every type of reef on the planet—twice—to see how each is responding to climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, overfishing, and the other insults humans have been throwing at many of them with increasing frequency and intensity over the last few decades.

The 100 Island Challenge is so wildly ambitious that even one of its co-leaders, Scripps coral reef ecologist Jennifer Smith, thought it would be absurd to try when Sandin, the project’s lead investigator, and Zgliczynski, a postdoctoral researcher, pitched it to her several years ago. “You guys are idiots,” Zgliczynski says she told them.

Over a dinner of wahoo fillets and Cooks Lager, the local brew, following the first day of diving in Rarotonga, the scientists say they could already see that the island’s reefs, alive with new growth of diverse coral species and crowded with fish scraping away excess algae, are not like those that have dominated the news lately. “Coral reefs are bleaching four times as frequently as they did in the 1980s, scientists say,” read a Washington Postheadline in January. “Coral Reefs at ‘Make or Break Point’, UN Environment Head Says,” blared another January story in The Guardian. “Coral reefs at risk of dissolving as oceans get more acidic,” announced Reuters in February.

Unchecked coastal development pollutes reefs; illegal, unreported, and unmonitored fishing depletes them; carbon dioxide emissions inhibit their ability to grow; and historic ocean warming has in recent years caused back-to-back bleaching events that threatened reefs worldwide, including potentially as much as half of the Great Barrier Reef’s northern corals. Still, although the bad news is undeniable, it’s not the only story. “And it’s not the story when communities take control of their marine ecosystem,” Sandin says. “When a community is engaged and listens to what’s underwater, they can keep it going.”

Read the full story at Scientific American

 

New deal gives EU fishermen access to Cook Islands’ tuna

December 6th, 2016 — The EU and the Cook Islands have agreed on all the elements of a new Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA), which gives the go ahead for EU vessels to conduct certain fishing operations in waters around the South Pacific island country.

On 29 November, the first Joint Committee in the framework of the SFPA between the EU and the Cook Islands came to an end. The parties defined the financial support to be granted by the EU for the development of the Cook Islands’ fisheries sector and discussed fisheries matters to allow for the start of fishing operations.

The new agreement will allow up to four EU vessels to fish for maximum 7,000 metric tons (MT) of tuna per year and other highly migratory species in the Cook Islands’ fishing area.

In return, the EU will pay the Cook Islands EUR 2.87 million (USD 3.1 million), of which EUR 1.47 million (USD 1.6 million) is in exchange for access to the resources. Remaining funds are specifically earmarked for the local fishing sector.

Over the next four years, the Cook Islands will invest EUR 1.4 million (USD 1.5 million) on improving the living standard of small-scale fishermen, reinforcing control and surveillance operations, strengthening the food safety authority and sharpening the sustainability of its fisheries policies.

The Joint Committee also reviewed the procedures for issuing fishing authorizations and catch reporting, as well as the boundaries of the fishing area accessible to EU vessels.

Read the full story at Seafood Source