Saving Seafood

Small-scale fishermen turn to apps and AI to tackle climate change

March 2, 2021 — From weather predicting apps to using artificial intelligence to monitor the fish they catch, small-scale fishermen and coastal communities are increasingly turning to digital tools to help them be more sustainable and tackle climate change.

Overfishing and illegal fishing by commercial vessels inflict significant damage on fisheries and the environment, and take food and jobs from millions of people in coastal communities who rely on fishing, environmental groups say.

In addition, climate change affects on small-scale fishermen – who account for about 90% of the world’s capture fishermen and fish workers – include fish moving to new areas in search of cooler waters or if their habitat is destroyed, rising sea levels, and an increase in the number of storms.

Launched in January by nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Small-Scale Fisheries Resource and Collaboration Hub (SSF Hub) is a multilingual website that aims to bring together fishermen, their communities and advocacy groups to connect, share ideas and find solutions to the problems they face.

Read the full story at Reuters

EDF’s SmartPass program aims to bring artificial intelligence to US fisheries management

February 18, 2021 — Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is launching a new program with the aim of improving data collection and fisheries management.

The program, SmartPass, integrates shore-based cameras with artificial intelligence to get a more accurate assessment of the number of vessels fishing in a particular region, according to EDF Global Fisheries Initiatives Senior Manager Sepp Haukebo.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New hub to support sustainable small-scale fisheries growth

February 10, 2021 — The global effort to harness the potential of small-scale fisheries to achieve sustainable food systems and eliminate poverty has led to the launch of the Small-Scale Fisheries Resource and Collaboration Hub (SSF Hub) by a global coalition involved in various operations along the entire seafood value chain.

“The SSF Hub is a multilingual, interactive online platform to strengthen small-scale fisheries governance and community development,” according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one of the organizations involved in forming the new entity.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Scientists to global policymakers: Treat fish as food to help solve world hunger

January 20, 2021 — Scientists are urging global policymakers and funders to think of fish as a solution to food insecurity and malnutrition, and not just as a natural resource that provides income and livelihoods, in a newly-published paper in the peer-reviewed journal Ambio. Titled “Recognize fish as food in policy discourse and development funding,” the paper argues for viewing fish from a food systems perspective to broaden the conversation on food and nutrition security and equity, especially as global food systems will face increasing threats from climate change.

The “Fish as Food” paper, authored by scientists and policy experts from Michigan State University, Duke University, Harvard University, World Bank and Environmental Defense Fund, among others, notes the global development community is not on track to meet goals for alleviating malnutrition. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of malnourished people in the world will increase from 678 million in 2018 to 841 million in 2030 if  continue—an estimate not accounting for effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fish provide 17% of the animal protein consumed globally and are rich in micronutrients, essential fatty acids and protein essential for cognitive development and maternal and childhood health, especially for communities in developing countries where  may be the only source of key nutrients. Yet fish is largely missing from key global food policy discussions and decision-making.

“Fish has always been food. But in this paper, we lay out an agenda for enhancing the role of fish in addressing hunger and malnutrition,” says Abigail Bennett, assistant professor in the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. “We are urging the international development community not only to see fish as food but to recognize fish as a nutrient-rich food that can make a difference for the well-being of the world’s poor and vulnerable. What kinds of new knowledge, policies and interventions will be required to support that role for fish?” she adds.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Japanese legislature passes law to ban import of IUU seafood

December 9, 2020 — Japan’s Diet, its national legislature, passed a law on 4 December to ban the importation of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) seafood.

The new law will require records on catches and transfers to be gathered and submitted to the government in order to establish traceability. For imports, a “certificate of legal catch” from a foreign government will be required.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Contaminants found in oysters could portend larger environmental and food safety problem

August 10, 2020 — New research suggests contamination of oyster beds with plastics, paint, and baby formula in Asia could reveal a larger emerging global public health risk.

Scientists from the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with Environmental Defense Fund, Cornell University, and Australia’s University of Queensland, found traces of plastics, kerosene, paint, talc, and milk supplement powders in the beds on the eastern Andaman Sea of Myanmar.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hope for the oceans in a time of COVID-19

April 14, 2020 — The following was released by the Environmental Defense Fund:

The global COVID-19 pandemic gives us all pause about what the future holds. Our focus and attention are on all those hurt by this terrible disease. But for many of us, this is also a time of deep reflection about society and the world we’ll inhabit when this scourge is over. So for me, it’s also a moment to reflect on the prospects for the ocean, one of the planet’s fundamental life-support systems — making it vital to human health and well-being.

A just-released article in Nature, by Professor Carlos Duarte of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and colleagues, argues that the global ocean can once again return to abundance, rebounding from overfishing and pollution by 2050, if humanity puts its shoulder to the wheel and redoubles efforts across all types of threats. We emphatically agree.

Here, we dive into what such lofty ambitions might require, through one of the key lenses that Duarte and company identify: sustainable fishing.

First, peer-reviewed research shows very clearly that sustainable fisheries management works.  That should come as no surprise. Our own work with University of California, Santa Barbara and others (Costello et al., 2016) modelling the world’s fisheries showed that the “upside” of informed and effective management rapidly outweighs the downside of unsustainable fishing (which would otherwise deplete more than 85% of fish populations). Our modelling shows that such management approaches would allow full rebuilding of most stocks (and total global fish abundance) in less than a decade — restoring fish as a valuable asset both for nature and human needs. This exciting finding was recently underscored by a deep and systemic analysis (Hilborn et al., 2020) showing that, in fact, when good management is put in place, fish and fisheries respond impressively.

Read the full release here

Environmental groups urge Americans to eat more fish while hunkering down against virus

March 23, 2020 — Environmental groups have long fought for animal rights, rallied against pollution and pushed back on overfishing, but a new message this week urged the nation to eat more seafood as it hunkers down during the coronavirus pandemic.

Specifically, many are asking you to please buy American-caught seafood.

“Over the past 20 years, American fisheries have become some of the best managed and most sustainable in the world thanks to policy reforms and the hard work of fishermen,” said Eric Schwaab, senior vice president for the Environmental Defense Fund’s oceans program. “But now fishermen need our help. By incorporating more seafood into our diets, we can support fishermen and coastal communities that depend on seafood harvesting as a way of life.”

The global spread of COVID-19 has triggered widespread economic chaos, and American fisheries are suffering due to restaurant closures and the collapse of export markets, advocates say.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Fishing for Fun? It Has a Bigger Environmental Impact Than We Thought

March 19, 2020 — Let’s go fishin’! After all, a lone angler fishing from a dock or a few friends going out to sea can’t have all that much of an effect on fish populations … right?

Think again.

“When you’re floating in the open ocean, it can be hard to imagine that your hobby will have an impact on the overall health of a fishery,” said Sepp Haukebo, who works on recreational fisheries conservation issues for the Environmental Defense Fund. “But multiply the number of fish a single angler catches and discards in a day by millions of anglers and you have a significant harvest on your hands.”

Haukebo echoes points made in two new studies, published in the journals Fish and Fisheries and Frontiers in Marine Science, that show recreational fishing has a much bigger collective effect on oceanic species than previously realized, with nearly one million tons of fish caught every year.

Far from being an insignificant drop in the proverbial ocean, this is a massive amount of fish — about 1% of total global marine fisheries catch, a much higher number than many scientists and managers used to believe.

Read the full story at EcoWatch

How to maximize coastal ecosystem recovery 10 years after BP spill: report

March 12, 2020 — As the 10th anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill approaches, state and federal agencies should consider nine strategies aimed at advancing ecosystem restoration, maximizing use of fine and settlement money stemming from the spill, and ensuring that local communities are involved in decisions affecting their future, according to a report released by a coalition of environmental groups Wednesday.

The report, “A Decade After Disaster,” was developed by the Restore the Mississippi River Delta coalition, which was created in 2008 to support coastal restoration efforts in Louisiana. It includes the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, and two Louisiana-based groups, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

While the BP spill was an unprecedented catastrophe, it provided an equally unprecedented opportunity to Louisiana and other coastal states in the form of more than $16 billion in settlement money for coastal restoration efforts, said Steve Cochran, campaign director for the Restore the Mississippi River Delta coalition and a vice president with the Environmental Defense Fund.

“Louisiana has made significant progress since the Gulf oil disaster, and we can honor these losses by continuing to act with urgency on ongoing recovery and in the face of land loss and climate change,” Cochran said.

Read the full story at NOLA.com