Saving Seafood

Scientists warn coral restoration can’t keep pace with global reef collapse

April 30, 2025 — Coral restoration won’t save reefs from global warming, according to a recent study – at least, not the way we’re doing it now.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Helsinki and published earlier this month in Nature Ecology & Evolution, finds coral degradation is significantly outpacing restoration efforts. Its results indicate most unsuccessful projects fail due to prohibitive costs, lack of global coordination, location unsuitability, and bleaching events caused by rising water temperatures, during which coral becomes white due to stress.

Despite “public perception and scientific enthusiasm” for coral restoration, we can’t restore our way out of this one, the study finds.

“Scaling up restoration to any meaningful level going beyond the very local scale would be extremely challenging,” senior author Giovanni Strona, now a quantitative ecologist at the European Commission in Italy, told Mongabay.

Sebastian Ferse, a senior ecosystem scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Germany, who wasn’t involved with the study, told Mongabay that its results suggest “reef restoration is prohibitively expensive, particularly when looking at the scale of the problem we are facing.”

“It is much more cost-efficient to prevent degradation of reefs in the first place than having to restore the damage afterwards,” Ferse said.

Read the full story at Mongabay

EU’s new Russia sanctions package includes ban on seafood

April 6, 2022 — A fifth round of sanctions against Russia, including a ban on imports of Russian seafood, has been proposed by the European Commission, amid fresh allegations Russia has committed war crimes during its invasion of Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, 5 April, she expected seafood to be among EUR 5.5 billion (USD 6 billion) worth of specific import bans, along with wood, cement, alcohol, and other products. Von der Leyen said the move would seek to “cut the money stream of Russia and its oligarchs,” and also close financial loopholes that currently exist between Russia and Belarus.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine creates turmoil for global seafood market

February 24, 2022 — Russian seafood exports to the United States and European Union are likely to be curtailed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed Russian forces entered Ukraine on Wednesday, 23 February. In response, U.S. President Joe Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced planned sanctions against Russia after its military forces engaged in a full-scale invasion of the former Soviet territory, which became an independent country in 1991.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

EU pleads with US judge to limit discovery in salmon price-fixing class-action lawsuit

July 21, 2021 — The European Union has not issued any public comment regarding its antitrust investigation into Norwegian salmon farmers for more than a year, but on 13 July, it made clear its inquiry is still active.

In a brief filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida, the European Commission contended that a class-action suit filed on behalf of U.S. purchasers of Norwegian farmed salmon in 2019 is interfering with its investigation. The lawsuit accuses Mowi, SalMar, Lerøy Seafood, Grieg Seafood, and Cermaq Group of exchanging competitively sensitive information among themselves, with the aim of artificially controlling the price of farm-raised salmon sold in the United States.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US-EU trade war winding down with five-year suspension of tariffs

June 16, 2021 — The United States and the European Union have resolved a trade dispute that had resulted in a ramping up of tariffs, including on some seafood products.

The quarrel, dating back to 2004, centered around subsidies for European airplane-maker Airbus and U.S. plane manufacturer Boeing. The dispute was brought before the World Trade Organization, which ruled in October 2020 that each side could impose billions of dollars in tariffs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Some Relief For Seafood Industry Thanks to Airbus-Boeing Deal

June 16, 2021 — On Tuesday the United States and European Union announced a cooperative framework to address the large civil aircraft disputes which have been raging since 2004. As part of the agreement, the U.S. and EU have agreed to move away from “past confrontation in pursuit of a cooperative future by suspending the tariffs related to this dispute for five years.”

“After years of bitter litigation and weeks of intense diplomacy, we have reached a deal on a set of high-level principles that resets U.S.-EU engagement in the large civil aircraft industry,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a press release. “We are strongest when we work with our friends and allies, and the partnership with European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis is a demonstration of that principle in action.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

Britain and EU sign fishing deal – but it ‘won’t please everyone’

June 3, 2021 — Britain and the European Union on Wednesday agreed the first ever annual deal on the management of shared fish stocks after Brexit.

In anticipation of a potential backlash from British fishermen, Whitehall sources on Wednesday night cautioned that agreement would not “please everyone”.

Brussels said the new fishing agreement proved that the UK and EU could work together after months of tensions since the UK left the Brexit transition period on December 31.

The European Commission said the new deal created a “strong basis for continued EU-UK cooperation in the area of fisheries” after months of negotiations, which began in January.

The agreement sets out the total allowed catch (TAC) for more than 75 shared stocks in UK and EU waters for the rest of the year.

The TAC, which aims to prevent overfishing, is then divided between the two sides on the basis of quotas agreed in the Brexit deal on fishing on Christmas Eve. Both sides had agreed to use the 2020 TAC until a deal could be found.

Read the full story at MSN

European fisher advocates push for prioritized COVID-19 vaccine access

May 3, 2021 — The European Commission and European Union member states should develop a specific COVID-19 vaccination protocol for fishers, which also adapts and prioritizes their access to the vaccine, thereby keeping “essential fishing operations running,” according to the European fisheries association Europêche and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF).

In a press release, Europêche and ETF said that fishers are regarded as essential workers and this, along with the “particularities” of their workplaces and working patterns, needs to be taken into consideration.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Targeted Ocean Protection Could Offer 3x The Benefits

March 23, 2021 — The new paper is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood and provide a cheap, natural solution to address climate change, in addition to protecting embattled species and habitats.

As reported in Nature, researchers identified specific areas of the ocean that could provide multiple benefits if protected. Safeguarding these regions would protect nearly 80% of marine species, increase fishing catches by more than 8 million metric tons, and prevent the release of more than one billion tons of carbon dioxide by protecting the seafloor from bottom trawling, a widespread yet destructive fishing practice.

BLUEPRINT TO PROTECT NATURE

The study is also the first to quantify the potential release of CO2 into the ocean from trawling. It finds that trawling pumps hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the ocean every year.

“Ocean life has been declining worldwide because of overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change. Yet only 7% of the ocean is currently under some kind of protection,” says lead author Enric Sala, an explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society.

“In this study, we’ve pioneered a new way to identify the places that—if protected—will boost food production and safeguard marine life, all while reducing carbon emissions,” Sala says. “It’s clear that humanity and the economy will benefit from a healthier ocean. And we can realize those benefits quickly if countries work together to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.”

To identify the priority areas, researchers analyzed the world’s unprotected ocean waters, focusing on the degree to which they are threatened by human activities that can be reduced by marine protected areas (for example, overfishing and habitat destruction).

Read the full story at Futurity

Brexit: UK fishermen fear losing their homes as export ban bites

February 22, 2021 — Since 1 January, the European Union has stopped British fishermen from selling oysters, scallops, clams, cockles and mussels, known as live bivalve molluscs (LBM), that are caught in so-called “Class B” waters.

The government says it is seeking an “urgent resolution”, while the European Commission told Sky News the ban, on health grounds, applies to all third countries and “is not a surprise” to the UK.

The Sailors Creek Shellfish company in Falmouth, Cornwall, has seen 99% of its business disappear.

Read the full story at SkyNews