Saving Seafood

New Stanford Study Provides Targeting Guide for IUU Fishing Vessels

April 11, 2022 — IUU (Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported) fishing is a challenging problem for the maritime sector. Its implications for the health of marine ecosystems and for human rights have catalyzed calls for a speedy solution, and it is a focus of several recent corporate and government policy commitments. Unfortunately, the ability of these actors to intervene is compromised by a shortage of information that could be used to target labor abuse and IUU fishing risk.

Previous research has helped to underscore the broad relationship between labor abuse at sea and IUU fishing, but the scales and extent are not well understood. This was the focus of a Stanford University-led study released on Tuesday. Essentially, the study identifies the regions and ports at highest risk for labor abuse and illegal fishing.

Two main underlying risk factors emerged: A vessel’s flag state and the type of gear it carries onboard could be pointers to its illegal activities at sea. “We found fishing vessel flag to have the greatest impact on predicting port risk for both labor abuse and IUU fishing, followed by vessel gear type for labor abuse, and the interaction between flag and gear type for IUU fishing,” the authors concluded.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

 

FAO, NGOs push for guidelines on transshipment

January 31, 2022 — A campaign to develop, publicize, and enforce guidelines setting standards for the responsible management of transferring catch between vessels at sea is gaining momentum.

The Food and Agriculture Organization is leading an effort to close loopholes allowing for transshipment of catch on the high seas, a practice the United Nations organization said encourages illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Scientists pen letter to Congress urging SIMP expansion

December 16, 2021 — More than 100 scientists signed a letter sent to Congress on Monday, 13 December, urging lawmakers to ensure that all seafood products imported into the United States are caught using legal means.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is often associated with human trafficking and other human rights abuses, and distant-water fishing forces vessel owners and operators to extend trips to “achieve a sizeable catch,” the university professors, research fellows, and scientists claimed in the two-page letter. In order to get that kind of catch, some operators will use forced labor and harvest fishing stocks beyond allowable limits, they alleged.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Sullivan-Whitehouse Provision in Defense Bill Aimed at Cracking Down on Pirate Fishing

December 16, 2021 — The following was released by the The Office of Dan Sullivan:

U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today announced passage of their maritime security proposal as part of the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which has now cleared Congress and is expected to be signed into law by the President. The senators’ amendment requires the Secretary of the Navy to produce a report on maritime security measures related to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

“As the largest producer of seafood in the nation—roughly sixty percent of American seafood comes from our waters—Alaska is undoubtedly the super power of seafood for our country,” said Sen. Sullivan, honorary co-chair of the Senate Oceans Caucus. “I intend to do all I can to keep it that way, including ensuring that we have an all-of-government effort to crack down on illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. This provision will help protect America’s fishing fleet, as well as the seafood industry across the globe, against bad actors, particularly as China continues to use its fishing fleet to project power in the Indo-Pacific and, increasingly, around the world. I look forward to continue working with Senator Whitehouse on pirate fishing and on cleaning up our oceans. Our work together is a model for how two senators, from different sides of the aisle, can work together to get big things done for our nation.”

“We need to protect Rhode Island’s hardworking fishing industry by rooting out unfair competition from illegal pirate fishing,” said Sen. Whitehouse, a co-founder of the Senate Oceans Caucus. “I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Sullivan and colleagues on both sides of the aisle to curb illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.”

The amendment will require the U.S. Navy to share information about steps taken to support the dissemination of unclassified information and data to regional partners, best practices learned from public-private partnerships, and any new authorities or capabilities needed to support counter-IUU efforts in order to guide future legislative efforts.

The legislation builds on maritime security provisions Whitehouse secured in last year’s NDAA. Whitehouse championed measures in the previous defense bill that required the Department of Defense to update Congress on previously enacted measured to combat illegal fishing, directed the Navy to work with the Coast Guard to assess solutions for tracking vessels engaged in unlawful activity at sea, and requested that the Office of Naval Intelligence provide an update on foreign governments using distant-water fishing fleets to undermine American interests.

Each year, IUU fishing produces between 11 and 26 million tons of seafood, resulting in global economic losses valued between $10 billion and $23 billion.

The bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus works to find common ground in protecting oceans and coasts. Thanks to the caucus’s leadership, Congress has taken steps to guard against IUU fishing, including ratifying a series of key IUU treaties with partner nations and passing implementing legislation to bring those treaties into effect.

 

More than 100 scientists call on Congress to end illegal fishing, human rights abuses in seafood supply chain

December 13, 2021 — More than 100 scientists on Monday called for federal action on illegal fishing, fraud and human rights abuses in the seafood industry.

In a letter to Congress, scientists called on representatives to end harmful practices along the seafood supply chain, including illegal, unreported and unregulated — or IUU — fishing and abuses like forced labor and human trafficking.

Human rights abuses and IUU fishing typically go hand in hand, scientists write, because unsustainable fishing practices push vessels further out to sea for longer periods of time, meaning some fishing companies rely on forced or underpaid labor to turn a profit.

“The interconnected issues of IUU fishing and human rights violations demand the United States take action to ensure that only safe, legally caught, responsibly sourced, and honestly labeled seafood is imported into our domestic market. The human rights abuses prevalent in the seafood sector make it clear that the United States needs to build in labor protections for those working at every stage in the seafood supply chain,” the letter’s authors write.

Read the full story at The Hill

 

Researchers map hot spots of transfer of fish catch at sea

July 26, 2018 — It could be considered the global CSI for high seas fisheries. In two new groundbreaking studies, researchers from Dalhousie University, Global Fishing Watch and SkyTruth have applied cutting-edge technology to map exactly where fishing boats may be transferring their catch to cargo vessels at sea.

Known as transshipment, the practice increases the efficiency of fishing by eliminating trips back to port for fishing vessels. However, as it often occurs out of sight and over the horizon, it creates major challenges, including enabling illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

“Because catches from different boats are mixed up during transshipment, we often have no idea what was caught legally and what wasn’t,” said Kristina Boerder, a Ph.D. student in Dalhousie University’s Department of Biology and lead author on the Science Advances paper, published this week.

Transshipment can also facilitate human rights abuses and has been implicated in other crimes such as weapons and drug trafficking. It often occurs in the high seas, beyond the reach of any nation’s jurisdiction, and where policy-makers and enforcement agencies may be slow to act against an issue they cannot see. By applying machine learning techniques to vessel tracking data, researchers are bringing unprecedented transparency to the practice.

“So far, this practise was out of sight out of mind, but now that we can track it using satellites, we can begin to know where our  truly comes from,” says Dr. Boris Worm, a Marine Biology Professor in Dalhousie’s Faculty of Science, and co-author of the Science Advances paper.

Read the full story from the Global Fishing Watch at PHYS

 

When Big Data meets overfishing

May 11, 2018 — Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and overfishing deplete fish stocks and cause billions of dollars in losses a year, experts say.

But new technologies offer opportunities to combat IUU, particularly for countries with limited means to patrol their waters or enforce legislation, said the London-based think-tank the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Here are some facts about the issue.

– Much of the world’s fish stocks are overfished or fully exploited, the United Nations has said, as fish consumption rose above 20 kilograms per person in 2016 for the first time.

– Global marine catches have declined by 1.2 million tonnes a year since 1996, according to The Sea Around Us, a research initiative involving the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia.

 – IUU is not confined to the high seas; it also takes place in exclusive economic zones, and in river and inland fisheries, and is committed by both national and foreign vessels.

– Initiatives to tackle IUU are run by for-profit and non-profit groups, and use satellite, data and other technologies.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

Protecting Alaska’s Fisheries

May 2, 2018 — Combating illegal fishing on the high seas, also known as international waters, which have no sovereignty, has been a thorn in the side of every nation that has a coastline. Relatively recent issues such as fishery sustainability, climate change, and deliberately mislabeling fish and fish products have prompted an effort to mount a worldwide coordinated response to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU).

This issue and others were addressed at the annual Seafood Expo North America in Boston in March. The expo attracted 1,341 exhibiting companies from 57 countries—including new attendees from Fiji, Oman, Ukraine, and Venezuela. The exhibitors included not only the fishing industry but companies that support it such as transportation companies, equipment suppliers, and other support organizations. All told the Seafood Expo attracted more than 22,600 attendees from more than 120 countries.

An international panel offered perspective on IUU fishing, which violates national laws and/or internationally agreed upon conservation and management measures in effect worldwide. The panel was titled, “Fighting IUU Fishing and Seafood Fraud: Enhancing Traceability and Transparency through Strengthened Governance Frameworks.”

Participants included Giuliana Torta, counselor for Environment, Climate Action, and Maritime Affairs with the EU delegation to the United States; Somboon Siriraksophon, Fishery Policy and Program coordinator at the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center; Rune Dragset, deputy head of unit in the Seafood Section of the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Fisheries; and, Deirdre Warner-Kramer, acting deputy director of the Office of Marine Conservation, US Department of State. All panel members agreed that cooperation across the world and a strict set of controls on how fish get to market are vital to dampening the problem of international fishing and seafood fraud.

Read the full story at Alaska Business Magazine

 

Shark bill could resolve debate over domestic fin market

March 20, 2018 — It’s fair to say that if the press release is coming from Oceana, it’s not going to have anything nice to say about the fishing industry. This is an outfit that seems to glory in perpetuating the misconception that reports on global fisheries apply equally to U.S. fishermen, fleets and practices as they do to foreign industry players.

That’s why when I saw Oceana had collaborated in the launch of Global Fishing Watch, I knew something outside of the worthy mission of combating IUU fishing was likely to come of it. We saw that in late February with the release of an article in Science that based its data on Global Fishing Watch.

Granted, if you look at the maps of aggregate data, you’ll see that U.S. coastal waters are not covered with the traffic Oceana deems damning. But not many average readers have time to dig that far or ask these kinds of questions about data sets. They see the headlines and condemn all fishing en masse.

The misconception that our fishing industry is just a small part of a globally mismanaged fishing industry is a perpetual grind against our highly regulated U.S. fleets.

Fishing is the seventh most regulated industry in the country, just barely outranking fishing is commercial air travel. And right behind it? Oil and gas extraction.

“I fish in North Carolina, and I’m regulated by the South Atlantic council, the Mid-Atlantic council, NMFS, the Atlantic States [Marine Fisheries Commission] and the state of North Carolina,” said Dewey Hemilright, a 2012 NF Highliner from Wanchese, N.C., and a supporter of a new bill that would preserve U.S. shark fishing.

The Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act of 2018 (H.R. 524) is a bipartisan bill that aims to create a formal and transparent certification program for countries seeking to import shark products into the United States. Foreign nations would apply for certification from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce confirming that they have an effective prohibition on shark finning and have shark management policies comparable to ours.

Read the full story at the National Fisherman

 

Rights Abuses Still ‘Widespread’ In Thailand’s Fishing Industry, Report Says

January 23, 2018 — Forced labor, human trafficking and other rights abuses are “widespread” in the Thai fishing industry, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that provides an update on a sector that has been cited for enabling slavery conditions.

In recent years, reports have emerged that detail forced labor and confinement on ships that make up Thailand’s large fishing fleet, where migrants from Thailand’s neighbors, such as Myanmar and Cambodia, are often victimized. Past reports have found prison-like conditions; the new report details how workers are often paid below the minimum wage, are not paid on time, and are held in debt.

Despite scrutiny from U.S. and European monitors and the Thai government’s public promises to clamp down, the abuses remain a big part of Thailand’s fishing industry, according to the report.

From Bangkok, Michael Sullivan reports for NPR’s Newscast unit:

“Under Thai law, migrant laborers are not entitled to Thai labor law protection. …

“The European Union has warned Thailand it could face a seafood export ban and the U.S. has placed Thailand on the Tier 2 Watch List in its latest trafficking in persons report.”

The 134-page report from Human Rights Watch is titled “Hidden Chains: Forced Labor and Rights Abuses in Thailand’s Fishing Industry. Compiled from interviews with 248 current and former fishers, it includes several quotes from workers.

“I didn’t know what was going on when I arrived,” trafficked Burmese worker Bang Rin said in March of 2016. “They just put me in a lockup, and it was only when the boat came in that I realized that was where I’d have to work. I went to do my pink card application on the 4th, and on the 5th I was out on the boat.”

The HRW says the research was conducted from 2015 to 2017, when its staff members visited all of Thailand’s major fishing ports.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio (NEPR)