Saving Seafood

“No tuna disaster” as global stocks deemed healthier than expected

April 25, 2017 — Fishing effort in most tuna fisheries has grown steadily in recent years, a trend that has been largely led by the constantly increasing purse-seine harvest. At the same time, these stocks remain in a healthy state and are much less overfished than many other coastal resources, delegates heard at the sixth European Tuna Conference in Brussels, Belgium.

Speaking at the biennial forum, held on the eve of the 2017 Seafood Expo Global, Alain Fonteneau, a renowned tuna fisheries scientist from the French Research Institute for Development (IRD), confirmed that the total global tuna catch has grown to a level of around five million metric tons (MT), with skipjack accounting for around 66 percent the total.

Fonteneau highlighted that the purse-seine fleets’ heightened productivity – averaging 2.5 percent annually over the last two decades – was chiefly responsible for this growth and that their improved efficiency was directly due to the increased number of fish aggregating devices (FADs) deployed in recent years.

Over the last 10 years, FADs have been responsible for approximately 50 percent of the total purse-seine catch, including 53 percent of the skipjack that has been caught during this period.

“If we were to lose all of the FAD fisheries tomorrow, we would lose most of the skipjack catch,” he said.

While the amount of skipjack caught in most fisheries has continued to increase – a trend that Fonteneau said is indicative of healthy stocks – most of which are still not yet exploited to their maximum sustainable yield (MSY), including the 2 million MT currently coming from the Western Pacific. He is, nevertheless, pessimistic about the Indian Ocean’s stock, despite it currently being in “good shape,” as his “personal feeling” is that the next stock assessment, expected in October, will suggest its over-exploitation.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

New Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross Lists U.S. Fisheries as a Top Department Priority

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – March 1, 2017 – In his first address (starts at 9:41 in the video) to Department of Commerce employees this morning, newly confirmed Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross included U.S. fisheries among his top priorities for the department.

In a list of ten challenges facing the Commerce Department’s 47,000 employees, including the launch of more NOAA satellites and changes to the methodology of the 2020 U.S. Census, Mr. Ross specifically identified the need for “obtaining maximum sustainable yield for our fisheries.”

Maximum sustainable yield (MSY) refers to the largest catch that can be sustainably taken from a fish stock over an indefinite period of time. Promoting sustainable fishing by achieving maximum sustainable yield is one of the primary goals of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), the chief law governing fisheries management in the U.S.

The U.S. commercial fishing industry is a vital part of the U.S. economy, with landings of 9.7 billion pounds of seafood in 2015 worth $5.2 billion, according to the latest “Fisheries of the United States” report from NOAA Fisheries. Nevertheless, nearly 90 percent of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported into the country.

Mr. Ross has previously expressed his support for domestic fisheries and his desire to reduce America’s reliance on seafood imports, which has created an $11 billion trade deficit for the U.S. seafood industry.

“Given the enormity of our coastlines, given the enormity of our freshwater, I would like to try to figure out how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net exporter,” Mr. Ross said at his January confirmation hearing, according to Politico.

Mr. Ross was confirmed in a Senate vote 72-27 Monday night. He is a successful billionaire investor and founder of the private equity firm WL Ross & Co., from which he has agreed to divest as he takes on his new government role.

ABTA questions efficacy of precautionary approach

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – July 11, 2016 – The American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) has released its position statement on the ‘precautionary approach’ to fisheries management, which the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is considering adding to its Convention text.

The precautionary approach, which fisheries expert Dr. Carl Walters criticized in a discussion with CFOOD last month, says that if an action has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or environment, it is up to the people taking that action to prove it is not harmful.

In its statement, ABTA noted that the precautionary approach is “deeply incoherent” because, while ICCAT “should take precautions against certain speculative dangers,” precaution and inaction also create risk.

“There are conditions in which it can be dangerous to reduce, increase or maintain fishing quota for the following year particularly if [we] take into account another guiding principle: maximum sustainable catch,” ABTA wrote.

While maximum sustainable catch is an unambiguous concept, ABTA wrote, the precautionary approach does not specify the proper conditions for using the approach or the preventative actions to take. Without more specific guidelines, the precautionary approach can be easily abused, ABTA argued.

“Efforts to impose the precautionary approach through regulatory policy will inevitably intend to accommodate competing concerns or, more likely, become a Trojan Horse for ideological crusades,” the statement said.

ABTA concluded by saying that the precautionary approach could by sound policy in certain situations, but a broad framework must first be developed. ABTA suggested creating this framework using guidelines in the UN Fish Stocks Agreement or through ICCAT’s Standing Committee on Research and Statistics’ Working Group on the Precautionary Approach, which last met in 1999.

Read ABTA’s full statement

EU Negotiators Agree on Multi-Annual Plan for Fish Stocks in the Baltic Sea

March 28, 2016 — Leaders of the European Union reached agreement in March on a multi-annual plan (MAP) for certain fish stocks in the Baltic Sea. The compromise among representatives of the European Fisheries Council, Parliament, and Commission follows 10 months of trilogue negotiations.

During that process, Parliament representatives argued strongly against efforts by the Council to set aside key elements of the EU’s reformed Common Fisheries Policy. The result is a plan that places greater emphasis on flexibility than on strict adherence to the law’s requirements.

Last spring, after the Commission published its MAP proposal, Parliament established its position on the Baltic plan by agreeing to a negotiation mandate in line with the CFP. The policy calls for restoring and maintaining fish populations above levels that can produce what is known as maximum sustainable yield (MSY), the largest average catch that can be taken from a stock without significantly affecting reproduction levels.

Read the full article at the Pew Charitable Trusts

Europêche hits back at Pew response

November 23, 2015 — In a further letter to Pew, Javier Garat, President of Europêche and Pim Vasser, President of EAPO, said: “It is disappointing that your response fails to address the issues that we have raised. We drew attention to the startling divergence between the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) view and Pew’s claims about fishing pressure and the state of the stocks off North Western Europe.”

Just last week an initial open letter to Pew, Europêche accused the report of making the assertion that fishing in pursuit of food and profit off North West Europe in recent decades has dramatically expanded.

Read the full story at World Fishing & Aquaculture