Pew Charitable Trusts Archives - Page 2 of 12

Uneaten oysters provide pearl of an environmental solution during COVID-19 pandemic

June 4, 2021 — Environmental groups and oyster farmers have found a silver lining — or a pearl — amid the ravages of the pandemic.

Millions of oysters that went unsold when restaurants closed are finding a new life back in the ocean, where advocates say they’ll help the environment and help coastal communities combat climate change.

Seafood and shellfish demand crashed during the pandemic. By the time restaurants began to reopen, many oysters had grown too big to eat.

But environmental groups quickly recognized a way to use those oysters in coastal communities. The Nature Conservancy and PEW Charitable Trusts announced plans to buy millions of unsold oysters and return them to the ocean as living reefs.

“We were just sitting on top of these huge oysters, just kept getting bigger and bigger by the day, and we, we couldn’t sell them. So they came in with a program, the SOAR program, and bought a lot of oysters from these guys. And it was a real lifesaver,” said Matt Welling, the owner of Lucky 13 Oysters in Long Island, New York.

Read the full story at WSJM

WTO DG fixes July ministerial meeting on over-fishing rules

May 11, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organization plans to host a ministerial meeting on July 15 where she hopes an agreement can be reached on cutting fisheries subsidies after 20 years of talks, a document showed on Monday.

Governments including major subsidisers China, the European Union and Japan spend billions of dollars a year to prop up their fishing fleets, contributing to over-fishing that is decimating wild stocks. The WTO was tasked by world leaders in 2015 with striking a deal to roll them back but missed a key deadline last year. read more

Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took charge of the global trade watchdog in March, has made fisheries a top priority and urged ministers in an invitation letter seen by Reuters “to find the common resolve and spirit of compromise that the WTO needs to bring these twenty-year-plus negotiations to a successful conclusion at this meeting”.

Intensive negotiations will continue in Geneva with the chair of the talks, Santiago Wills, expected to issue a fourth version of the draft agreement this week.

Read the full story at Reuters

Ambitious Vision for North Carolina’s Oysters Outlined in New 5-Year Plan

April 29, 2021 — Restoring oysters can boost water quality and offer shoreline protection from storms, and this week the North Carolina Coastal Federation released its five-year action plan, outlining steps to keep this valuable shellfish thriving.

Leda Cunningham, officer for Conserving Marine Life in the U.S. at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said North Carolina’s oysters are in good shape, but face threats from storms, poor water quality and the impacts of climate change.

She believes the new Oyster Blueprint offers an example for other coastal states of how to restore and protect oyster populations.

“In those 15 or so years, it’s led to measurable progress in the state, and that is really a result of the inclusive systematic approach that Coastal Fed has taken with its partners to identify challenges and opportunities with this special resource,” Cunningham stated.

Guided by the Blueprint over the years, North Carolina has restored nearly 450 acres of oyster habitat, grown shellfish aquaculture from a $250,000 to $5 million industry, increased the number of shellfish farms in the state tenfold, and developed a nationally recognized shell recycling program.

Erin Fleckenstein, coastal scientist for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, said the plan includes new management strategies to help safeguard North Carolina’s waters, particularly in the Newport River and Stump Sound.

Read the full story at the Public News Service

Key U.S. Pacific Fishery Council Takes Vital Step to Protect Oceanic Whitetip Sharks

April 27, 2021 — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (Wespac) took a major step forward at its March meeting by recommending the prohibition of wire leaders on the Hawaii deep-set longline tuna fishery in the western Pacific Ocean. Wire leaders, also known as steel trace, are used by vessels fishing for bigeye tuna, but when sharks are accidentally caught on the line, they are unable to free themselves and frequently die as bycatch. This is a problem for the oceanic whitetip shark, which is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A switch to nylon, or monofilament, leaders, which are easier for sharks to bite through, would reduce mortality and help give this shark population a chance to recover.

In addition, the council recommended the development of a requirement to remove as much fishing line, or trailing gear, from an accidentally caught shark as possible—that is, to cut the line as close to the shark as possible before release. That would further protect sharks once freed from a longline. Council staff estimated that these two requirements would reduce mortality by 17% to 36%.

It’s now critical that the council finalize these much-needed decisions at its June meeting and that federal fishery managers implement them. The recommendations have wide support—including from the Hawaii Longline Association, which announced that its member fishing vessels would voluntarily ban wire leaders months before the council recommendation.

Read the full story at Pew Charitable Trusts

NORTH CAROLINA: Researchers talk coastal habitat risks from sea level rise, other hazards

April 22, 2021 — Coastal habitat loss may cost North Carolinians the natural benefits the habitat provides, but researchers are working to keep decision makers informed of the risks and potential solutions.

Representatives from Pew Charitable Trusts, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Duke University and East Carolina University held an online workshop Monday discussing the hazards coastal habitat faces and how scientists and state officials are working to preserve and protect it. Pew Charitable Trusts Director Jennifer Browning said the workshop was a part of the trusts’ coastal habitat learning series and evolved from approximately three decades of fisheries management.

“It’s been wonderful to watch how the (N.C.) Coastal Habitat Protection Plan has evolved,” said Ms. Browning, who was on the team which developed the CHPP.

Duke University Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions Ecosystem Services program director Lydia Olander said Duke researchers, in partnership with the U.S. Climate Alliance, have been taking part in a project to map the effects of sea level rise on coastal ecosystem services. She said the project focused on six Atlantic Coast states, including North Carolina.

Read the full story at the Carteret County News-Times

JERRY FRASER: Don’t look up: 30×30 dusts off an old scapegoat

March 24, 2021 — It’s nice to know that among some in the science community, the threat of covid-19 is viewed as being on the wane.

Last week, the journal Nature postulated that “after a year of pandemic-induced delays, 2021 is set to be a big year for biodiversity, climate and the ocean.”

While I look forward to bidding good riddance to the pandemic, it’s hard to image that a “big year” for Nature’s editorial writers will be anything but a pain in the butt for commercial fisherman.

One reason for the excitement at Nature and elsewhere is the expectation that the advance of the 30×30 agenda, which calls for protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, will resume.

In the words of the Pew Charitable Trusts, “The call for 30 percent marine protection is part of securing a healthy ocean where marine parks enhance fisheries and sound fisheries management enhances biodiversity conservation.”

If you’re wondering what a marine park is going to look like, it’s a stretch of ocean that will host recreational and indigenous fishermen, wind farms, ecotourism, and in some cases, oil wells. In rare instances, there could be a token commercial fishing vessel, its permits held by an NGO.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a growing issue worldwide. FIU hosts conference in search of solutions

March 5, 2021 — Every time wild-caught fish is bought at a restaurant, store or waterfront dock, there is a one in five chance that it was caught outside of the law, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated – IUU – fishing is a growing issue worldwide. The global, economic and environmental effects are catastrophic, with coastlines around Latin America being some of the most impacted.

Recently during a telephonic press briefing, United States Coast Guard Vice Admiral Steven Poulin spoke on the urgency of the matter and the role the Coast Guard is playing in addressing this problem.

“IUU fishing undermines coastal state sovereignty,” Poulin said. “We in the Coast Guard are putting our strategies to address this problem into action.”

Southern Command is also making IUU fishing one of its priorities. At the IUU Fishing Conference on Feb. 3, Southern Command and other key groups emphasized the need for international cooperation, collaboration, leveraged technology, and transparency. Hosted by FIU’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, the conference reached more than 3,000 viewers from more than 49 countries.

Read the full story at FIU News

Once destined for raw bars, 5 million oysters are being rerouted to coastal restoration efforts

February 24, 2021 — On a recent cold, clear January afternoon, only the occasional customer shuffled in to buy bags of mollusks from Parson’s Seafood, along New Jersey’s southern coast. The place belongs to fifth-generation shop owner Dale Parsons, one of 15 or so dedicated commercial shellfish farmers in the region. Most of them are “hurting bad,” he said, since the pandemic shuttered the buck-a-shuck eateries and raw bars that purchase the bulk of their lumpy, thick-shelled product.

Outside and down the pier, Parsons loaded 10,000 or so muddy oysters in plastic bushel baskets into his skiff, and another 10,000-plus in a second boat helmed by his employees. Under waxy blue skies, they nosed out into Tuckerton Creek, motoring around a raft of mallards diving in marsh grass, past tight clusters of shuttered summer homes built on stilts, and out into the dazzling sun reflecting off lower Barnegat Bay. The plan was to dump both loads overboard.

The dumping, though, would serve a purpose. Parsons’ oysters had been purchased by the Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration initiative (SOAR), a seven-state program co-coordinated by the Pew Charitable Trusts and The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with various state agencies, NGOs, and universities.

At the end of its first phase, begun last October and slated to wrap up later this year, SOAR will have spent $2 million on 5 million oysters from 100 oyster farms in New Jersey, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Washington state. The purpose, from SOAR’s perspective, is to bulk up 20 reef restoration projects and hopefully push some of them into “exponential growth phase,” where they rapidly create habitat for more oysters and other marine species, clean the water, and mitigate coastal flooding.

Read the full story at The Counter

Technology Can Improve Safety and Security for Observers on Fishing Vessels

February 23, 2021 — The following was released by Pew Charitable Trusts:

The eastern Pacific Ocean is home to valuable tuna fisheries worth more than $5 billion each year. These stocks are managed by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which is responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of tunas and other marine species, as well as enforcing rules to end and prevent illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Transshipment is a key part of the seafood supply chain in which catch is transferred from a fishing vessel to a carrier vessel that then takes it to port, but management of transshipment is rife with loopholes, and IUU-caught fish can easily slip through the cracks.

For years, onboard fisheries observers have been the primary source of independent information on at-sea activity, collecting data on catch, transshipment, and more, and reporting rules violations and potential IUU activity to domestic authorities and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) such as IATTC. But serving as an onboard observer is a risky job, and the casualty rate on fishing vessels is notoriously high. Observers can be at sea for months at a time, often without quick access to medical care or assistance if they are in a threatening situation.

Last year, MRAG Americas, a fisheries-focused consultancy, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Walmart Foundation, deployed a new model of two-way satellite communications devices to several IATTC transshipment observers to improve real-time exchanges of information and, hopefully, help observers feel more secure onboard vessels.

Read the full release here

FAO Committee on Fisheries members urged to adopt global transshipment guidelines by 2022

February 10, 2021 — At this month’s meeting of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Committee on Fisheries (COFI), members were urged by sustainability-focused nonprofits to develop global transshipment guidelines, targeting adoption as early as 2022.

The Pew Charitable Trusts Senior Officer for International Fisheries Dawn Borg Constanzi told SeafoodSource she is hopeful the meeting will lead to the development of transshipment guidelines, which will include effective monitoring measures, universal authorization requirements, and information-sharing procedures.

Read the full story at Seafood Source