Seafood sustainability Archives

Prestige Oysters is the first MSC-certified oyster fishery in the Americas

February 18, 2022 — Prestige Oyster private oyster fishery, based in the U.S. states of Texas and Louisiana, has become the first Marine Stewardship Council-certified oyster fishery in the Americas and the sixth oyster fishery certified globally.

Prestige Oysters is a family-owned fishery based in San Leon, Texas, U.S.A., and considered a wild oyster fishery – a rarity as 95 percent of oysters consumed in restaurants in the U.S. are farm-raised. The certification allows Prestige Oyster products to carry the MSC blue fish label.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Sustainability experts: Systems and individual mapping key for seafood’s sustainability movement

March 19, 2021 — The sustainability movement in seafood encompasses a vast network of initiatives and individuals committed to driving lasting change.

Working within the movement can feel “like being in a galaxy,” according to Walton Family Foundation Senior Environmental Program Officer Teresa Ish, in that it inspires awe and, at the same time, a sense of uncertainty about where to turn next.

“It’s hard to see the galaxy when you’re sitting inside it,” Ish said during a Seafood2030 keynote panel at this week’s Seafood Expo North America Reconnect.

Stockholm Resilience Centre Researcher Per Olsson, who joined Ish for the session “Resilience, Innovation, and Transformation: Bouncing Beyond in a Post-COVID World,” agreed navigating sustainability systems is nuanced, expansive work. That’s why he advises seafood industry stakeholders to start out focused on creating a systems-mapping process.

“If you want to start somewhere, I think systems mapping is really important, to get a view of the system that you’re trying to change,” Olsson said. “It’s about mapping components and the interactions between them, but also where in the transformation you are. Are you before a crisis, sort of in the preparation phase? Or has the crisis happened and you’re trying to rebuild?”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

FishWise report outlines steps to improve labor conditions at sea

March 15, 2019 — Nonprofit seafood sustainability consultancy FishWise has released a report providing suggestions for ways seafood companies can improve vessel monitoring and transparency.

The report, “Open Water: Guidance on Vessel Transparency for Seafood Companies,” recommends companies obtain an International Maritime Organization (IMO) number for each fishing vessel, be proactive in transferring data to public vessel lists, and support the implementation of international agreements related to illegal fishing, improving vessel safety and standards, and protecting workers.

The report was issued in response to growing concern for the treatment of fishing crews on the high seas, including from U.S. government agencies, FishWise CEO Tobias Aguirre said in a press release.

“In order to safeguard human rights and reduce illegal activity at sea, companies – along with NGOs and governments – must commit to initiatives which improve vessel monitoring and transparency,” Aguirre said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: Piping down on pollution

June 27, 2018 — The clock was ticking on the young crew from Seafood Sustainability on Tuesday, as they rushed to complete about 20 new fishing line collection containers that will be donated to Gloucester and other Cape Ann communities to install at docks and other high-volume boating and fishing areas.

The problem was that it was Tuesday and the St. Peter’s Fiesta was set to begin a mere 24 hours later. And Fiesta, as anyone knows who’s experienced it, tends to monopolize the time and focus of the Gloucester Harbormaster corps as the city’s water-borne population swells to huge numbers of revelers.

“We’re rushing as fast as we can,” Kate Christiansen, the project manager for Essex-based Seaside Sustainability’s “Reel In and Recycle” program, said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon. “We’re in the process of building them right now and trying to get as much done as we can before Fiesta.”

Literally as Christiansen spoke, Josh Sheridan, Essex Sustainability’s marine science coordinator, led a team of three interns in an impromptu assembly line to transform 6-inch PVC piping — donated by the Building Center on the Gloucester waterfront — into monofilament collection containers.

Working in a backyard on Marchant Street in Gloucester, Ryan Keeth of Belmont, Jack McMahon of Hamilton and Sophia Guerriero of Essex toiled in the bright sunshine to complete the marked recovery units designed to mitigate the environmental pollution and navigational hazard of abandoned monofilament fishing line in oceans and other marine venues.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Legit Fish is Adding Validity to a Peculiar Part of the Seafood Industry

March 14, 2018 — Certain entrepreneurs have an interest in a particular topic or industry that serves as an underlying theme to their career.

Taking a look at the career of Legit Fish Founder and CEO Michael Carroll, you will see he has been involved with the seafood industry for nearly 30 years. Carroll has worked as a commercial fisherman, in various marketing roles selling cod and haddock to grocery stores, and as a business consultant for seafood-companies.

And now, he is the founder of a seafood-focused tech startup in a city both catered to tech and seafood.

Legit Fish provides an administrative and tracking platform for seafood offloaders and independent fisherman to certify and market their fish as local. The software application replaces the current paper and Excel logistics systems with a cohesive cloud-based system that offers a scalable and unmatched level of traceability in the seafood industry.

The seafood offloader simply inputs the vessel, species, sizes, and relevant harvest information which is automatically transmitted to federal harvest records, inventory, sales, accounting etc. substantially reducing labor and transaction efficiencies. The application verifies the accuracy of the product information against the official government harvest record through proprietary API access and approves the printing of labels.

“Our software is built for traceability and logistics. If you lie on a federal harvest record, there are consequences, therefore we ground our product origin claims on this record. It’s up to us to make sure that the seafood distributors are honest, while still trying to be a business solution,” Carroll said. “With our current business partners, we can authenticate landings in Boston, New Bedford and Gloucester which represents an estimated 70% of the New England Groundfish Fishery and 30% of Atlantic Sea Scallops Fishery.”

Read the full story at VentureFizz

Fishing treaty fee dispute is keeping vessels out of Pacific

January 17, 2016 — Two San Diego-based fishing concerns say they are no longer able to uphold their intention to provide the market with sustainable, free-school tuna harvested in the Western and Central Pacific Oceans (WCPO). South Pacific Tuna Corporation (SoPac) and its affiliate, The Global Companies (Ocean Global, LLC, Sea Global, LLC, and Pacific Global LLC), made the announcement on Sunday.

According to their press release, this is a result of halted U.S. Tuna Fleet operations as directed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which advised last month that all U.S. vessels are prohibited from fishing in the Western Pacific Ocean (WPO) until licenses from the Pacific Island Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) are issued for 2016.

The companies committed to establishing a Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified tuna program in January 2015, and spent the following nine months establishing chain of custody programs to meet and exceed the requirements. MSC standards are considered the most stringent of the current managed sustainability programs.

Read the full story Samoa News