Saving Seafood

Mixed signals jumble outlook for China’s seafood market

June 29, 2021 — China’s seafood market has been a jumble of mixed signals, with import volumes recovering but prices remaining soft.

In a recent financial update, Singapore-based high-end seafood restaurant chain Jumbo Seafood announced its intention to open more restaurants in China, after posting a strong performance in mainland China in the first five months of 2021. The company currently operates restaurants in five Chinese cities, but had pulled back from expansion in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Philippine fishermen stranded at sea by pandemic: ‘We think about jumping overboard’

September 11, 2020 — Anthony Medina’s daughter was 5 months old when he left the Philippines and set sail for the Indian Ocean in December 2018 on an odyssey where his livelihood collided with a pandemic that has kept him adrift at sea and exiled from home.

For more than a year, his days have been a monotonous blur of endless fishing on the Oceanstar 86, a 465-foot-long vessel with a crew of about three dozen. As long as there was seafood for their nets, including tuna, crab and squid, the crew members had to haul them in, clean and freeze them.

When their boat arrived in Singapore in March, Medina planned on catching a flight home. But he was shocked to learn that a virus outbreak had closed borders and shuttered ports, keeping him out of the Philippines and trapped on the fishing boat.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Drug trafficking could be putting ‘fragile fisheries’ at risk, study says

July 6, 2020 — The fishing boat flew a Singaporean flag as it sailed toward Batam Island in Indonesia. But when Indonesian Navy officers intercepted the vessel and boarded it in February 2018, they discovered that the boat, and its four-person crew, were actually from Taiwan. Flying a false flag wasn’t the only offense — customs officials also found 41 rice sacks packed with a ton of methamphetamine, or crystal meth, hidden beneath food supplies in the vessel’s hold.

The use of fishing vessels to transport drugs is a fairly common occurrence, according to a new study published in Fish and Fisheries. In fact, the study found that drug trafficking on fishing vessels has actually tripled over the last eight years, accounting for about 15% of the global retail value of illicit drugs.

Dyhia Belhabib, the paper’s lead author as well as the principal fisheries investigator at Ecotrust Canada and founder of Spyglass, an online tool that maps out vessels involved in maritime crimes, said there’s actually a distinct lack of data on drug trafficking in the fisheries sector. This study aimed to bridge that gap.

To investigate the relationship between the drug trade and global fisheries, Belhabib and her co-researchers gathered all of the available data on 292 reported global cases between 2010 and 2017, and used estimation techniques to fill in any missing information. For instance, when they had the amount of drugs, but not the price, they calculated prices based on data on the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) database.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Development of cell-based shrimp snagged by a bottleneck

June 25, 2019 — Shiok Meats, based in Singapore, made headlines when it unveiled a small quantity of lab-grown shrimp meat in the form of “siew mai” dumplings at the Disruption in Food and Sustainability Summit in March. Only three people – all associated with the company – got a taste, but it was a proof that the goal was achievable.

The company may have a leg up on competitors working on beef, as CEO Sandhya Sriram has confirmed to SeafoodSource that fish and crustacean cell culture is easier than in mammals because they tolerate lower oxygen levels and temperatures. Diffusion of oxygen to tissues becomes a problem when cells are grown in three-dimensional shapes. The cells’ ability to tolerate lower temperatures also reduces heating costs.

Despite these advantages of working with shrimp, the cost is still exorbitant; the eight dumplings, containing a small amount of cultured shrimp cells, cost around USD 5,000 (EUR 4,386) and took a few months to produce. The main barrier to cost-efficient production, according to Sriram, is the media.

“The cells grow in a nutrient mix/broth/soup called ‘media’ which is a mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fats – this mix currently is only produced by pharmaceutical companies as the clean meat industry is an extension of the stem cell industry used for therapy and organogenesis,” Sriram said. “Since this media now is pharma-grade, it is extremely expensive. The cost of production will go down once we find plant-based, edible and sustainable sources of nutrients in which the cells will grow.”

Organogenisis is the production of organs for transplant in the medical industry. The term “clean meat” is meant to contrast lab-grown meat from that grown in farmed, or even wild conditions, as these may contain antibiotics, pollution or parasites.

The emphasis on plant-based media is important because the majority of media currently used for in-vitro cell culture of eukaryotic cells is fetal bovine serum (FBS), which comes from blood drawn from a bovine (cow) fetus at the slaughterhouse. As an example of the high cost of this media, a case of 10 500 milliliter bottles of Corning-brand fetal bovine serum is available from a supplier for USD 5,150 (EUR 4,517).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NEW YORK TIMES: China Wants Fish, So Africa Goes Hungry

May 4, 2017 — Of all the stresses that humans have inflicted on the world’s oceans, including pollution and global warming, industrial fishing ranks high. For years, trawlers capable of scouring the ocean floor, and factory ships trailing driftnets and longlines baited with thousands of hooks, have damaged once-abundant fisheries to the point where, the United Nations says, 90 percent of them are now fully exploited or facing collapse.

The damage is not just to the fish and the ecosystem but also to people who depend on them for food and income. This is particularly true in Africa. In 2008, in two striking articles, The Times reported that mechanized fleets from the European Union, Russia and China had nearly picked clean the oceans off Senegal and other northwest African countries, ruining coastal economies.

It’s still happening, but now, according to a report by The Times’s Andrew Jacobs, China stands alone as the major predator.

With its own waters heavily overfished, and being forced to forage elsewhere to feed its people, the Chinese government commands a fleet of nearly 2,600 vessels, 10 times larger than the United States fleet, all heavily subsidized. As Zhang Hongzhou of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University observes, “For China’s leaders, ensuring a steady supply of aquatic products is not just about good economics but social stability and political legitimacy.”

Read the full opinion piece at the New York Times

China Fishery, Pacific Andes file bankruptcy in US

July 1, 2016 — Pacific Andes International Holding (PAIH) and its subsidiary China Fishery Group have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported.

The Hong Kong and Singapore-listed companies submitted the filing June 30, in the southern district of New York, along with more than 15 affiliates.

The Journal said four affiliates including Pacific Andes Resources Development (PARD), the Hong Kong-based parent company of China Fishery, have filed for chapter 15, a part of the bankruptcy code which covers international insolvencies.

The newspaper adds the filing will allow the company to benefit from US bankruptcy law, including protections that prevent creditors from seizing assets.

Citing court papers, the Journal writes that China Fishery officials said they filed for bankruptcy to protect the company’s business from the possibility of “hostile and aggressive action” from certain creditors.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News