Just hours after World Oceans Day ended last week, the Obama administration affirmed it was on the verge of making it easier to farm fish in federal waters, a move that some think will dramatically change the future of America’s coastlines, wild fish populations, and even the way we eat.
Photo: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
According to the D.C.-based lobbying group Food & Water Watch, the new law, jointly announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Commerce, promotes a national policy that “paves the way for dirty, crowded factory farm fishing to flourish in U.S. waters.”
Currently, farm-raised fish in the United States can only be grown in the three miles of offshore waters controlled by individual states. The new law would allow regional “management councils” to operate in federal waters, beyond the three-mile limit, and would expand fish farms throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
Obviously, growing fish in the Gulf, where there is still much uncertainty about the health of its waters due to last year’s BP oil spill, comes with concerns. The verdict is still out as to how both the Gulf itself and its marine life are faring after the dumping of 2 million gallons of oil and another 800,000 gallons of toxic dispersants.
Those for the new regulations, led by the NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, say the changes will take pressure off wild stocks that live close to shore and help slow U.S. dependence on fish imported from abroad. Today 84 percent of the seafood we eat in the States comes from elsewhere, and we currently run a $9 billion dollar seafood trade deficit.
The primary reason there is pressure to expand fish farming is because the public is demanding more and more fish. Global fish consumption has grown by 65 percent in the past four decades, and today more than half of the fish we eat comes from farms. Requests from other government departments only encourage the demand: Last month the USDA suggested people eat twice as much seafood to meet new dietary recommendations.
Food & Water Watch contends the new policy “conveniently fails” to mention that 70 percent of the seafood caught or farmed in the U.S. is shipped abroad. If that trend continues, even as the fish farming industry in the U.S. expands to $5 billion dollars a year, we would end up sending most of the factory-farmed fish overseas but still keep the pollution and impact on wild stocks.
One effect of all that farming, says F&WW, would be the generation of untreated sewage, equivalent to that of 17.1 million people, or twice the number of residents of New York City.
Multiple recent reports suggest that even the most aggressive aquaculture plans will not help protect wild stocks or provide for the demand boom.
At the conclusion last week of European Fish Week, organized by Ocean2012, a coalition hoping to change the way the EU fishes, it was clear that protecting the remaining wild stocks around the globe will not be easy. Demand for fish, thus farms, is booming across Africa as well, from Egypt to Nigeria. Fishing fleets continue to grow—and grow more sophisticated—from the North Atlantic to Antarctica. Reasonable remedies to slow the take, including lowering quotas, limiting seasons, and taking away fishing licenses, have so far not worked.
Next week Australia’s WorldFish Center and U.S.-based Conservation International will release a much-anticipated first assessment of the status and impact of the global aquaculture trade.
Where exactly does all this farmed seafood come from? Asia accounts for 91 percent of the world’s aquaculture; China alone is responsible for 61 percent of the world’s total, much of it resource-demanding carp. The reality is that feeding some farmed fish, like salmon, shrimp, and prawns, requires mulching wild caught fish into pellets for food, further impacting the future of wild stocks. New guidelines suggest only that there should be more research on “alternate feeds.”
One small piece of good news on the fish front: Retailers and restaurants are jumping on the sustainable seafood bandwagon. Trader Joe’s, pushed hard by Greenpeace and others, says that by the end of 2012 it will offer only sustainable fish in its 365 stores. Previously the company has eliminated heavily overfished Chilean Sea Bass, Orange Roughy, and Red Snapper from its refrigerators.
(For the rest of my dispatches, go to takepart.com)
Nonprofit advocate organization Oceana has launched a big, new, years-in-the-making campaign against what it calls “seafood fraud.” Its team of scientists has concluded that more than 70 percent of the seafood we eat in the U.S. is mislabeled, often on purpose.
Photo: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Americans should have the right to know what is on their plates. If you eat seafood, the impacts of the global fraud uncovered by Oceana are being felt in the seas, in your pocketbook, and in your health.
The report, “Bait and Switch: How Seafood Fraud Hurts Our Oceans, Our Wallets and Our Health,” concludes that most people, including many buyers of seafood for grocery chains and markets, don’t really know where the fish came from … nor can they recognize one species of fish from another.
At the Washington, D.C., press conference announcing the report, Oceana laid out skinless filets of halibut next to fluke, red snapper next to hake and farmed next to wild salmon. Virtually no one was able to tell the difference. A taste test—between tilapia and vermilion snapper, cooked in lemon caper sauce—fooled everyone. If the meat is frozen or canned, human ability to distinguish tilapia from pollock disappears.
The over-arching goal of “Bait and Switch” is to require proper labeling on all fish, informing consumers exactly what they’re buying and where it comes from. Right now, illegal fishing operations—which mislabel and smuggle, falsify paperwork, and profit off bribery and corruption—evade all but the most rigorous testing. Increasing the difficulty of accurate labeling, most fish is processed at sea, and species are obscured long before the boat ever hits a dock.
If you’re paying to buy an expensive fish caught in the wild (salmon, for example), but are being sold a filet grown cheaply on a fish farm in China (tilapia), you’re the loser. On the health side, certain species are more prone to industrial pollutants and some contain allergens you should know about when ordering or buying.
If we can’t pinpoint where fish are coming from, we can’t monitor and control overfishing, wreaking havoc on abused fisheries. According to Oceana, the U.S. is “an easy target for dumping illegal, poor quality and unpopular seafood because controls are few and far between.” Eighty percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. comes from overseas.
Solutions are within reach. DNA testing of fish is doable and not overly expensive. The problem is introducing testing in the field and enforcing its use.
I spoke with Beth Lowell, the Washington D.C.-based campaign director of the Seafood Fraud campaign, and she was optimistic that the report will result in real change.
TakePart: What’s been the response to the “Seafood Fraud” report?
Beth Lowell: Great. The media continues to be interested in the story and not just from the environmental reporters, but also consumer and food reporters as well. For the most part, the reporters that I have talked with have been surprised at the amount of seafood fraud in the US market.
TakePart: What about the seafood industry itself?
Beth Lowell: The seafood industry has been relatively supportive as well. Fraud is an issue they know is a problem for the industry. National Fisheries Institute, an industry organization, formed the Better Seafood Board—one of area they focus on is fraud. Seafood fraud hurts the honest fisherman and honest seafood industry players.
TakePart: What’s next?
Beth Lowell: This week the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to consider S. 50, the Commercial Seafood Consumer Protection Act, which would be a first step in addressing fraud in the U.S. In February 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on seafood fraud. This bill, S 50, implements many of the GAOs recommendations. We are supportive of the bill.
Overall, we are looking for improved traceability in the seafood chain so that fish can be tracked from fishing vessel to plate. This will help eliminate species substitution and other forms of fraud.
Want to make your voice heard? Write the Food and Drug Administration and tell them you want safe, legal, honestly labeled seafood.
They’re back! We’re not talking hurricanes, though that season is officially underway.
Photo: Dani Cardona/Reuters
And, no, this is not about sharks; Discovery’s dubious Shark Week doesn’t start until the end of July.
No, it’s time for the increasingly unpopular annual return of jellyfish swarms to beaches around the world. Last year, the gelatinous, free-floating sea creatures made much of the western Mediterranean unswimmable. This past weekend—the unofficial start of summer—thousands of nasty, golf-ball-size jellyfish washed ashore on a 10-mile stretch of Florida’s east coast, stinging a reported 1,800 swimmers. Red warning flags were posted on beaches from Cocoa Beach to Cape Canaveral.
Thanks to the overfishing of big predator fish and warmer ocean waters, jellies are showing up sooner, in bigger numbers, and far beyond home territories. In Florida they clogged the shallows and took over the wet sand of the beach. Despite air temps in the 90s and a water temperature of 79, wetsuits were very popular. Innocent kids picked up the jellyfish and tossed them at each other, only to be stung. Tough guys waded into the shallows attempting to shrug the stings off, but quickly ran toward lifeguard stands that had stocked up with vinegar-and-water solutions to diffuse the itching, burning and rashes, which I guess beats urinating on them. Also, Benadryl cream is said to alleviate itching and swelling. At least two jelly victims were hospitalized.
The beachings are worse for the jellies than for man; as soon as the creatures hit the sand, they start to die. So many of them are massed in the shallows that they soon run out of food.
Even more surprising than the quantity of jellyfish in Florida was the species. The critters washing ashore by the thousands were so-called mauve stingers, which haven’t dotted Florida beaches for more than a decade (more common are the blue Portuguese man-of-war or cannonball varieties). Compact but fitted with long tentacles, mauve stingers are exactly the same jellyfish that harassed Mediterranean beaches during the summer of 2010.
Scientists believe the stingers were transported across the Atlantic in the Gulf Stream, which wraps around the coast of Florida, suggesting a steady migration of the mauves will menace Gator state beaches throughout this summer. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, biologists who study the Irish Sea are blaming the overfishing of herring for giving jellyfish an “exponential boost” in population. The trend has been growing since 2005.
Though routes taken by these jellyfish to these beaches are still under study, it’s clear that humankind taking 100 to 120 million tons of predators out of the sea in the past 20 years has left plenty of room for jellyfish populations to explode. Jellyfish thrive in disturbed marine ecosystems, loving dead zones and seabed’s that have been raked by trawling nets. Powerful currents and global shipping fleets give the bouyant pests free travel around the world.
In Florida, the only person happier than pharmacists selling out their Benadryl is a Cocoa Beach, Florida, coconut salesman. He claims the less time people spend in the water cooling off, the thirstier they are.
(For the rest of my dispatches, go to takepart.com)
Fakarava Atoll, the Tuamotus, French Polynesia—Maru’s 16-foot, plywood fishing boat hugs the eastern edge of Passe Garuae. The boat is steered by one metal rod coming straight out of the floorboards in his left hand. The accelerator is another rod, held tightly in his right hand. Only two passes access the atoll’s 36-by-21 mile lagoon. Twice a day, big water rushes either in or out. Navigation requires years of experience.
Photo: Luis Davilla/Getty Images
As we edge out onto the South Pacific for a day of fishing, currents at the heart of the pass are running out at about seven knots, creating what appear to be standing riptides. If we were anywhere near the center, we’d be cartwheeled by the fast-moving water and big waves.
Maru, a 46-year-old native of Fakarava—the Tuamotus’ second-largest atoll—has driven boats through here thousands of time, so far without incident.
Surprisingly few people in the population of about 700 on this remote atoll 150 miles north and east of Tahiti make a living off fishing. The big industry here—black pearls—has become more lucrative and in some respects easier. Though the boom in black pearls has ebbed in recent years due to flooding the market—every Polynesian with access to the ocean wants in on the business—pearls don’t require risking life and limb on the open ocean every day.
Maru tells me he prefers the fishing life over the intensive routine of seeding oysters and monitoring them for a year and a half, hoping they’ll produce pearls. His days are in a way idyllic, leaving from the docks of Fakarava’s one town around six and returning by two or three in the afternoon. His catch provides the bulk of the fresh fish for the atoll’s residents. Today he’ll take a dozen big mahi-mahi, spearing them from his boat while simultaneously steering and accelerating. He surveys for signs of a small school—watching for the big fish to break the surface—and then chases them down, tiring them. It requires a skill-set few Westerners can imagine: Steering, accelerating, scouting and spearing, all with only two hands.
A man of few words, especially when intent on the catch, Maru pulls in his last fish of the morning and admits that he feels “more alive” when he’s out on the sea. The ocean is nearly glassy-calm, but some days are not so close to paradise. Gray skies and big winds do occasionally visit this corner of French Polynesia.
Fishing for jacks or sharks inside the big lagoon is an option, but for the big, wild fish—bonito, yellow-fin tuna, mahi-mahi, barracuda or paru, a large red perch—the ocean is the place. Maru fishes six days a week. He assures me there are plenty of fish in his ocean and that he catches as much as he wants, on any day.
The big pressure here is not what the locals take from the sea; it’s the pressure of illegal fishing by big boats from China, Japan, Europe and South America. A 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) protects all of French Polynesia’s 130 islands. The territory does have agreements with some fishing fleets to allow quotas on yellow-fin tuna catches, but last year a Spanish trawler with motor trouble was towed into the Marquesan island of Nuka Hiva, loaded with illegally caught fish. A Venezuelan boat was fined $635,000, and its captain jailed for a month recently for taking 80 tons of tuna over a few weeks in the same waters.
Today’s beautiful, seemingly trouble-free waters are emblematic of a global ocean dilemma. Plenty of international and local laws protect against poaching and illegal fishing, but enforcement is very difficult. The 130 islands of Polynesia cover just 1,622 square miles of land; the territory includes nearly 1 million square miles of ocean. A small Navy supported by tax-dollars from France is at a loss to survey all that blue.
To Maru, such concerns come from another world. His focus is narrow, mostly on tomorrow, maybe the end of the week. He says he rarely sees signs of international fishermen—though they are out there, all around—and brags that on any given day he can fill his bright-red boat with big, colorful fish. The tricky challenge for him is that the market is not what it used to be.
“It used to be that everything I caught was sold in Fakarava,” he says, after navigating against still-outgoing currents in the pass and into the lagoon. “Now, because we get so much food flown in or by cargo boat from Tahiti, there are less people buying.” He often ends up freezing part of his catch and selling it to bigger boats heading back to Tahiti.
“It’s easier when I sell everything to my neighbors,” he says. “But wherever the fish sell, I’m happy.”
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
It looks like the first permit to allow open ocean fish farming in the U.S. may soon be granted to a Hawaii-based company, Kona Blue Water Farms. If successful, several other companies are in line to start-up soon in waters surrounding the 50th state.
The announcement by NOAA has raised alarms with consumer protection groups, in particular Washington D.C.-based Food & Water Watch, which has been closely monitoring this relatively untested form of wild seas aquaculture.
While fish farming near shore proliferates around the world, mass producing fish in floating pens or cages in open ocean waters – and a variety of potential problems ranging from pollution to the spreading of disease – is just starting to gain scrutiny.
According to Food & Water Watch, NOAA is classifying the new form of aquaculture as a kind of fishing so that it “can claim it has authority to issue a permit for this new ‘gear type.’ “It’s outrageous that NOAA is equating … a dangerous, large-scale polluting method of farming fish with fishing.”
For its part NOAA insists it is time the U.S. gets busy in the open ocean and that with wild stocks down and demand up all kinds of aquaculture need to be on the table. Today Americans consume 5 billion pounds of seafood a year, 84 percent of which is imported, resulting in a trade deficit of about $9 billion.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
French Leave, Eleuthera—Under a cloud-plumed sunrise at the end of a two-and-a-half-mile long beach, I watch a 14-foot plywood boat back into the morning surf. A trio of Bahamian men readies the craft for a day of spearfishing along the a near reef that parallels the 110-mile-long island. One will steer; another will watch and stack fish. The third—a lithe, fair-skinned black man with “Aries” tattooed on his upper arm—dons a thick wetsuit while we talk. He will dive and spear. They hope the day’s catch will include 40 grouper, maybe another 40 lobster.
The laws for all fishermen in the Bahamas are straightforward, no matter the size of the boat or crew: Boats must be 100 percent owned by Bahamians. They can use seine nets, hook and line or—Aries’s tools of choice this morning—the Hawaiian sling and spear. No long lines, no chemicals and no explosives are permitted in the Bahamas. The fishermen have no GPS or fish finders. Bigger boats, mostly based at the north end of the island, set up what the locals refer to as “condominiums,” slatted wooden traps to catch lobsters.
I watch the 14-foot plywood boat motor away up the coastline. The day will take the trio 30 miles down the coast and back by early afternoon, when they will cart their catch across the island. They will clean and hawk their fish from the boat ramp at Governor’s Harbor. Passing drivers slow at the roadside cutting table, observe, ask questions (“What you got today?” “How fresh?”) and decide to stop and buy … or not.
Aries tips a white plastic bucket filled with six-pound lobster to show off his catch. “It was a good day,” he says. When I ask if fishing is his passion, he admits not.
“I like being on the water, I can dive to 100 feet. I’m not afraid of anything down there, even the tiger sharks, but to be honest when construction is good here … It’s good for the fish because lots of guys, including me, stop going out.”
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
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