A worker peels the spine from a tuna at New York's Fulton Fish Market—the world's largest after the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, Japan—on March 29, 2013.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MINCHILLO, AP
Published April 9, 2014
Do
you know if the fish on your plate is legal? A new study estimates that
20 to 32 percent of wild-caught seafood imported into the U.S. comes
from illegal or "pirate" fishing. That's a problem, scientists say,
because it erodes the ability of governments to limit overfishing and
the ability of consumers to know where their food comes from.
The
estimated illegal catch is valued at $1.3 billion to $2.1 billion
annually and represents between 15 and 26 percent of the total value of
wild-caught seafood imported into the U.S., report scientists in a new study in the journal Marine Policy.
Study co-author Tony Pitcher
says those results surprised his team. "We didn't think it would be as
big as that. To think that one in three fish you eat in the U.S. could
be illegal, that's a bit scary," says Pitcher, who is a professor at the
fisheries center of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
To
get those numbers, Pitcher and three other scientists analyzed data on
seafood imported into the U.S. in 2011. They combed through government
and academic reports, conducted fieldwork, and interviewed stakeholders.
The
scientists report that tuna from Thailand had the highest volume of
illegal products, 32,000 to 50,000 metric tons, representing 25 to 40
percent of tuna imports from that country. That was followed by pollack
from China, salmon from China, and tuna from the Philippines, Vietnam,
and Indonesia. Other high volumes were seen with octopus from India,
snappers from Indonesia, crabs from Indonesia, and shrimp from Mexico,
Indonesia, and Ecuador.
Imports from Canada all had
levels of illegal catches below 10 percent. So did imports of clams from
Vietnam and toothfish from Chile.
NG STAFF. SOURCE: P. GANAPATHIRAJU, ET AL., MARINE POLICY
In response to the study, Connie Barclay, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Fisheries,
said, "We agree that [pirate] fishing is a global problem, but we do
not agree with the statistics that are being highlighted in the report."
Barclay says data are too scarce to make the conclusions verifiable.
But,
she adds, "NOAA is working to stop [pirate] fishing and the import of
these products into the U.S. market." She points to recent increased
collaboration with other law enforcement agencies and improved
electronic tracking of trade data.
Pirate Fishing
The
U.S. is important to consider when it comes to fishing because it is
tied with Japan as the largest single importer of seafood, with each
nation responsible for about 13 to 14 percent of the global total, says
Pitcher. Americans spent $85.9 billion on seafood in 2011, with about
$57.7 billion of that spent at restaurants, $27.6 billion at retail, and
$625 million on industrial fish products.
However, what
few Americans realize, says Pitcher, is that roughly 90 percent of all
seafood consumed in the United States is imported, and about half of
that is wild caught, according to NOAA.
Pirate fishing
is fishing that is unreported to authorities or done in ways that
circumvent fishery quotas and laws. In their paper, the authors write
that pirate fishing "distorts competition, harms honest fishermen,
weakens coastal communities, promotes tax evasion, and is frequently
associated with transnational crime such as narcotraffic and slavery at
sea." (See: "West Africans Fight Pirate Fishing With Cell Phones.")
Scientists
estimate that between 13 and 31 percent of all seafood catches around
the world are illegal, worth $10 billion to $23.5 billion per year. That
illegal activity puts additional stress on the world's fish stocks, 85
percent of which are already fished to their biological limit or beyond,
says Tony Long, the U.K.-based director of the Pew Charitable Trust's Ending Illegal Fishing Project.
"The
ocean is vast, so it is very difficult for countries to control what
goes on out there," says Long. He explains that pirate fishers are often
crafty, going to remote areas where enforcement is lax. They may leave a
port with a certain name on the boat and the flag of a particular
country, engage in illegal fishing, then switch the name and flag and
unload their catch at a different port.
Read More Here
.....
The
oceans are vast and humans are small — as the monthlong hunt for a
vanished Malaysian jetliner demonstrates. Think of the challenge, then,
for law enforcement and fisheries managers in going after fleets of
shady boats that engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
These criminals ply the seas and sell their catches with impunity,
making off with an estimated 11 million to 26 million metric tons of
stolen fish each year, a worldwide haul worth about $10 billion to $23.5
billion. Many use banned gear like floating gillnets, miles long, that
indiscriminately slaughter countless unwanted fish along with seabirds,
marine mammals, turtles and other creatures.
The
danger that illegal fishing poses to vulnerable ocean ecosystems is
self-evident, but the harm goes beyond that. Illegal competition hurts
legitimate commercial fleets. And lawless fishermen are prone to other
crimes, like forced labor and drug smuggling. The convergence of illegal
fishing with other criminal enterprises makes it in every country’s
interest to devise an effective response.
That’s
the job of the Port State Measures Agreement. It is a treaty adopted by
the United Nations in 2009 that seeks to thwart the poachers in ports
when they try to unload their ill-gotten catches. Many countries have
been unable or unwilling to enforce their own laws to crack down on
poachers flying their flags.
Read More Here
.....
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