The law will come into force in national parks within two years and in all of the country’s marine protected areas by 2030
Greece has become the first country in Europe to announce a ban on bottom trawling in all of its national marine parks and protected areas.
The country said will spend €780m (£666m) to protect its “diverse and unique marine ecosystems”.
Continue reading...Justin Trudeau says allegations ‘extremely troubling’ after officers arrested First Nations men and confiscated their boots and phones
Two First Nations fishermen have said they were forced to walk shoeless for hours in the dark and cold after Canadian federal officers seized their boots and phones.
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said the allegations were “extremely troubling” amid mounting anger over the treatment of the Mi’kmaw fishermen, whose ordeal has prompted comparisons with the notorious “starlight tours” in which the police routinely abandoned Indigenous people in the bitter cold.
Continue reading...Open letter calls for Soil Association certification to be removed from industry, amid concerns of negative environmental impact
The British body that certifies food in the UK as organic has been accused of misleading consumers over its labelling of Scottish farmed salmon.
Thirty charities, conservation and community organisations, including WildFish, the Pesticide Action Network and Blue Marine Foundation, say the negative environmental impacts of the industry in Scotland “run completely counter” to the principles of the Soil Association’s promotion of healthy, humane and sustainable food.
Continue reading...An ice chunk broke loose from shore, stranding 122 winter anglers 30ft from shore until first responders were able to evacuate them
More than 100 people stranded while fishing on an ice chunk that broke free on a Minnesota lake were rescued on Friday, authorities said.
The anglers were on an ice floe in the south-eastern area of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami county – about 200 miles (322km) north-west of Minneapolis – when it broke loose from the shoreline.
Continue reading...The sardines and mackerel were found floating on the surface of the sea near the fishing port of Hakodate in Hokkaido
Officials in Japan have admitted they are struggling to determine why hundreds of tonnes of fish have washed ashore in recent days.
Earlier this month, an estimated 1,200 tonnes of sardines and mackerel were found floating on the surface of the sea off the fishing port of Hakodate in Hokkaido, forming a silver blanket stretching for more than a kilometre.
Continue reading...Five-year project to reduce environmental impact of industry has ‘all but failed’, report finds
British retailers and seafood companies have been accused of making misleading claims over “responsibly sourced” scampi or langoustines, according to campaigners, who say a five-year project to reduce the environmental impact of the £68m industry appears to be failing.
The companies, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, Young’s and Whitby Seafoods – the last of which is currently the largest supplier of breaded scampi to UK pubs, restaurants and fish and chip shops – are all part of a fishery improvement project (FIP) aimed at making the UK langoustine industry more sustainable.
Continue reading...Ethical concerns over sustainability and welfare have seen venues offering new choices to ubiquitous ‘chicken of the sea’
Salmon has undergone a rapid transformation in recent decades. Once a special treat, it is now ubiquitous. From drinks reception canapés to wedding functions, Christmas smoked salmon or simply wrapped in foil and baked on a week night, salmon is everywhere.
Scotland is world renowned for salmon production, and the fish makes up 40% of its total food exports; it is also Britain’s most valuable food export. Healthy, low in saturated fats and high in omega-3, salmon is a success story.
Continue reading...People are ahead of governments, says David Cooper, who blames backtracking on parties seeking ‘wedge issues’ for electoral gain
Government backtracking on environmental promises is being driven by politicians and vested interests, not the public, the acting UN biodiversity chief has said, as he called for greater support for those experiencing short-term costs from green policies.
David Cooper, acting executive secretary for the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), told the Guardian he believed the public mood was not moving against greater environmental protections, and that vested interests opposed to action on the climate crisis and nature loss were trying to frustrate progress.
Continue reading...The release of water from the Japanese nuclear plant has already caused the price of produce from surrounding coastal areas to drop
Awa-jinja is a place of pilgrimage for the more superstitious fishers of Shinchi-machi, a coastal town in Fukushima, who come here to lower their heads and ask the Shinto gods to look kindly on them as they prepare to steer their boats into the vast Pacific Ocean.
Today, though, the “safe waves” implicit in the shrine’s name are of little concern to the men and women coming to the end of the working day at the town’s fishing port.
Continue reading...Letters sent to two accreditation schemes say pollution is contributing to the extinction of a critically endangered fish species
More than 80 organisations around the globe have called for two international accreditation schemes to revoke sustainability certifications for salmon and trout farmed in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour, with letters labelling the certification “misleading”.
The letters to the Best Aquaculture Practices (Bap) and GlobalG.A.P schemes come as federal and state government workshops are held in Hobart to determine what urgent action is necessary to prevent the extinction of the critically endangered Maugean skate, an ancient fish species found only in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast.
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Continue reading...Some fishers say they lack information and worry about Japan’s plan to discharge treated wastewater into the sea
Every day fisher Charlie Maleb takes his string lines and his nets out from Wala Island, Vanuatu, into the Pacific Ocean.
The 54-year-old drops his net around 5am and waits an hour before pulling it out, hoping to catch sardines, poulet and mangrove fish. Later in the day Maleb drops a line attached to a traditional fishing rod, fashioned out of a long tree branch.
Continue reading...About 2,000 crew members withdrew labour over pay and conditions, as well as citing serious breaches of overfishing rules by Spanish and French companies
The waters of west Africa and the Indian Ocean boast some of the world’s largest, healthiest populations of tropical tuna, and that makes them havens for industrial tuna fishing fleets, owned by countries vastly richer than the nations whose borders form these coastlines.
In order to protect the fish populations of poorer African nations from rapacious overfishing by richer countries, EU tuna vessels are bound by agreements centred on the sustainability and “social empowerment” of third countries.
Continue reading...Fishery board reports shrinkage in size of River Ness as water scarcity alert issued for parts of Scotland
Concern has been raised about the water levels of Loch Ness and the River Ness amid the protracted dry spell affecting Scotland and the rest of the UK.
Brian Shaw, the director of Ness District Salmon Fishery Board, said there had been a dramatic shrinkage in the size of the River Ness. He told the BBC: “These conditions are not normally good for angling.
Continue reading...Environmentalists from the Philippines urge investors to avoid LNG projects which they say threaten the Verde Island Passage
Campaigners from the Philippines have urged British banks not to fund the expansion of fossil fuel use in their country. It follows a huge oil spill that threatened a globally important marine biodiversity hotspot.
Filipino environmentalists have travelled to the UK to meet representatives from Barclays, Standard Chartered and HSBC as part of efforts to stop the expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plants and terminals in and around the Verde Island Passage, a global marine biodiversity hotspot known for its whale sharks, corals, turtles and rich fisheries, which was badly affected by the oil spill this year.
Continue reading...Europe accused of ‘neocolonialism’ for using vassal small island states to sway policy and continue ‘disgraceful plundering’ of distant waters
More than half of the EU’s delegation to a crucial body of tuna stock regulators is made up of fishing industry lobbyists, the Guardian’s Seascape project can reveal, as Europe is accused of “neocolonial” overfishing in the Indian Ocean.
The numbers could shed some light on why the EU recently objected to an agreement by African and Asian coastal nations to restrict harmful fish aggregating devices (FADs) that disproportionately harvest juvenile tuna. Stocks of yellowfin tuna are overfished in the Indian Ocean.
Continue reading...Officials announce 45-day ban on harvesting elvers in provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
Canada has temporarily shut down its baby eel fishery following a string of attacks on harvesters, as well as mounting concerns over widespread poaching of the threatened fish.
Officials from the department of fisheries and oceans on Saturday announced a 45-day ban on harvesting the young eels, called elvers, in the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, shuttering the lucrative C$50m (£30m) market.
Continue reading...Bottom trawling associated with the feed product depletes oceans more than wild-catch fishing, expert says
Australia’s growing aquaculture industry is trying to end its reliance on fishmeal in order to become more sustainable.
Fish farms have traditionally been reliant on fishmeal, a feed made from small fish such as anchovies which is often fished unsustainably in developing countries. The practice has jeopardised the industry’s environmental credentials, says Ian Urbania, a pulitzer prize-winning journalist and founder of the non-profit journalism organisation The Outlaw Ocean Project.
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Continue reading...Company says vessel’s construction will help ‘pass on our whaling culture to the next generation’
A Japanese company is building a new whaling ship designed to travel as far as Antarctica, sparking fears commercial operations could resume in the Southern Ocean.
Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, reaffirmed the Albanese government’s commitment to a global moratorium on commercial whaling, while Greenpeace condemned the practice as “brutal and unnecessary”.
Continue reading...Retailer and green groups warn of ‘high environmental cost’ of fish aggregating devices to tuna stocks and other endangered marine life
The EU is under pressure to significantly restrict its huge fleet of fishing vessels from using “fish aggregating devices” that make it easier to catch huge numbers of fish and contribute further to overfishing.
A letter signed by Marks & Spencer and more than 100 environmental groups, including the International Pole and Line Foundation, warns EU officials that the devices (FADs) are one of the main contributors to overfishing of yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean, because they catch high numbers of juveniles.
Continue reading...Fishing gear used by Maine lobstermen is killing right whales. Will boosting a $1bn industry trump protecting an endangered species?
President Macron of France may not have realised it, but he walked into another fishing war earlier this month when he and 200 other guests were treated at the White House to butter-poached Maine lobster accented with American Osetra caviar and garnished with celery crisp.
At issue was the lobster, currently subject to a court ruling designed to prevent Maine’s lobstermen from trapping the crustacea in baited pots marked by lines that can fatally entangle feeding North Atlantic right whales. There are now just 340 such whales, with only about 100 breeding females, making the species one of the most endangered on the planet.
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