Japanese auction sees bluefin tuna sell for £608,000: The annual auction for Japan’s first tuna of the year took place this month at Toyosu Fish Market in Tokyo. The long-running Japanese tradition sees businessmen and companies make bids way beyond the true market value of the tuna for the honour and prestige of buying the first tuna of the year. This year Yukitaka Yamaguchi paid ¥114 (approx. £608,000) for a 525lb bluefin tuna. Yamaguchi is the president of a wholesale fish company and owns the Onodera Ginza sushi restaurant. It was the fourth year in a row he had won the auction. The Daily Mail reported that Yamaguchi hoped the purchase of the tuna would help promote the tuna fishing industry and revitalise Tokyo’s sushi restaurants, many of which are still trying to recover to pre-pandemic levels of trade. Read more on this story by clicking here.
Shark meat may be being sold to unwitting UK consumers: An article in the Independent this month claimed that UK consumers may be eating shark meat without realising, due to weak labelling regulations. The paper quoted researchers from Canada’s Dalhousie University who found that unlabelled shark meat was being sold across the world, including in Britain. Leonardo Feitosa, a shark expert who was one of the co-authors of the study, said that the lack of labelling may have been the cause of the increase in global shark catches which increased from 76 million in 2016 to 80 million in 2019. It is believed that up to 25 million of these sharks are from species which are either threatened or endangered. Mr Feitosa told the Independent: “Because shark meat is a relatively cheap substitute for other types of fish, there is considerable mislabeling, making some consumers eat shark meat without their knowledge.” A 2019 study by the University of Exeter found that unlabelled shark meat was often sold in Britain, with 90 per cent of fish and chip shops surveyed selling shark without specifically informing customers of what species they were buying. Read more on this story by clicking here.
Calls for “unacceptable” organic status to be removed from Scottish farmed salmon: The Soil Association, which certifies food as organic, has come under pressure to remove the organic certification from Scottish farmed salmon. Thirty charities and conservation organisations, including WildFish and the Blue Marine Foundation, have said in an open letter that the organic certification of salmon amounts to “unacceptable greenwashing of an unsustainable industry.” Rachel Mulrenan from WildFish’s Scotland told the Guardian: “So-called ‘organic’ Scottish salmon is a misnomer. The fish are raised in the same way as all Scottish farmed salmon – in open-net cages, where all the waste from the farm flows straight into the surrounding lochs and sounds, including faeces and uneaten feed.” It was also pointed out that open-water salmon farms use high levels of antibiotics to control disease in farmed salmon which can impact other wildlife, and the close proximity in which salmon are farmed creates a breeding ground for parasites which can spread to wild populations if farmed fish escape. A spokesperson for the Soil Association told the Guardian that there were “strict rules” which had to be followed to gain organic certification and there was “much work to be done” to improve fish farming. Click here to read more on this story.
Government urged to end harmful subsidies for UK commercial fishing fleet: An article in this month’s Guardian has reported that conservation organisations have urged the government to phase out subsidies which help unprofitable and polluting commercial fishing to continue. The move comes after a report published in the journal Marine Policy highlighted that diesel fuel subsidies for the UK commercial fleet came to between £150 and £180 million a year. Such subsidies allow the most environmentally damaging and highest polluting forms of fishing – such as seabed trawling and dredging – to continue and create a disincentive to switch to more sustainable fishing methods. Certain sectors of the fishing industry, such as beam trawlers and scallop dredgers, which are highly environmentally damaging due to the impact they have on the seabed, would be unprofitable if subsidies were taken away. Charles Clover, the co-founder of the marine conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation, told the Guardian that the news suggested that the government was not aware of the scale of fuel subsidies, and went on to say: “We will not be alone in calling for these unjustifiable and idiotic subsidies to be phased out as soon as possible.” Read more on this story here.
Norway approves controversial deep sea mining: Norway has become the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to seabed mining, although licences would not be issued until further environmental impact assessments have been carried out. The controversial practice will use heavy machinery to remove rocks known as nodules from the seabed in the deepest parts of the ocean. Nodules contain extremely valuable metals such as lithium and cobalt which are used in the batteries of electronic devices and mobile cars. The demand for such metals is increasing, but the world’s largest reserves are found in politically unstable countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Environmental campaigners have said that the impact of deep-sea mining has yet to be fully understood, and could have a potentially devastating impact on deep-water ecosystems. The Norway Institute of Marine Research has stated that a further five to ten years of research is needed before deep sea mining should begin and Norway’s decision pits the country against the UK and the EU, both of which have also called for further research before deep sea mining begins. Read more by clicking here.
Industrial sandeel fishing could be banned in Scottish waters: Commercial fishing for sandeels could be banned in Scottish waters. The news comes after 97 per cent of respondents in a consultation launched by the Scottish government indicated that they wanted fishing for the species prohibited. If the ban goes ahead, commercial fishing for sandeels would also be banned in a section of the North Sea which is classed as English waters. Sandeels are a vital food source for marine birds and a wide variety of fish species. However, they are fished for in huge numbers, especially by the Danish fishing industry which is estimated to catch 94 per cent of all of the sandeels captured in Scottish waters. Indeed, it is only European vessels which catch sandeels in UK waters, as no British fishing boats have been given a quota for the species since 2021. The vast majority of sandeels that are caught are not used for human consumption but are instead reduced down into fish meal which is used for animal feed. The consultation was launched as fears grew that industrial fishing for sandeels, which sees the Danish fishing industry alone take 180,000 tons each year – is having a devastating effect on seabird populations which are already under threat. The RSPB Scotland said that the news was the “greatest action” that could be taken, while MSP Ariane Burgess said that it was a “huge boost” for Scottish seas and “a proud day for Scotland’s puffins, kittiwakes and other iconic seabirds.” Read more on this story here.
Carbon released by seabed trawling “too big to ignore”: An article in the Guardian this month explained that a new study has highlighted the huge amounts of carbon which are released by seabed trawling. Scientists estimated that between 1996 and 2020 between 8.5 and 9.2 billion tons of carbon were released through seabed trawling – around 370 million tons each year. The scientists stated that this level of carbon was “too big to ignore” and likened trawling to “marine deforestation” which causes “irreparable harm” to the marine environment. The most carbon emissions came from trawling hotspots including the East China Sea, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Greenland Sea. Overall, seabed trawling released as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire aviation industry, but the study pointed out that countries rarely included trawling in their climate action plans. Read more on this story by clicking here.
Ocean temperatures rose at “astounding” rate in 2023: “Astounding” changes in ocean temperature have caused “freak” weather around the world as “the climate crisis continues to intensify.” The world’s seas and oceans – which absorb around 90 per cent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere – saw their temperature rise at the highest rate ever last year. While ocean temperature records go back to 1940, it is likely that the oceans are hotter than at any time in the last 2,000 years. The article recounted research from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota which will be published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Prof John Abraham, one of the team that produced the research, told the Guardian. “The ocean is the key to telling us what’s happening to the world and the data is painting a compelling picture of warming year after year after year … We’re already facing the consequences and they will get far worse if we don’t take action.” Click here to read the full article on the Guardian website.
Satellites reveal that three-quarters of industrial fishing boats are ‘hidden’: Satellites have uncovered that 75 per cent of industrial fishing vessels are effectively hidden from public view when they are fishing. This is because these so-called ‘dark vessels’ are not publicly trackable as their tracking systems are inactive or have been switched off. Research from Global Fishing Watch used combined satellite imagery, GPS data from fishing vessels and machine learning to create a picture of commercial fishing which saw many more vessels operating than previous studies (which only used publicly available data) had shown. The research was published in the journal Nature, suggests that the sheer number of vessels doing this – and the fact that the majority operate in parts of the world where illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) is known to take place means they are deliberately making themselves untrackable as they are fishing illegally. David Kroodsma, of Global Fishing Watch, told the website Space.com: “A new industrial revolution has been emerging in our seas undetected — until now … On land, we have detailed maps of almost every road and building on the planet. In contrast, growth in our ocean has been largely hidden from public view. This study helps eliminate the blind spots and shed light on the breadth and intensity of human activity at sea.” Read more here.
First footage of newborn great white shark captured (possibly): A YouTuber believes that they may have captured the first-ever footage of a newborn great white shark. Southern California-based Carlos Gauna created the YouTube channel TheMalibuArtist where he uploads footage of sharks he has taken using a drone. Last year, when accompanied by Phil Sternes, a shark expert from the University of California, Riverside, he captured footage of a very pale-coloured shark which appeared to have a layer of skin flaking off. While they were unsure of what it was, they eventually realised that it must be a great white shark which had just been born, and what they thought was the skin flaking off was the mucus-like substance which coats newborn great whites. Capturing such footage would be a world first and was published in the academic journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. However, other scientists have urged caution. Dr Chris Lowe, from California State University, said that Gauna and Sternes may not have seen a newborn shark but instead a “Shark with a skin disease, or it could be a number of other things we haven’t even thought of” and went on to say that there needed to “a lot more evidence” before it could be ascertained that the area was a “pupping location.” Read more on this story by clicking here.