Sea Port’s New Zealand Greenshell™ Mussels Are Sustainability and Nutritional Superstars

The AquacultureNew Zealand organization believes that New Zealand Greenshell™ Mussels are one of the most environmentally friendly seafood protein sources available.  Sea Port’s own assessment supports this view and we graphically communicate this by way of our “Go Blue! Seafood Sustainability Spectrum®” and our “Go Blue! Plate Choose My Seafood for Sustainability®”.

While New Zealand’s mussel aquaculture helps sustain and preserve the health of our oceans, actually eating the mussels helps sustain and advance our own personal health too.

Outstanding Nutritional Attributes:

·         Three times more iron than beef and a third of our daily protein needs in one serving

·         Three times our daily Vitamin B12 needs

·         100% of iodine and selenium (also a good source of other vitamins and minerals)

·         Contains over half the amount of Omega-3s as Sockeye Salmon (680mg)

  Enjoy These Sustainability and Nutritional Superstars Twice a Week!

Sea Port attends Presidential Task Force meeting to combat IUU fishing and seafood fraud

In Washington D.C. on August 18, Sea Port attended a meeting of a newly formed Presidential Task Force in order to offer advice on combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU) and seafood fraud in the U.S. marketplace. 

Sea Port was among a small but diverse group of seafood industry stakeholders that included fishing vessel owners, processors, distributors, retailers, and import/exporters.  The task force panel consisted of federal representatives from the Departments of State, Commerce, Defense, FDA, NOAA, USDA, and several other federal agencies associated with regulating our seafood.

President Obama directed this task force to formulate recommendations within 180 days for implementing a new comprehensive framework of programs to focus on the areas of greatest concern for the IUU and fraud problems occurring in the U.S. seafood marketplace.  To assist in completing their task, the panel wanted Sea Port and the group to define both the scope and the critical control points of these two distinct issues based on the perspective of our entire seafood industry.

The major points communicated to the Presidential Task Force by Sea Port and the seafood industry group:

Concerning IUU:

• The scope of the IUU problem is relevant for less than 5% of the wild seafood we consume and of this amount, the vast majority is associated with the wild caught seafood that we import from foreign countries that are sorely in need of more effective wild fisheries management and enforcement schemes.

·         The critical control point to eliminate IUU is at the foreign source regardless if the seafood was caught within a country’s 200 mile EEZ or attained on international high seas by their distant-water fishing fleets.

Concerning Seafood Fraud:

• The scope of the mislabeling of species fraud issue is most relevant at the critical control points located at restaurants and retailers.  The scope of the short weight (including full ingredients disclosure) fraud issue is relevant to the entire supply chain for both wild and farmed seafood.

Group advice offered to the Task Force for addressing the separate issues of IUU & and seafood fraud:

• Combating IUU fishing requires the U.S. to be more engaged  internationally with foreign countries, the FAO, and regional fisheries organizations so responsible wild fisheries practices and enforcement mechanisms can be agreed upon that clearly defined the pathway toward eradicating IUU on both the high-seas and within all nation’s EEZs.  However, If our actions simply redirect IUU seafood away from the U.S. marketplace to other countries that still accept IUU, then we will have done very little to solve this foreign fishing problem that truly requires a cooperative global solution.

    

• Initiating enhanced and robust efforts to enforce existing laws will very quickly produce dramatic improvements to the economic fraud issues of short weight, ingredient mislabeling, and species substitution in the U.S. marketplace. 

Sea Port’s Opinion on the Most Important Takeaways from the Presidential Task Force:  

1. FDA enforcement against “short weight” may soon be greatly enhanced and expanded and this may result in significant negative consequences for seafood companies that still engage in this type of seafood fraud.
2. Success in combating IUU fishing may soon advance due to heightening levels of U.S. international cooperation and new forthcoming initiatives to share proven U.S. fisheries management and enforcement schemes with the rest of the world.

Please don't be shy about leaving comments..........Sincerely, Dave

The  world availability of freshwater will be crucial for aquaculture to fulfill its promise to produce an additional 40 million tons of seafood that we will need by the year 2030

Currently 62% of our farmed seafood comes from freshwater and 8% from a mix of salt and freshwater (brackish water).  Lumping these together shows that 70% of our worldwide aquaculture production is dependent upon freshwater.

Over the past several years, the growth in freshwater aquaculture has been increasing at a faster rate than that of marine (salt-water) aquaculture production systems.

Critical points to ponder going forward:

• With an additional billion of us coming in 2030, will there be less freshwater available for aquaculture? 
• Will climate change make less or more freshwater available?
• Will groundwater and watershed resources be properly utilized and sustained for the next billion of us coming by the year 2030?

Currently less than 0.007% of Earth’s water is freshwater that we can utilize!  This shows how precious and limited it is for providing for our health, industry, agriculture, and aquaculture.

There is an ever-increasing  global issue of freshwater availability and an example close to home is California’s recently passed legislation to confront the state’s water crisis.

Freshwater will soon become the new “gold” of the 21^st century as the world confronts the constraints of a dwindling supply compared to a growing demand.

Aquaculture’s future success to feed another billion of us by the year 2030 is inextricably bound to the availability of freshwater.

Please let us know your thoughts on this and any other issues affecting our seafood industry.

Sincerely, Dave Glaubke…………Sea Port’s Director of Sustainability Initiatives