IUU Fishing and Ocean Acidification – Sea Port’s Letter to Congress:

Dear Senator Reid, Speaker Boehner, Senator McConnell, and Representative Pelosi,

Sea Port Products Corp is a member of a diverse group of stakeholders that share a common interest in healthy U.S. fisheries that support a robust domestic seafood industry and vibrant coastal communities. We are writing to urge you to support and quickly pass the International Fisheries Stewardship and Enforcement Act (S. 269/ H.R. 69) and the Pirate Fishing Elimination Act (S. 267) and to ratify the Port State Measures Agreement.  These bipartisan bills and the agreement would improve the detection and prosecution of illegal fishing on the high seas, keep suspected foreign illegal fishers out of U.S. ports, and protect U.S. fishermen, our domestic seafood supply, and enhance the sustainability of global marine fisheries. 

While we overwhelmingly support the passing of S. 269/H.R. 69, S. 267, and the Port State Measures Agreement, Sea Port would like to bring to your attention the larger crisis of emerging ocean acidification.  We believe that the increase in ocean acidity and global warming caused by the record levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could have profound negative effects on the entire world’s fisheries that dwarf the current regulatory issues of illegal fishing, overfishing, and bycatch.

The global burning of fossil fuels, wood, and other organic matter to provide energy for a growing world population produces an ever-increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2 that both warms and acidifies our oceans.  Ocean acidification is inhibiting the ability of shellfish larvae and certain plankton to incorporate calcium into their bodies to assure their proper development and survival.  It is possible that the emerging negative consequences of ocean acidification will make all historical overfishing damages look tame by comparison.

Thank you for your consideration of passing S.269/H.R.69 & S.267 and the agreement.  In addition, thank you for considering the much wider focused perspective that identifies the increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2 and the emerging negative impacts it has on the entire world’s marine ecosystems.

David Glaubke, Director of Sustainability Initiatives

Note to Sea Port’s industry partners/customers:  Please use all or any portion of this letter to voice your support for these bills directly with your Congressional & House Representatives.

Please feel free to leave any comments or opinions. 

Seafood Nutritional Partnership

The Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) Sends a Strong Message about Seafood’s “Must Have” Nutritional Benefits

 The recently formed Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) brought together healthcare, nutrition, education, and seafood experts and created a united voice in order to convince U.S. consumers to eat seafood for its essential nutritional health benefits.  Sea Port joined with others in the seafood industry to provide startup funding for this partnership and is pleased that an informed group of experts now exists to promote the uniquely essential nutritional health aspects of seafood.  The partnership strongly states that the risks of eating seafood (e.g. mercury) are far outweighed/countered by seafood’s multiple essential nutritional benefits (e.g. omega 3s, selenium).

Simply put,  by not eating seafood at least twice a week (8-12 ounces) as recommended by the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, children (also developing fetuses), adults, and senior citizens are not getting the proper amount of the essential nutrients that seafood supplies for optimum brain, eye, and cardiovascular health. 

Not only does the Seafood Nutritional Partnership website list the state of the art science to back their seafood essential nutrients message, but they also list multiple seafood preparation instructions using the pictorial power of Pinterest.  The use of this innovative tool helps take the mystery and fear out of cooking seafood for the consumer.  Seafood preparation is appropriately given major emphasis by the partnership, because in the long run, convincing people how easy it is to cook seafood will help bring consumption up to the recommended levels.  For the public to finally acknowledge that seafood provides critically essential nutrients is one thing, but getting people to feel comfortable cooking seafood is quite another.  The Seafood Nutritional Partnership is positioned well to convince the remaining 80% of us that do not eat enough seafood to do so and hence improve our personal health and that of our potentially unborn children.  Sea Port wholeheartedly supports this critically important mission.

Sea Port will also continue to expand on its own internal initiatives such as its “Go Blue! Plate – Choose My Seafood for Sustainability” which promotes both human health and environmental stewardship by simply advising consumers to choose to eat a variety of seafood at the proper weekly intervals.  Please visit our website and our Go Blue! Seafood Sustainability Blog today to stay informed on socioeconomic, environmental, and sustainability developments in our seafood industry.

Elephant in the Room?

Environmentally Destructive Human Activities That Take Place on Land May Ultimately Determine the Health of Our Marine Living Resources

Now is the time for the proponents of the Ecosystem Approach to Marine life Management to more fully confront the environmental damages that arise from land based human activities.  Broadly speaking, ocean ecosystems are not protected enough from the negative environmental by-products arising from our ever expanding world population as it struggles to feed, clothe, house, create products, transport, and heat/cool itself.

1.  Worldwide, runoffs of agricultural fertilizers/pesticides, industrial wastes, and sewers have caused a growing number of coastal “dead zones” where very little marine life can live due to oxygen depletion or other toxicities.  There are over 400 of these dead zones that persist or exist periodically each year around the globe.  These types of runoffs will most likely continue to increase along with our ever-growing population and create additional problems that may negatively affect the entire structure of the ocean food web.

2.  The global burning of fossil fuels, wood, and other organic matter to provide energy for a growing world population produces excessive greenhouse gases and airborne particulates that increase global warming and the acidity of our oceans.  Ocean acidification has been linked to inhibiting the ability of shellfish larvae and certain plankton to incorporate calcium into their bodies to assure their proper development and survival.  It is possible that the emerging negative consequences of ocean acidification will make all historical overfishing damages look tame by comparison. 

3.  Worldwide, people are increasingly building on marine coastlines and in riparian zones resulting in the destruction of estuaries, swamplands, marshes, mangrove forests, and watersheds.  This results in the degradation of productive coastal marine and riparian habitats that have for millions of years served as nurseries and homes to a vast diversity of aquatic life.  This continual loss of productive marine coastlines and riparian zones may prove to be much more negative in the long run than any overfishing activities currently happening around the world today.

Many environmental activists call for the establishment of marine reserves to allow for the recovery of ocean habitats that have been damaged by irresponsible fishing.  They advocate that 10% to 50% of our oceans be placed in such reserves.  They want approximately 80% of these reserves to be located near the coastlines of the world.  These marine areas, unfortunately, are where most of the negative environmental influences coming from the land-based activities of humans mentioned above tend to manifest themselves.

Without NGOs and nations taking a more aggressive role in confronting our growing world population with its concomitant environmental impacts, all our efforts to manage fisheries or to create marine reserves may ultimately prove to be too narrow-minded.  The Ecosystem Approach to Marine life Management needs to broaden its perspective to incorporate the negative environmental by-products of the land based activities of an ever-expanding world population that may reach 10 billion by the year 2050.  Now is the time to more fully confront this elephant in the room that we too often seem to ignore.

The U.S. Commerce Department May Levy Countervailing Duties on Imported Farmed Shrimp

Countervailing will be Unavailing

Sea Port foresees farmed shrimp Countervailing Duties as being unavailing for improving the economic lives of U.S. Shrimpers, U.S. Consumers, and for the many shrimp farmers of Indo-Asia-Pacific Developing Countries.  Implementation of such duties would make the cost of shrimp (America’s favorite seafood) more expensive and therefore less affordable to all U.S. consumers.

Sea Port believes Countervailing will be Unavailing in improving the marketing, production/processing efficiencies, and environmental impacts of the U.S. Gulf wild shrimp fishery.

Sea Port believes Countervailing will be Unavailing in improving the poverty levels of developing countries that have expanding shrimp aquaculture that is designed to help lift families out of such poverty.

Sea Port believes Countervailing will be Unavailing in promoting U.S. consumers to consume more affordable seafood to improve their health.

In short, Countervailing will be Unavailing for the majority of shrimp producers and consumers and only has a chance of benefiting a very few politically connected U.S. wild shrimp fishery participants.

Sea Port believes that Countervailing and Unavailing need to be replaced with Prevailing:

Prevailing should be what the U.S. Shrimpers are doing in their efforts to market their wild catch as distinguishable from farmed imported shrimp, advance their production and processing efficiencies, and to lessen their environmental impacts due to trawling and by-catch.

Prevailing should be what Indo-Asia-Pacific developing countries are doing in their struggle to alleviate poverty by expanding not only shrimp aquaculture but other farmed seafood species as well.

Prevailing should be what U.S. consumers are doing in their quest to improve their health by consuming more affordable shrimp and other seafood.

In short, Prevailing should be what the majority does over the minority who resort to using politics and barriers to achieve benefits rather than using constructive creativity for which the seafood industry is proudly known.

Sea Port is optimistic that the constructively creative seafood industry will continue to prevail in its quest to provide more affordable healthy seafood for an ever-expanding world population in spite of any possible farmed shrimp Countervailing Duties that we find quite unavailing in many respects.

    Sea Port Opposes Mining in the Salmonid Ecosystems of  

the Bristol Bay Watershed in Alaska

To:  United States Environmental Protection Agency

Sea Port Products Corporation is in the business of providing healthy seafood for human consumption in the United States.  Through our many corporate Go Blue! initiatives, we demonstrate our responsibility to help maintain and improve the health of our world’s productive aquatic resources that we ultimately depend upon for our business success.  In short, in order to sell healthy seafood we need to have sustainably healthy waters in our marine and freshwater ecosystems.  We oppose mining in the Bristol Bay watershed because we believe that such activities would negatively affect the health and productive capacity of both the marine and freshwater habitats that are crucial for sustaining the bountiful production of salmonids in this World Heritage class natural wonderland.  The EPA should share this same sense of responsibility and wholeheartedly exercise their authority as outlined in the Clean Water Act to join Sea Port’s opposition to mining activities in this region.

Historically, rivers in the Pacific Northwest  were dammed and watersheds were altered that resulted in sacrificing the abundant natural salmon runs in order to grow irrigated crops, produce electricity, and harvest lumber.   Even though these massive salmon runs of the past were negatively impacted, great benefits arose that helped feed, clothe, shelter, and economically advance the growing population of that time.   The costs of losing the enormous salmon runs were less than the many ensuing benefits that helped support the growing population.  Seen in this light, Sea Port further opposes mining in the Bristol Bay watershed because we believe the environmental costs are not sufficiently outweighed by any possible mining benefits conferred to the people of Alaska in terms of providing basic human needs or broad based economic opportunities.  Incidentally, the University of Alaska’s Anchorage Institute of Economic and Social Research just released a report that revealed that the Bristol Bay salmon industry produces $1.5 billion per year in economic output on a national basis.  The report details for the first time the actual economic impacts that Bristol Bay has on the State of Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and the rest of the United States. It supports over 12,000 jobs in fishing and processing, plus generates another 7,800 jobs across the country in retailing, restaurants, warehousing and other ancillary services.

Sea Port foresees that the majority of the additional animal protein needed for the world’s growing population, which is estimated to reach over 9 billion by 2050, will have to come from our aquatic resources. Sea Port believes that the Earth’s available arable soil and pasturelands have been maximized and therefore our future terrestrial food production capabilities face serious constraints. In light of this, Sea Port opposes mining in the Bristol Bay watershed because such activities would harm a valuable wild aquatic habitat that is destined to become increasingly critical for food production as our growing world population demands healthy consumable proteins.

In summary, Sea Port opposes mining in the Bristol Bay watershed because our future food supply will depend heavily upon the 70% of our planet that is aquatic and any human activities that negatively impact its productive potential should be avoided.  Sea Port pleads with the EPA to join with us in opposing mining activities in this world famous natural salmon producing wonderland.

Working together to Advance Seafood Sustainability

Current Farmed Shrimp Mortality Problems Due to EMS are Only a Bump along the Road

Shrimp aquaculture on a large commercial scale is less than 30 years old and is certainly in its infancy when compared to the long history of the production of beef, pork, and chicken.   Beef, pork, and chicken have over a 3000-year head start on shrimp farming and in modern times governments around the world have devoted great resources to identify, treat, and prevent diseases that have emerged in the production of these vitally important land based domesticated animal species.

Currently the very young shrimp farming industry is going through growing pains exemplified by losses due to both known and unknown disease, culture and seeding processes.   This is currently exemplified by the emergence of EMS which is short for “early mortality syndrome”. EMS is causing dramatic pond losses of juvenile shrimp in several S.E. Asian production areas and as of late, the exact cause (bacterial, viral, genetic, combination of factors, etc.) has not been definitively identified.

I have no doubts that the cause of EMS will be discovered in the near future and/or that changes in aquaculture practices will prevent it from developing at farm sites in the first place.  At present, there are ongoing efforts around the world by both shrimp farmers and scientists to improve shrimp culture as it strives to catch up with the successes that land based animal protein production systems have seen in terms of disease prevention and farming efficiencies.

While today EMS mortality news is the hottest topic in the world of farmed shrimp, it is important to view this as just a bump along the road as shrimp aquaculture travels towards becoming a more mature, healthy, and efficient protein production system.

EMS ?….this too shall pass.