Tuna Fisheries in Indonesia Go Eco-Friendly
Tuna industries in Indonesia are turning to friendly fishing. The world tuna industry has been widely blamed for killing endangered sea life, such as turtles, sharks and sea birds.
The sea-life killing culprits are the longline and purse seine nets they use. The nets drag and dredge the sea bed, taking everything along with the prized tuna, a staple in most menus. However, the Nutrindo fishery in Bitung, North Sulawesi in Indonesia is using the hand line rather than longline in their 25 boats for two weeks to one month. Fishery owner Hartono Tjandrason says the reason he chose the handline was to avoid catching in sealife except for tuna. [Hartono Tjandrason, Fishery Owner]: “In this fishing industry, we need development sustainability, resources sustainability. So, without resources we would not have development. We have to maintain this circle.” His fishery exports a ton of yellow fin tuna to Japan daily and some 100 tons to United States a month. Bas Zaunbrecher, of ANOVA, a Netherlands-based tuna fishery that operates in Bali’s waters says most of his customers in Japan and the U.S. demand environmentally friendly seafood products. [Bas Zaunbrecher, ANOVA]: “More and more of our customers they require fish from sustainable sources. So it is actually a must for the future and also if things are not being controlled properly in the future, we will not have any resources anymore to buy our product from.” His company’s long line of fleets have replaced traditional J-shaped hooks, which fish and turtles tend to swallow, with various sizes of circular hooks. Endangered sea turtles accidentally caught by fishermen off Indonesia’s sea coasts usually die, but innovative hooks that are too big to swallow are increasingly saving the reptiles’ lives.
Duration : 0:1:59
Sea Shepherd – Farley Mowat Rammed – 2008 Seal Defense
Canadian Coast Guard Rams Farley Mowat
The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS Des Groseilliers twice rammed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Farley Mowat.
The Coast Guard had ordered the Farley Mowat to not approach the area where seals are being slaughtered. When the Farley Mowat did not comply, the Coast Guard rammed the vessel near the port aft stern area. After the Farley Mowat stopped in the ice, the Coast Guard rammed the ship a second time in the same area of the ship causing damage to the plates in that area.
The Coast Guard has demonstrated extreme recklessness with this move. The crew of the Farley Mowat were engaged in documenting the slaughter of seals. They were not interfering with the hunt.
“I’m beginning to wonder if anyone on the bridge of the Groseilliers has a license to command a ship,” said Captain Alex Cornelissen. “The incompetence of the Coast Guard has already cost the lives of four sealers this week-end and now they are ramming ships in dangerous ice conditions. This is unbelievable. It’s like the Coast Guard has declared war on seal defenders and the sealers are collateral damage.”
The Farley Mowat will remain in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and will continue to document the atrocities on the ice. Already the crew have seen enough evidence to understand that the Canadian government’s pretense that the slaughter is humane has no basis in reality — in other words it’s a state sponsored lie.
“It appears that Canada is prepared to use violence to cover-up the truth of this slaughter,” said Captain Paul Watson. “Our duty is to resist their violence and continue to document the truth.”
Canada’s commercial seal “hunt” is the largest mass slaughter of marine mammals in the world. This year, Canada will allow 270,000 harp seals to be killed.
Canada’s 2006 quota for killing seals: 325,000 for the regular commercial “hunt” and an additional 10,000 harp seal allowance for new aboriginal initiatives, personal use, and Arctic hunts. As usual, the commercial quota was exceeded, resulting in over 330,000 seals being killed.
During the previous three years, the government of Canada delivered the death sentence to over one million baby harp seals.
Sea Shepherd continues to oppose this annual obscenity called a “hunt.” It is not a hunt because the sealers simply walk up to the seals (who have no means of escaping or hiding) and bash the seals on the head or shoot them.
Sea Shepherd, known for direct action, has and continues to use other methods to fight to bring the “hunt” to a permanent end. In 2005, Sea Shepherd joined many other organizations in promoting the international boycott of Canadian seafood products as a means to strip the commercial seal “hunt” of all economic value and force it, by financial means, to end. The Boycott of Canadian Seafood targets the very people who slaughter the seals: It is the fishing industry that runs the seal “hunt” which is a make-work project for off-season fisherman.
Sea Shepherd Seal Defense
http://www.seashepherd.org/seals/
Duration : 0:3:19
Vital Choice seafood, tour with Randy Hartnell.
Watch the Full IPHONE FRIENDLY Video: http://www.naturalpartners.tv/ArchivedShows/2009ParkerSeminarCoverage/RandyHartnell/tabid/1614/Default.aspx
Randy gives NPTV a personal tour of their premiere, healthful and wild products and what makes them so delicous compared to other products on the market.
Contact Randy Hartnell
randy@vitalchoice.com
www.vitalchoice.com
Duration : 0:6:25
Bring me a seal, I’ll club it!
Save the seal, collect the whole set! 
This is a video response to Alishia Fox’s response http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhLrCn_R2zM&feature=player_embedded to Sara Green’s cbc story in support of the Newfoundland seal hunt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6JdSqO1ku0
I don’t care if animals are cute, I care how they taste. Taste drives many things in our global consumption. This video is not only for Alishia, but to any who oppose the seal hunt like the EU who have started a ban on such products. Are you willing to risk the lives of humans AND seals over it’s cuteness? That’s really what’s at stake. If the atlantic cod is driven to extinction the seals will follow. What you are suggesting may have global implications on the food chain.
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Update: Seals eat more than cod fish and the numbers I included were based on a seals consumption of a long list of creatures that I also would enjoy on my plate. So I stand by the numbers in my video, but the number of what is mis-stated.
I would still club a seal, but I would eat it. The only reason I would club a young seal is due to a lack of freezer space.
I do not support the practice of skinning the animal just for fur. I try to avoid eating seafood generally because of the situation of overfishing, but I do soooo love the taste of it. So it’s more of a now and again treat for me vs. a staple of my diet.
In the current situation, I would eat seal meat if it was offered but I currently live in BC and it’s just not readily available, but finding a market for the meat would be encouraging as it would reduce the needless waste. Who knows, if it became all the rage, they would rely less on other seafood products and maybe strike a more balanced situation.
Probably what has me off so much in the past are activists that radically skew the realities. I know everyone in opposition is not that way but the tactics sometimes border on ridiculous. Seal meat is good for you, try it sometimes, many of us have been indoctrinated that it’s disgusting. Our own Governor General of Canada got such flack for eating seal with the Inuit. From a vegetarian perspective, fine I get it. But if you’re still an omnivore, I say if you want to help out, try some seal meat sometime. Invoking such a harsh stigma against it as a food source doesn’t help.
As far as populations go I find the seal’s regrowth rate quite rapid, and that concerns me. As they are quite gluttonous creatures.
Thanks to Alishia’s response to me which I also recommend you watch, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EQaHAFIhA0&feature=response_watch she introduced an interesting dynamic to me that I had not considered of the seal possibly eating more cod predators. I am not qualified to make that assessment for or against on this point, so I won’t. Especially when it comes to the variety of species it eats. That certainly does put more into question.
Duration : 0:5:3
Wholesale Food Distributor Talks About Seafood Month
National Seafood Month is every October. AGAR, a New England Wholesale food distributor is the leading provider of seafood products to restaurants in New England, including their very popular Nautifish brand of Seafood; http://www.nautifishseafood.com/
Duration : 0:2:38
EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN MINDORO BY MARIO MAGAYON
http://www.wwf.org.ph/newsfacts.php?pg=det&id=181
Europe Accepts Responsibly-caught Coral Triangle Tuna
The first-ever Philippine shipment of handline-caught tuna with catch certificates recently entered the European market.
This first batch of fresh / chilled loined tuna caught in Mindoro came with catch certificates ensuring their traceability and verifying that they were from registered boats operating in legalized areas using highly selective fishing gear.
“This positive development comes just after the EU banned untraceable tunas from entering its ports at the start of this year,” says WWF Coral Triangle Programme Tuna Strategy Leader Dr. Jose Ingles. “It clearly proves that small-scale fisheries using responsible catching methods like handline tuna fishing can fare well in global markets through proper certification and compliance.”
The traceability system was developed and facilitated by the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and approved by the EU earlier this year. These traceable tuna came from Mindoro through a project partnership with WWF, the local government, and the private sector, as a response to the stringent catch certification policy imposed by the EU in light of growing consumer demand for sustainable seafood products.
With this first shipment, it is now possible to trace back the tuna loins to the fisher, the boat, and the exact location of the fish aggregating device where the fish was caught.
“European countries make up the biggest fish market in the world, and with this catch certification system in place in the Philippines, we can look forward to an effective convergence of economic opportunities and environmental sustainability,” adds Dr. Ingles.
Tuna in the Coral Triangle, which spans the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste, adds considerably to the economies of many developing nations and supports the livelihoods of millions of people in this region and beyond.
The Coral Triangle contains spawning and nursery grounds and migratory routes for commercially-valuable tuna species such as bigeye, yellowfin, skipjack and albacore, producing more than 40% of the total catch for the Western Central Pacific region, and representing more than 20% of the total global catch.
Concludes Dr. Ingles, “This scheme is an effective step towards eliminating Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU), which has been increasing worldwide, resulting in the declining catches of a growing number of fish stocks.”
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WWF is the world’s largest and most experienced conservation organization. Help us come up with practical environmental solutions by visiting wwf.org.ph/howhelp.php or calling 895-6294. Together, we shall face environmental adversity – to leave our children a living planet.
For more information:
Paolo Mangahas
Communications Manager, WWF Coral Triangle Programme
pmangahas@wwf.org.my
Gregg Yan
Information, Education and Communications Officer, WWF-Philippines
920-7923/26/31
gyan@wwf.org.ph
Duration : 0:4:36
