Eurofish magazine 2 2017

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ISSN 1868-5943

April 2 / 2017 C 44346

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Denmark Reviving the coastal fishery

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In this issue

Danish parliamentary package to revive coastal fishing The Danish coastal fisheries sector has been shrinking for several years for a variety of reasons. Since quotas were made transferable there has been a degree of consolidation in the sector with bigger companies buying up quotas and fishing capacity. Fishers have also found it difficult to adapt to the volatility of the quota regime with developments in quotas being unpredictable from one year to the next. Complex rules and regulations that need to be complied with and the volume of paperwork they entail have also discouraged the sector. Young people who might have chosen fishing as an occupation are put off by the investment it calls for as well as the physically demanding nature of the work, when other options are available.

The net result is falling numbers of fishermen and the closure of small fishing ports that would otherwise contribute to the economy of coastal communities. At the end of last year four of the parties in the Danish parliament got together to propose a package of measures that would revitalise the coastal fishing sector.

Read more on page 34 Aquaculture: Fish like any livestock is threatened from time to time by disease and fish farmers need to recognise symptoms and with the help of veterinarians take remedial action. As important is to manage the farm in a way that minimises the risk of contracting disease in the first place. Maintaining the correct density, following standard hygiene precautions, enforcing biosecurity measures, and taking prophylactic steps are some of the basic rules that a fish farmer should follow to prevent as far as possible the far more expensive and difficult situation of having to deal with an outbreak of disease. Even the best managed farms are not immune to attack by pathogens, however, but the risk can be reduced significantly. Read Dr Manfred Klinkhardt’s article on page 27 Cobia (Rachycentron canadum) is still a relatively unfamiliar name on the market, but some feel that this species has the potential to become the salmon of whitefish. Wild catches of cobia have so far been modest according to official statistics, but production from aquaculture has been increasing steadily thanks in part to its ability to grow rapidly, its robustness, and the relative simplicity of its diet. Over the years, other challenges, such as closing the production cycle from egg to market-sized fish, and the production of fry, have been overcome. Cobia has other advantages too. Yields are high, it is well suited to being cut into steaks, fillets, and portions, it has a high fat content, good flavour, and the meat flakes when cooked. Currently, production is mainly in Asia and Central America, which may partly explain why European consumers are generally unaware of the fish – a situation that should change as production increases. Read more on page 30 Fishing in Gaza: Despite the complicated politics of the region, the Gaza strip has a fishing sector comprised of close to six thousand fishermen and a fleet of some 1,200 fishing vessels that target finfish and crustaceans in the coastal zone. Sardines form most of the catch, but smaller volumes of high value species are also landed. The fish is sold at four or five markets, most of them simple affairs based directly on the beach. Rates of fish consumption hover around 4 kg per capita, but only about 40 is from domestic production, the rest is imported. The sector includes a small fish farming industry producing some 300 tonnes of gilthead seabream.

The sector has several external and internal challenges that need resolution if it is to thrive sustainably. Given the circumstances this is not something that will happen overnight. Read more on page 52 Packaging: In its simplest form, packaging for fish and seafood probably meant a sheet of newspaper.

Nowadays however although it may be possible to find newspaper wrapped round a portion of fish and chips, it is more likely to be a sheet of sturdy, grease proof paper, that will resist tearing and leaking, and will hold the contents warm. The humble newspaper cannot measure up to the requirements that packaging materials are expected to meet today, requirements that are revolutionising the packaging industry and prompting research into materials and combinations of materials that can accommodate all the (sometimes conflicting) demands that are placed on them. Read more on page 55 Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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Table of

News

6 International News

Events 16 Seafood Expo Global / Seafood Processing Global, 25-27 April 2017 Brussels seafood show celebrates 25 years

16 Union of Latvian Fish Processing Industry

17 Croatia, Croatian Chamber of Economy 6-1015 18 Spain, Halls 7 and 8

19 Denmark, Danish Fish Tech Group, Danish Fish Processors, Halls 4 and 5

20 Turkey, Istanbul Exporters’ Association 11-2101, 11-2201, 11-2301

20 Marel Salmon ShowHow, 8 February 2017, Copenhagen New labelling machine is highly efficient

23 AquaFarm, 31 January 2017, Pordenone, Italy Vertical farming pioneers attend AquaFarm 24 Fish 2017: Fish Processing and Aquaculture Technologies, 2-3 February 2017, Moscow Great hopes for farmed fish production in Russia

Aquaculture

27 Globalisation facilitates the introduction of fish diseases Treatment problems on fish farms in many EU countries 30 Cobia – a rising star of global mariculture Five-kilogram fishes within just a year

Denmark 34 The Danish Agrifish Agency Reconciling sometimes conflicting interests 37 New package of measures to revive the Danish coastal fishery Small fishing villages should benefit too 40 Nordisk Tang is creating a range of products using marine macroalgae Making seaweed trendy 42 Fisheries Local Action Group Djursland Fighting for a sustainable coastal fishery 43 Kattegat Seaweed explores the potential of farming algae and harvesting wild stocks Leading from the front Damaged vessel image credit: Petty OfďŹ cer 3rd Class Jasmine Mieszala, U.S. Coast Guard

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Contents 45 Plastix’ products contribute to improving the environment Recycling discarded fishing gear

Safety

(CC BY-SA 3.0) Map based on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Location_European_nation_states.svg

by Hayden120 and NuclearVacuum

47 Safety at sea is priority for the EU’s more than 150,000 fishermen The most dangerous occupation in the world: fishing at sea

Poland 50 Gadus Fishing and Processing is still a family business Modern, diverse and growing

Palestine 52 Fishing in the Gaza Strip A small industry faces formidable challenges

Technology 55 New kinds of packaging solutions enhance sustainability Less material input, improved functional properties

Trade and markets 58 Post-summer harvests in Norway bring only temporary relief from high salmon prices Strong demand likely to keep prices up

Worldwide Fish News Albania

page

13

Belgium

pages

6, 10

Canada

pages

11, 13

Denmark

page

Italy

pages

Malaysia

page

14

Morocco

page

10

Norway

page

15

Poland

page

7

Russia

pages

8

Spain

pages

8, 12, 14

Sweden

page

14

UK

pages

9

USA

page

12

8 6, 10

60 Bivalves tend to be consumed on the markets where they are produced Limited shelf life limits international trade in bivalves 62 El NiĂąo has negative impact on landings in Latin America Positive trend in certain cephalopod stocks

Guest Pages: Prof. Lluis Serra-Majem 63 An international foundation dedicated to understanding and promoting the Mediterranean Diet Far more than just a nutrition pattern

Service 65 Diary Dates 66 Imprint, List of Advertisers

Scan the QR code to access the Eurofish Magazine website (www.eurofishmagazine. com), where you can also sign up to receive the Eurofish Magazine newsletter.

Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Tuttofood 2017, 8-11 May, Milan

Where seafood takes the scene Today, everybody seems to be speaking about the Blue Economy, a new business model for the agrifood industry, and especially for the Mediterranean areas that combine sea and land resources in terms of sustainable development and resource reuse.

The Blue Economy will be one of the main themes at Tuttofood 2017, the World Food Exhibition in Milan that will include a prominent role for Tuttoseafood, the specialized area dedicated to fish and seafood – smoked and dried fish, tinned or fresh, processed and packaged.

The event will be a unique opportunity to discover new trends and analyse the hottest topics, combining a complete overview of the agrifood scene with vertical insights into various sectors thanks to a comprehensive programme of workshops, seminars, and meetings. There will be a special exhibition space in partnership with Blue Sea Land, the international expo of Mediterranean, Middle-east and African agrifood districts which is held annually in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily. Special training dates, meetings, workshops, and cooking shows will be held within Seafood Academy, Tuttofood’s dedicated

Tuttoseafood will be an area dedicated to fish and shellfish products within the Milan World Food Exhibition.

training area for seafood professionals.

The many novelties of the 2017 edition have already attracted many professionals. At least 75,000 visitors are expected, with 30,000 of them from 110 foreign countries.

There are 2,000 hosted buyers arriving, with 51 percent from Europe, 16 percent from North America, and 11 percent from Asia.

A further 7 percent is expected

each from Africa and the Middle East while 5 percent will arrive from South America and 2 percent from Oceania. Together with Netcomm, the Italian e-commerce consortium, Tuttofood will present the eCommerce Food Lab, a 1,000-square-metre hub presented in collaboration with Digital Events to promote networking among B2B professionals. Other agreements have been signed with different organisations to

increase the presence of decisionmakers from large-scale retailers.

One more reason not to miss Tuttofood this year is Week & Food, seven days dedicated to high-quality food and beverages. This initiative will take place within Milano Food City, the new food week that will enliven Milan from 4 to 11 May with events in the city’s most iconic locations. For more information visit http://www.tuttofood.it/.

Belgium: Commission proposes multi-annual plan for small pelagic stocks in the Adriatic The Commission adopted a proposal for a multi-annual plan for management of small pelagic stocks (anchovy, sardine, mackerel and horse-mackerel) in the Adriatic. Small pelagic stocks in the Adriatic are currently managed through a combination of international, EU and national measures.

This proposal consolidates and adapts the existing framework 6

to fisheries in the Adriatic. The plan sets target fishing mortality rates for the two most valuable and widespread commercial stocks in the Adriatic: anchovy and sardine. Once adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, it will allow Adriatic Member States to deal with local fisheries specificities at a regional level, for instance

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by preparing joint recommendations on technical measures. The proposal is the first proposal for a multi-annual plan in the Mediterranean and the third under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), following plans for the Baltic and North seas. Under the CFP, multiannual plans should contribute to sustainable fishing levels, with measures for landing obligations,

technical measures, and safeguards for remedial action where needed. The plan mainly concerns Italy, Croatia and to a limited extent Slovenia. Small pelagic stocks represent a significant share of income for the fisheries sector in the Adriatic. Anchovy and sardine account for over 97 of catches of small pelagic fish in the Adriatic.

[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Poland’s fish output, exports expand in 2016 According to the latest available data from the Institute of Agriculture and Food Economics (IERiGZ), Poland’s fish and seafood output increased by 15.7 year-on-year to 402,500 tonnes in the period from January to November 2016. In the first 11 months of 2016, Poland’s fresh and frozen fish output tripled to 53,900 tonnes, while smoked fish output increased by 11,3 to 80,500 tonnes. Smoked salmon accounted for 54,800 tonnes, up 9,4 year-on-year. With last year’s increase, the country’s fish exports grew to PLN 6.35 billion (EUR 1.47 billion), up 16,2 compared with a year earlier.

Polish fish industry players managed to sell an aggregate 247,600

tonnes of various fish and seafood products, including fillets, smoked, processed and canned products to foreign markets.

Exports of processed salmon products rose by 4.7 percent to 76,400 tonnes, while foreign sales of processed herring products increased 3.2 percent to 61,200 tonnes. This was also accompanied by higher imports of fish and seafood. From January to November 2016, Poland imported a total of 513,500 tonnes of various products, up 7.1 per cent compared with the same period a year earlier. The country’s fish and seafood imports were worth some PLN 7.81 billion (€1.81 billion).

Salmon dominated Poland’s fish imports in this period, at about 146,800 tonnes, up 3 per cent

Poland’s fish exports grew to PLN 6.35 billion (EUR 1.47 billion) in 2016, up 16% compared with a year earlier.

compared with the first 11 months of 2015. Other major import categories included herring, with

14. International Fair of Seafood Processing and Products

organisation

venue

Gdańsk International Fair Co. monika.pain@mtgsa.com.pl t. +4858 554 93 62

AMBEREXPO Exhibition & Convention Centre 11 Żaglowa St., Gdańsk, Poland

87,300 tonnes, trout, at 13,600 tonnes, as well as tuna, with 11,700 tonnes.

Gdańsk, Poland

7-9.06.2017

polfishfair.pl Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Russia’s fishing industry to exhibit at SEG, Brussels Russian fishing companies will exhibit at Seafood Expo Global, where the Federal Fishing Agency is organizing a Russian national pavilion. The main goal for participation is to establish contacts with the end customers of their products, to limit the number of intermediaries, and make the process of delivery, storage and transport of fish and seafood more controlled and transparent.

Among the species that are fished by these companies are cod, haddock, halibut, pollock, red salmon, sea bass, catfish, herring, whiting, squid, scallops, smelt, salmon, pink salmon, sardines, and crabs.

Many of these products are also processed into frozen fish, but also into fillets, canned fish, smoked, salted, dried and sundried delicacies, fishmeal and fish oil. From its 720 sq. m pavilion the Russian fish and seafood industry will present

Russia will have a national pavilion at Seafood Expo Global in Brussels this year where companies from all parts of the sector will exhibit their products and services.

new and high quality products showing off best production practices, interactive company

demonstrations, and information about the Russian fish industry and its plans for development.

Visit the Russian pavilion in Hall 11 at Seafood Expo Global on 25-27 April 2017.

Denmark: Feed manufacturer partners with training institute Danish vocational school Hansenberg offers an education which combines training in agriculture with a focus on aquaculture. The school wants to closely collaborate with organizations and companies from the aquaculture industry to further develop students’ skills at the highest possible level, and therefore,

Hansenberg and Aller Aqua have entered a partnership agreement.

As part of the agreement Aller Aqua will allow visiting aquaculture students to its factory in Christiansfeld and a research station in Büsum, Germany. Aller Aqua will contribute with external training, marketing support, and industry relevant articles.

Lars Rahbæk, Group Vice President, Global Sales & Marketing at Aller Aqua adds that it is a natural step to enter this partnership, as his company acts as an ambassador for the school, the education, and not least the students. “We want to contribute to a successful training of the students, we want to

make the most recent knowledge available to the school, and we want to attract young people to the education. Thereby, we can do our part to ensure long term access to competent young people, who shall contribute to good development and growth in the Danish aquaculture industry”.

Spain’s bluefin tuna fishing plan for 2017 The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment announced that the Spanish government had published its “Plans for the Fishery, Capacity, and Control of Bluefin tuna” and allocation criteria for the reserve pool of quota for 2017. According to the capacity plan, Spain will have 4,243.57 metric tonnes of bluefin tuna quota in 2017, which is a 20.08 increase compared with 2016.

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Responding to the announcement, the Low Impact Fisheries of Europe (LIFE) said that the Spanish government had refused to grant its members access to this fishery. LIFE emphasized several crucial issues that favour the fair allocation of tuna quota to polyvalent coastal fisheries activities using gears and methods with a low environmental impact and a high social value.

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According to LIFE, the Spanish plan would increase fishing possibilities for the industrial fleets that caused the demise of the bluefin tuna fishery in the first place. The artisanal fleet in general has access to only 1.6 of the overall quota, allowing it to catch bluefin tuna as bycatch, and the Canary Islands artisanal fleet only has 4.4 of the global quota. According

to LIFE, 2017 will be a decisive year for bluefin tuna in which the resource must transit from a recovery plan to a management plan. LIFE urged the EU to distribute bluefin tuna quotas fairly, giving special attention to traditional and artisanal fisheries, providing incentives to fishing vessels that use fishing gears with low environmental impact.

[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] UK ďŹ shermen may not win waters back after Brexit An EU document which has been obtained by The Guardian reveals existing quotas will remain, and British fishermen are losing hopes that the UK can win its “waters backâ€?, despite promises from campaigners like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. MEPs have drafted seven provisions to be included in Britain’s “exit agreementâ€?. The UK and EU are to keep commitments on sustainable fishing – contained within the United Nations stocks agreement. UK’s trawlermen were among the most vocal critics of the EU during the referendum. During the referendum campaign, Johnson described the CFP as “crazyâ€? and claimed the EU had inflicted a “tragedyâ€? on the industry, halving the number of people working within it. But the leaked report from the European parliament’s committee

on fisheries insists that the granting access to the EU domestic market post-Brexit should be conditional on Britain continuing to respect the rights and obligations in the CFP. The document further states that any exit deal must include measures “ensuring the maintenance of the same legal conditions for UKregistered vehiclesâ€?. The MEPS insist that EU vessel-owners should continue to be allowed to manage boats under the UK. It has been reported that the Dutch-owned trawler fleet accounts for 23 of the English fishing quota.

Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said he understood why the EU would start negotiations with a “hard line� but that he believed there would be radical

changes for the industry. He said that around 85 of the current catch of the Danish fleet was in UK waters and 80 of the catch of the fleet from Normandy. Of the quota for Channel cod, the French have 84 and Britain has 9. There would be change once the UK leaves the European Union, he maintained.

The government’s white paper failed to offer any commitments to UK trawlers over the future, despite

the sector having a high profile in the referendum campaign. The paper noted that “in 2015 EU vessels caught 683,000 tonnes (ÂŁ484m revenue) in UK waters and UK vessels caught 111,000 tonnes (ÂŁ114m revenue) in member states’ watersâ€?. It stated, “given the heavy reliance on UK waters of the EU fishing industry and the importance of EU waters to the UK, it is in both our interests to reach a mutually beneficial deal.â€?

A leaked report from the European Parliament reveals that UK’s access to the EU market, post-Brexit, is conditional on Britain abiding by the rights and obligations of the CFP.

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Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Belgium: EU raises concern as IATTC fails to adopt robust tuna conservation measures The EU is concerned by the InterAmerican Tropical Tuna Commission’s (IATTC) failure to adopt a robust, science-based conservation measure for tropical tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The European Commission has urged IATTC members to work towards adopting more robust measures to address management and conservation for all stocks and

fisheries, at their annual meeting in July 2017. A last-minute agreement was reached, which applies a catch limit for certain fisheries in 2017, but the agreement falls short of what is needed to guarantee long-term sustainable management of tuna stocks.

An extraordinary annual meeting of the IATTC was held in February.

Scientists recommended closing the fishing for big-eye tuna and yellowfin tuna for 87 days. The EU supported this proposal, but a majority of IATTC members considered this measure unacceptable. Instead, IATTC decided only to set a global catch limit for big-eye tuna and yellowfin tuna caught through FADs, and a limit for yellowfin tuna for dolphin-associated fisheries. No

limits were imposed on other fisheries, which will continue to be regulated by the current 62-day closure – despite sharp catch increases in this fishery. The EU also encouraged the IATTC to finally agree on a capacity management plan to address fleet overcapacity and to take measures to limit the number of fish aggregating devices (FADs) used in the region.

Italy: Aquaculture association commits to more sustainable production in Italy. The aquaculture sector in Italy comprises both freshwater and marine species. Significant volumes each of Mediterranean mussels, and Japanese carpet shell clams are grown with smaller quantities of grooved carpet shell clams. There is also a small production of oysters. Of the finfish, rainbow trout is by far the dominant species with smaller

Morocco-EU fisheries partnership strengthened European Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Karmenu Vella travelled to Morocco to visit the Salon Halieutis fisheries fair in Agadir. The aim was to underline the importance of the fisheries partnership between the EU and Morocco and the value of international cooperation in tackling shared oceanrelated challenges. The European Commission launched an initiative on international ocean governance in November last year, and is working with partner countries to push for science-based fisheries management in Regional Fisheries Management Organisations around the world. Commissioner Vella met with the Moroccan Minister of Agriculture and Marine Fisheries, Aziz Akhannouch, to highlight 10

the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA). The EU has similar agreements with countries across the world, where EU boats fish in return for EU investment. In Morocco’s case, €14m is earmarked to support the local fisheries sector, which seeks to provide increased job opportunities for local fishermen and exchange ideas and best practices. During the visit the EU also launched a twinning and investment programme for Morocco’s aquaculture sector. Commissioner Vella discussed sustainable blue growth in the western Mediterranean with a range of business leaders and fisheries ministers from other African countries to promote better ocean governance, particularly the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

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volumes of seabass, seabream, seatrout, sturgeon, and mullet.

The agreement was signed by Pier Antonio Salvador, President of API and Paolo Bray, Founder of Friend of the Sea in the presence of Giuseppe Castiglione, the State

NEW

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forest Policies. Friend of the Sea will develop guidelines and will provide technical support including training courses to promote sustainable aquaculture.

PUBLICATION

FISH NUTRITION

Friend of the Sea, an NGO dedicated to the conservation of the marine habitat, has signed a collaboration agreement with the Italian Aquaculture Producers Association (API). The two organizations have committed to actively collaborate to mitigate the potential impacts of aquaculture on the environment and to promote sustainable aquaculture

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[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Canada: Company approved to sell insect larvae as aqua feed Enterra Feed Corporation has received approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to sell whole black fly larvae as a food ingredient for salmonids, including farmed salmon, trout, and arctic char. With this approval, the British Columbia-based company is the first to market and sell this sustainable, natural product to aquaculture feed manufactures in Canada. It is the first time CFIA has approved an insect-based feed, after it approved the same product in chicken broilers last year.

The company says the product can effectively replace other ingredients in fish feed such as fishmeal and soybean meal. Canada is the fourth-largest producer of farmed salmon in the world,

according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. In 2015 the farm gate value of salmon and trout in Canada was $850 million.

Production of fish meal can deplete wild ocean stocks and is subject to substantial price fluctuations. Soybean meal requires significant agricultural inputs that could otherwise be used more efficiently to grow food for people. Enterra’s insect-based feed ingredients are sustainably produced with a long-term price guarantee. The company collects pre-consumer recycled food from farms, grocery stores and food producers and feeds the waste food to larvae which grow rapidly under controlled conditions.

Larvae from the black fly can now replace fishmeal or soybean meal as a source of protein for fish feed.

Once mature, the larvae are processed into renewable feed ingredients in the form of whole dried

black soldier fly larvae, meal (made of de-fatted larvae) and oil (extracted from the larvae).

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[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] USA: High-mercury seafood like swordfish linked to incurable ALS twice as likely to have ALS as those with lower mercury levels.

Today in the UK, ALS affects about 5,000 adults every year, and about 30,000 people in the US. ALS (also known as motor neuron disease) is caused by progressive damage to the nerve cells that transmit signals from the brain to the muscles to control movement. “For most people, eating fish is part of a healthy diet,” said study author Elijah Stommel of Dartmouth College, “But questions remain about the possible impact of mercury in fish.” Mercury is thought to be a neurotoxic metal with a range of damaging effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems, according to the World Health Organization.

Consuming very high amounts of mercury in seafood has been linked to fatal conditions such as Minamata disease, which was first discovered in the 1950s and killed thousands of people in Japan, due to industrial pollution of rivers that were a crucial local source of seafood.

Derke Snodgrass, NOAA Photo Library

According to research presented at the American Academy of Neurology, people who eat types of fish that are typically high in mercury are twice as likely to be diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a fatal progressive neurodegenerative condition affecting nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The study looked at participants’ diets, recording how much fish they ate, and whether they were highmercury types such as shark and swordfish, or low-mercury types such as salmon and sardines.

They also took clippings from the participants’ toenails to measure the amount of mercury in their system. Of the 518 study participants – 294 who had ALS, and 224 who didn’t – people in the top 25 for eating mercury-rich fish and seafood were twice as likely to have ALS. In total, 61 of participants with ALS were in the top quarter of estimated mercury intake. Results from the toenail clipping analysis also supported these findings, as people in the top 25 of mercury levels in their clippings were

Excessive consumption of species such as swordfish and shark that tend to be high in mercury can double the likelihood of developing ALS.

Spain: Super additive leading the way to more sustainable aquaculture feed Fish farmers are always looking for sustainable feed that can make fish strong and healthy.

A new study led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Spain concludes that marine feed ingredients in aquaculture can potentially be replaced by plant ingredients without detrimental effects, when appropriate feed additives are included. Plant-based fish feed is seen as more sustainable than feed containing other marine products, such as

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fishmeal. Research shows that some farmed fish species can survive without any or with a very limited supply (<7) of marine feed ingredients, but their efficiency to digest the feed declines, and they are more susceptible to diseases and stress.

Sodium butyrate is one of the most promising feed additives to be used in aquaculture to prevent these adverse effects. The team of researchers found that supplementing feed with butyrate, a salt of short-chain

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fatty acid produced by bacterial fermentation of undigested carbohydrates, helps to preserve intestinal function in gilthead seabream.

Two Transnational Access (TNA) studies, which allow scientists to use research infrastructures in different locations, were conducted to define the most effective butyrate dose for gilthead seabream based on growth performance and measures of intestinal function, architecture and permeability.

Fish given the supplement showed fewer intestinal problems normally associated with a plant-based diet. Senior author Dr Jaume Pérez-Sánchez, CSIC, said that looking at 80 intestinal genetic markers the team could show changes in the expression of genes involved in antioxidant defense, epithelial permeability and mucus production when fish were fed with plant-based diets alone. Most of these were returned to normal when adding sodium butyrate to the diet.

[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Closer collaboration with Albania on sustainable fisheries The Republic of Albania is an important player in the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) of FAO, the regional fisheries management organization based in Rome, which counts 23 countries from the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins as members. The current collaboration is set to become stronger following a bilateral agreement

signed between FAO and Albania’s Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Water Administration aimed at strengthening cooperation and technical assistance activities in fisheries and aquaculture over the next years.

A letter of agreement was signed

by Edmond Panariti, the Albanian minister and FAO Deputy DirectorGeneral Maria Helena Semedo.

The co-operation will result in the development of a national fisheries data collection system, the establishment of effective Port State Measures for the fight against IUU fishing, and support to the development of a national strategic plan for sustainable aquaculture. In expressing his support for closer collaboration, Edmond Panariti stressed Albania’s willingness to

implement the measures foreseen by the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures which entered into force on 5 June 2016. With its Adriatic coastline, fisheries are an important sector for Albania.

Currently, aquaculture in Albania includes intensive, semi-intensive, and extensive cultivation techniques in marine, brackish and freshwater environments.

Canada: Food banks turns to farming as donations decline Some Canadian food banks are looking to alternative solutions to help augment declining fresh produce donations. One Canadian food bank, Mississuage, recently launched AquaGrow Farms. Using a combination of fish farming and soilless agriculture they are now growing lettuce and tilapia using an aquaponics laboratory. The

waste from the fish tanks is filtered and used to fertilize the lettuce. The vegetable in turn cleans the water, which is then sent back into the fish tanks. It takes about six months for tilapia fingerlings to reach about a kilogram in size, at which point they will be sent off-site for processing and packaging. The first harvest was expected at the end of March.

Executive director Christopher Hatch said the Ontario food bank is the first in Canada to be producing its own fish. There were just under 90,000 visits to food banks last year in Mississauga, Canada’s sixth largest city with a population of about 720,000. “People tend to want to give us a can of soup and box of Kraft Dinner, which is fine, but

we’re trying to also source higherquality nutritional value food,” said Hatch. “It’s already having a big impact in the community. We’ve been getting some feedback from clients who have received this lettuce and they have been very happy and feel very fortunate to have received this fresh lettuce especially when it’s dark and grey outside.”

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[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Sweden: Gut feeling essential for migrating fish In a new thesis published at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Jeroen Brijs has tried to answer why trout spend so much time in potentially dangerous estuaries before migrating to sea. He reveals the answer may lie in the gut. Trout migrate to sea to grow as much as possible before returning to the rivers to spawn, but they must first undergo a wide range of changes so that they can survive in the salty water. By investigating the

essential physiological changes necessary for trout to maintain salt and water balance, we can now better understand how a fish prepares for a life at sea. A particularly risky section of the journey from freshwater to seawater occurs in the estuaries, as trout are bombarded from above by predatory birds. Mortality rates of trout in estuaries can be as high as 90, yet they still choose to spend several days there.

Jeroen Brijs wondered why migrating fish chose to spend time in these dangerous areas before entering the sea. He and his colleague have investigated the physiological changes that take place when fish move from freshwater to seawater, which allow them to survive at much higher salinities. Their findings reveal that adjustments in gut function, such as increased gut blood flow and movements, seem to play an important role

for fish maintaining salt and water balance in seawater.

These modifications are crucial for the survival of fish crossing the freshwater-ocean boundary because if the gut is not ready for high salinity waters the fish will die from dehydration. It is likely that despite the increased risk of getting eaten, migrating fish are forced to stay in the estuaries until their guts can handle the high salinity waters of the sea.

Spain: New fluorescence method detects mercury in fish Researchers from the University of Burgos, Spain have developed a fluorescent polymer which lights up in contact with mercury that may be present in fish.

High levels of the metal were detected in samples of swordfish and tuna. The presence of the toxic metal mercury in the environment comes from natural sources, but industrial waste has caused an increase in concentrations of the metal in some areas of the sea. In the food

chain, mercury can be diluted either in organic form as methylmercury or as an inorganic salt. Researchers from the University of Burgos have created a fluorescent polymer, JG25, which can detect the presence of these two forms of mercury in fish samples. The development is published in the journal Chemical Communications.

Tomás Torroba, lead author of the paper explains that the polymer

remains in contact with samples extracted directly from the fish for around 20 minutes. Then, when the sample is irradiated with ultraviolet light, it emits a bluish light. A portable polymer probe, which can be used in situ, was used to apply the technique to 2-gram samples from a range of fish species. The research showed that the larger the fish is, the higher are the levels of mercury: between 1.0 and 2.0 parts per million for swordfish, tuna and

dogfish, around 0.5 ppm in conger eels and 0.2 ppm in panga.

No mercury was found in farmed salmon, which are large fish and at the top of the food chain, but the metal is not present in captivity due to the lack of an industrial or natural source.

Malaysia: ASEAN fish production to rise policies and technology needed to ensure sustainability A new report from WorldFish, Fish to 2050 in the ASEAN Region, shows that fish production in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries will reach 24 of global output by 2030. However, policies and law enforcement in fisheries management are critical to ensuring sustainable growth in both sectors. For ASEAN countries fish is an important source of nutrition and the fisheries sector also

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provides employment opportunities in impoverished areas. The majority of fish production occurs in developing countries in the south, where competition for natural resources is high. The international fish trade represents an important source of foreign currency earnings. By volume in the ASEAN region, fish production is four times that of poultry and 20 times that of cattle. Aquaculture is expected to supply more than

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half of the fish for consumption in the region. Future fish supply and demand in ASEAN faces a number of challenges, especially climate change, which will cause disruptions in ocean and aquatic ecosystems. Increasing demand for fishmeal and fish oil and the associated price increases of fish will also become key drivers of change in technologies and management. In addition to continuing to support the

rise of sustainable aquaculture in ASEAN and the Asian region, WorldFish aims to scale this learning in Africa, a region where aquaculture remains a huge opportunity for income, employment and food and nutrition security. Fisheries and aquaculture are increasingly becoming a primary source of animal protein, micronutrients, foreign exchange, livelihoods and wellbeing for the population in the region.

[ INTERNATIONAL NEWS ] Norway: Higher cod prices hit Europe’s fish consumers a leading buyer of Icelandic cod, the most popular fish eaten out of home, typically as fish and chips.

The rise in European cod prices comes as overall fish prices have firmed thanks to lower supplies and steady demand growth.

Apart from salmon, whose output has been hit by disease and sea lice problems, prices for tuna have also risen after a period of sustained lows, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Low or stable supplies of many highlytraded species can be expected to push global seafood prices up further in the medium term, despite the economic difficulties currently being experienced in major emerging markets such as the Russian Federation and Brazil, says FAO.

Dave Moss, Seafish.org

Europe’s fish lovers are facing higher cod prices due to a prolonged fishing strike in Iceland and increased demand, which led consumers to seek alternatives.

Prices of Norwegian cod, which is used in the UK for the iconic fish and chips, have risen almost 30 from a year ago, to EUR2 per kg. A 45 rise in salmon prices over the same period has led consumers to look for cheaper substitutes.

The prices for Icelandic cod have risen 1 from a year before. Disagreements between the Icelandic fishermen’s union and the vessel owners’ association have left ships grounded at ports in Iceland since December. The peak cod-fishing season in Iceland is typically between February to April, and analysts think current delays in fishing could limit supplies later in the year. The UK is

The rise in prices of cod from Norway and Iceland have UK buyers looking for alternatives in their quest to supply fish and chips to consumers.

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Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ EVENTS ] Seafood Expo Global / Seafood Processing Global, 25-27 April 2017

Brussels seafood show celebrates 25 years

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eafood Expo Global and Seafood Processing global will once again open their doors to representatives from the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seafood industry on Tuesday, 25 April. The event this year is expected to feature more than 1,600 exhibitors from 80 countries and cover the entire

gamut of goods and services related to the seafood industry.

The latest in fresh, frozen, valueadded, processed and packaged products will all be on display at Seafood Expo Global spread over seven halls (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, Patio), while those interested in processing equipment, logistics services,

or other seafood related services will need to head to Seafood Processing Global in Hall 4.

Eurofish member countries will be well represented at the show.

No fewer than eight have country pavilions Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Italy,

Spain, and Turkey, while companies from Poland and Lithuania will exhibit individually. Eurofish will share their stand (7-1416) with the Albanian Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Water Administration and the Ro-Pescador Association from Romania.

Union of Latvian Fish Processing Industry

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he Union of Latvian Fish Processing Industry has a long history of attending the event. Latvia processors are perhaps most famous for their canned Riga sprats in oil, but

this is only one of a wide range of products that are typically on display. This year there will be eight companies exhibiting at the pavilion, a fraction of the 100 processing plants that exist in Latvia, but

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these eight companies are members of the association and have a strong interest in export markets.

Latvian processors produce frozen, salted, canned, and smoked fish. The canneries typically use fish from the Baltic Sea, while other processors use imported pelagic fish and salmon. Some locally caught freshwater species are also processed. The bulk of the value from the processing sector is from processing small pelagics from the Baltic Sea sprats and herring. Didzis Smits, the president of the Union of Latvian Fish Processing Industry, and the organiser of the pavilion remarks that a new company will be exhibiting at the Latvian pavilion this year. This is

a cod processing company with joint Icelandic Latvian ownership that is filleting and freezing cod from Norway for supply to the United States. The company, however, is looking to diversify its markets and has therefore joined the association and will be actively taking part in the exhibitions that the union attends. We have excellent global supply and distribution chains in Latvia, says Mr Smits, and this is a good example of a Nordic company, processing in Latvia, and then sending the product to a western market.

Latvia is a net exporter of seafood products and Estonia, Lithuania, and Denmark are the main

[ EVENTS ] recipients. The Russian embargo introduced in 2014 forced companies to pivot to the west and now the EU takes more than half the Latvian exports of fish and seafood.

But Latvian companies are looking further and further afield for

markets for their products. The US market is an obvious destination both in terms of size and because of an immigrant community from the Baltics and from Russia that is familiar with the products Latvia exports. But Latvian exporters are

also looking at Asia, the Gulf states in West Asia as well as Japan, South Korea and, more recently, China, where approval to export has been granted to some thirty Latvian companies. Volumes are still modest, however, but

participation at the Seafood Expo Global could help change that â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all three countries will be represented with national pavilions. For more information about the Latvian pavilion, contact Didzis Smits, didzis.smits@cannedfish.lv

Croatia, Croatian Chamber of Economy 6-1015

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apture fisheries in Croatia are dominated by the production of large quantities of two species, sardines and anchovies, which also provide the raw material for a processing sector that manufactures salted and marinated products for the domestic and export markets. Salted anchovies are highly regarded products in Spain and Italy particularly when they stem from the Adriatic where the

combination of temperature and salinity create a microclimate that gives the fish a characteristic and sought-after flavour.

The Croatian stand at the SEG is organised by the Croatian Chamber of Economy and Zoran Radan from the chamber says that the pavilion will primarily host companies that are manufacturing these two products. Salting is a relatively long process taking four to six months and the final

Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ EVENTS ] product too has a relatively long shelf life. Salted anchovies are packaged in jars in oil and some manufacturers are creating variations on the basic product by combining them with olives and even cheese. Once salted for the requisite length of time the fish needs to be filleted, a process that is only possible by hand as the fish is extremely delicate after

salting. Many Croatian firms send their salted anchovies to Albania to have them processed into fillets. Marinating is a different story however with a shorter processing time and a shorter shelf life.

Other producers at the Croatian pavilion are using Croatian small pelagics to create canned products that combine the fish with different oils or sauces and even

vegetables to give new variations on an old theme.

Croatia also has an aquaculture industry producing seabass and seabream among other species.

The best-known company in the sector Cromaris will also be exhibiting at the stand. The company sells fresh fish and fillets to domestic and foreign markets,

in particular Italy, and also has a range of fresh fish, fillets and steaks that are packaged in modified atmosphere giving them a longer shelf life. For visitors interested in Croatian products the companies at the stand will be offering samples not only of fish but also the Croatian wine that goes with it. For more information, contact Zoran Radan, zradan@hgk.hr

Although the Spanish are still among the biggest consumers in the world of fish and seafood per capita, the last couple of years has seen a decline in consumption, a development that is causing concern not only in the industry, but also among health professionals and in the administration.

Among the reasons touted for this falling consumption is changes in lifestyle, which have led consumers, especially young people,

to switch from fish and seafood to other products that are easier and less time consuming to prepare. From a commercial point of view, fish retailers are the first to notice that consumers are eating less fish. They have therefore introduced a wider range of products that includes ready to eat items, as well as smoked, salted, and cured seafood products, that require little by way of preparation before they can be eaten.

Products like this will be among those that are on display in the Spanish pavilion. Fishmongers are also going beyond providing raw fish to cooking fish and seafood themselves which customers can then buy and takeaway. In this the retailers are experimenting with preparing fish in different styles, Asian, or Latin American, to try and increase the diversity of their offerings and tempt more customers.

Spain, Halls 7 and 8

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he Spanish pavilion at Seafood Expo Global reflects the importance of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fishing and processing sector as well as its significance for the economies of some of Spainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s autonomous communities. Galicia, Asturias, Canary Islands, AndalucĂ­a, Catalonia, and the Basque Country, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment (MAPAMA) will all have areas in a giant Spanish section in hall 7.

Spanish companies are involved in all aspects of the seafood value chain from capture and farmed production, to processing, sales, marketing and distribution. Fresh, frozen, and value-added fish and seafood products will all be represented at the Spanish pavilion by companies that range from giant multinationals to small family affairs. The ministry space (7-1533) alone amounts to some 250 square meters and will host two associations, Conxemar, the Spanish Association of Wholesalers, Importers, Manufacturers and Exporters of Fish products and Aquaculture, which represents over 220 companies, as well as Anfaco, which represents some 245 companies from the seafood industry. The two associations together with 22 companies will occupy some 200 sq. m of space, while the balance will go to institutions.

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[ EVENTS ] Denmark, Danish Fish Tech Group, Danish Fish Processors, Halls 4 and 5

D

enmark will have a pavilion each at the Seafood Export Global for fish processors in Hall 5, and the Seafood Processing Global for processing equipment manufacturers in Hall 4. The domestic market in Denmark is small forcing the country’s manufacturers to be internationally competitive with carefully designed, sophisticated, and high quality products that can also compete on price.

The Danish pavilion representing members of the Danish Fish Tech Group will host 28 suppliers of solutions for the fish and seafood processing industry. These will offer a range of equipment including for refrigerating and

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freezing, packaging, canning, pumps, belts, waste water treatment, and complete processing lines. Hygiene and food safety, two of the most important topics today within the processing industry for food and particularly for fish, due to its perishability and delicate nature, are deeply embedded in the Danish processing machinery industry. Strict regulations and demanding consumers means that food safety standards in Denmark are among the highest in the world. Therefore, Danish suppliers to the fish and seafood processing industry have developed innovative and hygienic solutions that comply

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with rising demands for quality seafood world-wide. Equipment suppliers work with optimising part of or even the whole flow of product through a factory, making changes that can improve hygiene and deliver a better and more food-safe product. This often leads to increased efficiency

allowing greater volumes to be processed, says Martin Winkel, Head of the Danish Fish Tech Group. For more information about the companies at the Danish pavilion, contact Martin Winkel, martin.winkel@ dk-export.dk or Tanja Hai, tanja. hai@dk-export.dk.

”

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A A L B O R G , D E N M A R K 11, 12 & 13 O C T O B E R 2 017

25TH International Fisheries Exhibition in Denmark DanFish International is one of the world’s most important exhibitions for equipment and services to the fishing industry. In 2015, DanFish International welcomed 325 exhibitors from 26 countries and almost 14,000 visitors, including invited key buyers from all corners of the world.

Contact: Lasse Holsteen Jessen, +45 99 35 55 09, lhj@akkc.dk Else Herfort, + 45 99 35 55 18, ehe@akkc.dk

Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ EVENTS ] Turkey, Istanbul Exporters’ Association 11-2101, 11-2201, 11-2301

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urkey will have sixteen companies exhibiting at Seafood Expo Global this year offering a wide variety of fish and seafood including seabass, gilthead seabream, red mullet, gray mullet, anchovy, horse mackerel, trout, fresh and chilled or frozen products, and marinated seafood products. Turkish participation at this years show will be for the 13th year running, a period over which much has changed in the country’s seafood industry.

The growth in the aquaculture industry both sea farming and freshwater farming is the single biggest change. Turkey is today the biggest producer of seabass, seabream and freshwater trout in Europe. While these three species

form the mainstay of Turkish aquaculture production, companies have also been experimenting with other species and today can boast a production of meagre, red seabream, pink dentex, and real dentex. It is not just on the production side that there have been developments, but all along the value chain. Companies have graduated from only supplying whole round fish to offering fillets and even ready meals combining fish with other ingredients. Packaging is not only in polystyrene boxes, but also in modified atmosphere and vacuum packaging.

Products from the capture fishing and processing industry include marinated anchovies, and sardines, as well as smelt. The growth

in the aquaculture sector has also led to developments in the fish feed industry. Farming companies are integrating backwards building feed mills, so as to be able to control the entire production chain and to stay independent of

feed companies. All this and more will be visible at the Turkish pavilion, where, in addition, tasting sessions of Turkish seafood will be held at regular intervals. For more information, contact Gülden Polat Sagban, gpolat@iib.org.tr

Marel Salmon ShowHow, 8 February 2017, Copenhagen

New labelling machine is highly efficient Organised by Marel, an Icelandic manufacturer of fish processing equipment for the salmon and whitefish industry, the Salmon ShowHow this year was the 16th edition of the event. It attracted some 300 visitors from 140 companies from around the world. he Salmon ShowHow is held at the company’s demonstration centre, Progress Point, in Copenhagen. Many of the attendees are from Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Norway, but also a fair number come from further afield, both east and west.

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In addition, the dry area in the demonstration room featured packaging and labelling machinery as well as various slicers.

Among the latter was the I-Slice 3300 for retail packs that can slice fish and place the slices on a board for vacuum packaging or deliver the slices to a conveyor or a tray.

This year the company displayed a couple of new machines, a labelling unit that was in fact previewed at the company’s whitefish event held in November last year, and a massive deheading unit that was coupled to a filleting system.

Improved sustainability with linerless labels

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The new labelling machine, the M360 labeller, is a state-of-theart piece of equipment that can place linerless labels on trays of

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Marel’s Salmon ShowHow, the 16th edition of the event, gathered some 300 people from 141 firms at the company’s demonstration centre, Progress Point.

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[ EVENTS ] selecting different options in the software that runs the machine.

The deheader will go on sale at the end of the year after Marel together with its partners in the salmon industry have further refined its performance.

The M360 labeller, a new piece of equipment displayed at the Marel Salmon ShowHow, has a smaller environmental footprint thanks to its use of linerless labels.

different sizes, and is also suited to working with skin packs. The labels can be complete wraparound labels or partial C-wrap wraparound labels or even just top labels. The linerless labels do not have a backing paper making them both more environmentally friendly and more efficient for several reasons. The reel weight is reduced compared with selfadhesive labels that have backing paper, there is no backing paper waste, and because a reel can hold more labels there is less downtime for reel changes. In addition, application speeds are high, up to a 100 packs a minute, the label serves as a tamper indicator, and there is a larger surface for printing. All this can be achieved because linerless labels instead of being self-adhesive have adhesive strips on the underside of the label and silicone strips on the front. The adhesive strips stick the label to the package, while the silicone strips prevent the labels on a reel from adhering to each other. The new labeller was to launch at Seafood Expo North America in March this year.

Yield equals that of manual deheading An imposing piece of machinery that was pre-released at 22

the Salmon ShowHow was a deheading unit. This is a sophisticated piece of equipment that takes hygienic and ergonomic design principles to new levels and not only cuts the head off the fish but also the tail resulting in a product that is ready for filleting. The deheader can of course be seamlessly linked to a filleting line giving very high levels of throughput, yield and quality. With its six blades the machine can handle up to 20 fish of between two and ten kilos a minute. Each fish that is introduced into the machine is measured precisely and the cutting tools adjusted accordingly to reduce waste to the bare minimum. The fish goes through a series of ten steps of which four are cutting procedures. These cuts are made very cleanly, which makes any subsequent trimming procedures easier and less wasteful. The company claims that the deheader offers the same yield as a manual process and with higher quality as handling is reduced to a bare minimum â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the operator only has to place the fish in the holder after which everything is automatic. Any changes, for example to the angle of the blades or the kinds of cuts that are made, are not done manually, but by

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While these two pieces of equipment generated a lot of interest visitors also got to see demonstrations of filleting, pinboning, portioning, and slicing machinery and, in particular, the Innova software that provides a system to manage the progress of the fish from reception to dispatch.

Tailoring the product to the channel As usual the event included a number of presentations from Marel staff as well as from outside experts. The in-house presentations covered traceability, maintenance, value-added products, and the management of finished products, while the two external experts were from Nordea and Kantar Worldpanel. Katherine Shade from Kantar Worldpanel in her presentation showed how fresh fish consumption differed depending on whether it was bought at a supermarket, a convenience store, or online and how it was important for the product and the message to be tailored to the channel, the occasion and the consumer. The three main channels in the UK where people shop for food are the big supermarkets, online, and convenience stores including the discount stores. Consumers also often do a main shop, when they buy groceries say for a week, followed by top-up shops, as some things run out. Traditionally, the main shop is done at a supermarket while the topping up is at a convenience or a discount store. However, Ms Shade pointed to changes in the way consumers were shopping

with the main shop shifting away from regular supermarkets to online purchasing and to discount stores. In addition, consumers increasingly replace the main weekly shop with smaller and more frequent purchases.

Interestingly, the number of times in the week consumers shop, the shops they visit, and the number of items they buy, have all more or less stayed the same over the last several years.

Fish consumption benefits from interest in health, convenience The concept of health, she said, has been growing in importance; consumers are eating more fruit, vegetables, and fish and less red meat. This may have to do with the increasing number of older people, and particularly older couples, who tend to eat more fish, for example. Convenience is also popular among consumers as it saves them time and effort even if it costs more.

These trends, health and convenience, both favour the increased consumption of fish. In the UK fish consumption is growing at 2.6ď&#x2122;&#x201A;, though much of this is due to price increases. It would be better to get more people to buy fish, a strategy that calls for better understanding of consumers, who they are, what they want, understand their lifestyle, and offer something more of them will want to buy. In supermarkets this means fish products should appeal universally to consumers irrespective of their age or the size of their household, they should be placed strategically with similar cuts of other proteins (fish fillets, chicken breasts, pork chops), and there needs to be a wide range of offerings.

Online sales on the other hand are popular among households with families as they buy in bulk, and key here is that the food

[ EVENTS ] needs to be healthy, convenient and filling to make it attractive.

Promoting online sales of fish would mean that more people get to consume fish. Online sales offer advantages such as the ability to easily link to products that can be eaten with the main dish, such as potatoes or other vegetables, so if the website combines an easy recipe with links to all the ingredients, it might encourage sales. Important factors for online sales are the fact that consumers tend to value health and ease of preparation more during the week than at the weekend, when they

have more time and are more inclined to indulge. Convenience stores are popular in part because of the spread of one and two person households, which in turn is driven by young people starting families later and by older people living longer.

Here too convenience and ease of preparation are influential factors in the decision about what to buy. On the other hand, consumers are willing to spend more if they can justify it to themselves. Seafood is healthy, but if it also practical to prepare and enjoyable, consumers will be prepared to spend more on it.

Population growth and health suggest bright future for salmon

market is going to be challenging. However, in the longer term, demand is driven by population growth and the desire for more healthful food neither of which is liable to abate. In addition, much research is going into combating the challenge posed by sea lice and other factors that hinder the growth of the fish, which should in time pay off. Moreover, developing new licences in Norway for farming as well as the promise of land-based cultivation and other initiatives all point to increases in biomass, suggesting that overall the future of salmon looks bright.

Kolbjørn Giskeødegürd from Nordea provided an overview of salmon markets saying that biological issues in Chile and Norway had removed 200,000 tonnes of salmon from the market last year leading to high prices and big losses for processors. He expected consumers to feel the increase in prices as contracts are renegotiated and store labels start to reflect the current price of salmon. Factor in currency fluctuations and the

AquaFarm, 31 January 2017, Pordenone, Italy

Vertical farming pioneers attend AquaFarm Aquaculture, Algae and Vertical Farming protagonists of the event with their production chain. Three sectors, strategic to the future of the national economy, have met up in the ďŹ rst integrated event organized in Europe.

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he first edition of AquaFarm was a comprehensive event for aquaculture, vertical farming, and algae farming. Sponsored by the Del Pesce Group and Biorigin, the conference consisted of 15 international sessions that were addressed by 113 speakers and attended by visitors from 25 countries. Italian and international attendees of note included: Giuseppe Castiglione, State undersecretary of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies; Riccardo Rigillo, the Director of Fisheries of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies; Professor Stefano Cataudella, president of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean; Dickson Despommier

of Columbia University, creator of the concept of vertical farming; and Professor Mario Tredici, vice-president of the European Algae Biomass Association. Also present were Pier Antonio Salvador, president of the Italian Fish Farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Association, and Giuseppe Prioli, president of the Association of Mediterranean Aquaculture.

Vertical farming uses no soil and little water By growing crops without using soil, and by using limited amounts of water, there is the possibility for stacking beds of growing crops on top of each other to save space. With high water and space efficiency, these

methods, called vertical farming, are gaining significant interest in urban areas where there is a demand for locally sourced vegetables which have less of an impact on the environment.

For example, AeroFarms in New Jersey, USA has been successful selling baby greens to clients in New York City. The benefits are lower overall environmental impact, and freshness of

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23

[ EVENTS ] The water in an aquaponic system could be further used for microalgae cultivation. Why microalgae?

Francesca Tulli of the Universita Degli Studi di Udine demonstrated recent findings for the use of microalgal products in formulated fish feeds. This means that the fish within an aquaponic vertical farm could be fed by the microalgae produced on-site. Microalgae today is used in aquaculture to enhance the flesh color of salmonids, but other possibilities include making other pigments and cosmetics, high value products which can help to increase the profitability of a single vertical farming site.

The first edition of AquaFarm attracted attendees from 25 countries, who heard about recent developments in the fields of fish, shellfish, and algae farming.

the produce since it is grown locally. Vertical farming started as a movement for farming and land use, and has been extended to introduce plant life

architecturally into the urban environment. Interdisciplinary designers are looking for ways to more fully utilized the closed loop system of the vertical farm

environment. One possibility is by introducing aquaculture which would fertilize the plant life, a symbiosis known as aquaponics.

The presentation of the 15 conference sessions of AquaFarm 2017, the video interviews, and the photo and video gallery are available on the website www.aquafarm. show. Aquafarm 2018 will take place again in Pavilion 5 of Pordenone Fiere, on 15 and 16 February.

Fish 2017: Fish Processing and Aquaculture Technologies, 2-3 February 2017, Moscow

Great hopes for farmed fish production in Russia Abundant fish resources of 4.7 million tonnes allow Russia to cover about 80% of its domestic demand for fish and seafood products.

Yet, the contribution from the aquaculture sector to the total fisheries supply accounts for only 3.7%, mostly from freshwater farming.

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n the period 2013-2015, the aquaculture production in Russia was 153,000-160,000 tonnes. In 2016, farmed fish output reached 174,000 tonnes, an increase of 14 compared to 2015.

The state programme of the Russian Federation “Development of the fisheries sector” foresees output from the aquaculture sector reaching 315,500 tonnes by 2020.

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Currently, the Federal Agency for Fisheries and the Ministry of Agriculture are preparing legislation that will simplify land use for aquaculture. In addition, the issue of aquaculture activities on fish catching sites has been under consideration, especially for Sakhalin Island, as well as further improvements in the Aquaculture Law.

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Aquaculture in Russian regions should benefit from development programmes Development of the Russian aquaculture and fish processing sector was the key topic of the second international conference, Fish 2017: Fish Processing and Aquaculture Technologies,

which took place in Moscow on February 2-3, 2017. The event brought together representatives from the administration and industry to discuss current issues and review international success stories within the aquaculture sector. Russian representatives from the executive and legislative branches at the federal and regional levels

[ EVENTS ] Freight of perishable goods by rail slumps for several reasons

Ekaterina Tribilustova, Eurofish; Igor Scherbak, FAO; Viktor Asharin, Federal Agency for Fisheries of Russia, form part of a panel discussion.

discussed the legal and regulatory aspects of the industry and new development programmes for Russian regions.

On the first day of the conference Vitaliy Artamonov, Chairman

Transportation of fish products across the vast territory of Russia was another hot issue for participants both in fisheries and aquaculture industry. Vitaliy Momot, President of the Association of Refrigerated Rolling Stock Operators, presented the current state of the sector and modern logistic technologies for processing and transportation of fish cargos.

He noted that rail transport is losing competition to road transport.

At present, the share of rail in the transportation of perishable cargos is 12ď&#x2122;&#x201A;, while the share of road transport is 88ď&#x2122;&#x201A;. In 2007-2016, the volume of transportation of perishable cargos by rail decreased 41ď&#x2122;&#x201A; to

are 56 companies specialized in trout farming, production of fish juveniles and fish processing. In the period 2007-2016, the farmed fish volume increased 125ď&#x2122;&#x201A; reaching 21,200 tonnes.

Vitaliy Artamonov presented the

â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;Śexcellent to hear about new scientiďŹ c technologies and their applications, and to make so many valuable contactsâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;?

Vitaliy Artamonov, Chairman of the Karelian Trout Farming Society, Russia of the Karelian Trout Farming Society, delivered an overview of the aquaculture development in the Republic of Karelia in Russia. Despite the fact that the share of the total fisheries and aquaculture output of the Republic of Karelia is just 1.2ď&#x2122;&#x201A; (about 55,000 tonnes) of the total fisheries and aquaculture production in Russia, this region leads in trout farming, and production of fish fry, with a share of 60ď&#x2122;&#x201A; of the national total. There

structure of the market, where six large companies contribute 52ď&#x2122;&#x201A; of the production, while 42 small companies and 5 medium ones contributed to 33ď&#x2122;&#x201A; and 15ď&#x2122;&#x201A; of the production respectively.

He noted a rapid development of the sector with a growth of 18ď&#x2122;&#x201A; compared to the previous year, as well as a rapid increase of trout prices on the domestic market, creating favorable conditions for fish farmers in the region.

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[ EVENTS ]

Vitaliy Momot (foreground), President of the Association of Refrigerated Rolling Stock Operators, said that increases in freight prices have pushed traffic on to the road network.

6.1 million tonnes due to obsolete rolling stock, complicated rules for transportation of perishable goods and transportation costs. The formula for calculating the refrigerated containers transportation charge was changed in December 2011 resulting in higher transportation costs and a consequent drop

Kuril Islands, Magadan, the Sakhalin Island and other remote places, said Momot.

Keen interest in ways to promote farmed fish On the second day of the conference Ekaterina Tribilustova, Market

“…interesting and lively discussions with memorable presentations from the FAO and Eurofish…”

Victor Asharin, Head of the Aquaculture Department in the Federal Agency for Fisheries of Russia

in rail-borne refrigerated container freight. At present, transportation of perishable goods by rail continues only due to private business.

In 2016, 50 of all fish from the Russian Far East was transported in refrigerated containers, and the route Far East – Moscow –Far East accounted for 80 of all transportation of fish products. Fish is delivered from Kamchatka, the 26

Specialist from Eurofish International Organisation, presented several best-case studies on the popularisation of freshwater aquaculture products in Europe. Examples of promotion campaigns for carp and trout in Poland and Spain were discussed showing how producers can create successful joint generic campaigns. Creating contemporary and attractive promotional campaigns

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highlighting freshwater farmed fish as healthy, convenient and appealing is a necessary element to maintain consumer demand, she said.

At the end of the conference, a resolution with the most relevant questions and high-priority tasks was prepared for further submission to the relevant committees of the Federation Council and the State Duma. At the The international conference, Fish 2017: Fish Processing and Aquaculture Technologies was organised by the publishing house Sfera together with the Federal Agency for Fisheries of Russia, Atlantic Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Federation Committee for Agrarian and Food Policy and Environmental Management, the State Duma Committee on

conference it was apparent that the development of the Russian aquaculture sector would be facilitated by improvements in the regulatory framework. New sites for aquaculture are also expected to become available. According to the Federal Agency for Fisheries, some 1,300 fish farming sites with an area of 90,000 hectares will be auctioned to investors starting in the Russian Far East in 2017.

Agrarian Questions and other partners.

Over 200 participants from various regions of Russia attended the conference, represented by companies in aquaculture production, fish processing, logistics companies, research institutes and associations. International participants and invited speakers were from Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Romania, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA, China among other countries.

[ AQUACULTURE ] Globalisation facilitates the introduction of ďŹ sh diseases

Treatment problems on ďŹ sh farms in many EU countries Diseases are functional disruptions which can have adverse effects on the existence of all living organisms, including ďŹ sh. In natural habitats such as rivers, lakes and seas, ďŹ sh diseases often go unnoticed. In aquaculture systems, however, they are more easily recognized, particularly since high stock densities promote spreading of infection. Fighting these diseases is difďŹ cult because the necessary drugs are lacking or they are not authorized. This creates a state of emergency when therapy proves impossible.

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here are several possibilities and reasons why the health status of a fish can get out of control. The interdependencies that exist between the fishâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s immune system (which protects it against numerous diseases), latent pathogens in the environment, and the animalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current living conditions are highly complex.

There are many factors that can trigger disease within aquaculture systems. The spectrum ranges from stress due to poor farming conditions, parasitic infestation and external injuries, to genetic impacts such as malformations or hereditary diseases, and various fish diseases caused by pathogenic germs, bacteria and viruses. Diseases resulting from pathogens are particularly dangerous because they often lead to huge losses and, in the case of inadequate isolation of the infected communities, can easily spread to other fish farms, for example when several fish farming facilities are positioned successively in a riverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s course.

That is why some particularly dangerous fish diseases are subject to mandatory reporting, both at national level and within the EU. Notifiable diseases include, for example, IHN (infectious hematopoietic necrosis), VHS (viral haemorrhagic septicaemia) and IPN (infectious pancreatic necrosis) in salmonids, as well as koi

herpes viral infections in carp, mostly KHV for short although the correct abbreviation would actually be CNGNV, standing for carp nephritis and gill necrosis virus.

Stress and parasites weaken the immune system Although stress is in itself not an illness it interferes with the fishesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rhythm of life, weakens their resilience and thus creates the necessary conditions for subsequent diseases. Among the most important measures for disease prophylaxis are thus the avoidance of any kinds of stress, from daily handling procedures to water quality or the suitable design of the fish tanks.

Environment-related physical and chemical damages, i.e. health damages that are not caused by pathogen germs but by unfavourable water parameters, constitute an extensive complex of risk sources.

Too much or too little oxygen, temperature shocks, poisoning from substances that are dissolved in the water, or high pH values which can lead to gill necrosis (GN), for example, in carp. Too little oxygen and carbon dioxide in the water can cause gill swelling in trout and is just as serious as oversaturation of the water with dissolved gases which is considered to be the cause of gas bubble disease. Sunburn can

also occur in fishes if the aquaculture facility does not offer sufficient shade. Damages caused by constructional or functional defects in a farmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technology and can lead to considerable losses are also termed â&#x20AC;&#x153;technopathiesâ&#x20AC;?.

Parasites too compromise a fish's resistance facilitating secondary infections. Whilst ectoparasites, which colonise the skin, fins, gills and external body cavities, endoparasites are to be found in the abdominal cavity as well as

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[ AQUACULTURE ]

For fish species like bass there are vaccinations which effectively prepare the fish’s immune system for some of the most frequent diseases and health risks.

in and on internal organs, in the intestine, the liver, the kidney and the brain. Parasitic tapeworms, flukes, hookworms und annelids damage the host organism to different degrees depending on the infection intensity. The fishes lose weight, growth is poor, and their general well-being is affected. But there are also parasites which can be the direct cause of illness if they appear in large enough numbers.

An example of such parasites is Ichthyophthiriose (white spot disease), which originates from parasitic paramecia. Whirling disease in trout, a disorder which leads to the fish swimming abnormally in an awkward corkscrew-like pattern, a darkening of the rear part of the body, and spinal distortion is caused by a single cell parasite (Myxosoma cerebralis).

In the case of other parasites such as swim bladder worm in eels it is not even clear what concrete effects the parasites might have on the fish. Originally the parasite Anguillicola crassus came from Japanese eel but in the mid-1980s it was discovered in the swim bladders of European eel as well. In the meantime it seems to have infected the majority of eels. Eels with swim bladder worms become stunted and often display 28

abnormal swimming patterns.

In professional circles it is even discussed whether the parasite might be partially to blame for the overall decline of the eel population because mature animals perhaps no longer manage to migrate to their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea. A further negative accompanying effect which is above all caused by parasites that sting and bite the fish, sit on the skin or the gills, and tap the blood capillaries or parts of the gill epithelium, is the transmission of infectious diseases. The carp louse Argulus, for example, is considered to be the carrier of spring viral anaemia in carp (SVC). In Chile the salmon louse is considered partially responsible for the spreading of the ISA virus among salmon cultures.

Mycoses are indications of poor husbandry Diseases caused by fungi, called mycoses, are not only detrimental to the fish’s appearance but they can also have serious economic consequences because if they remain untreated they almost always lead to the death of the infected animals.

Mycoses are secondary infections that can occur everywhere

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where the protective mucus layer on the skin’s surface is damaged. For example through mechanical injuries or after illnesses that have damaged the skin structure. Such mucus-free areas are ideal targets for fungal attack. The fungi develop on the skin to form a cotton-like film.

Probably the most frequent and most widely spread fish fungus or mould is Saprolegnia which occurs everywhere in almost all waters and can attack all fish species as well as their spawn.

Control of fish parasites and fungi is difficult, not only because the use of effective agents in natural waters and fish farming facilities requires very large quantities and is accordingly expensive but also because hardly any drugs are authorized and readily available. Malachite green is an effective fungicide which has been banned for treatment of food fish since 2004 and the remaining substances mostly contain copper sulphate or copper chloride as effective agents which is lethal to many invertebrates and some fish species in small doses. Some parasites such as Myxobolus cerebralis whose larvae lead to whirling disease in fishes can only be treated through prevention by disinfecting against the intermediary host Tubifex or sludge worm with quicklime or calcium cyanamide (CaCN2).

Individual infected animals can be bathed in weakly concentrated formalin, potassium permanganate, iodine-free cooking salt or lysol.

Vaccines prevent bacterial and viral diseases Probably the greatest danger to a fish stock, however, comes from bacterial and virus-based diseases that are encouraged by

a lack of hygiene, overstocking, or organic contamination of the water. The chief bacterial diseases in trout and salmon farms are cold water vibriosis, furunculosis, and fish mycobacteriosis, bacterial fin rot and enteric redmouth disease ERM). BKD (bacterial kidney disease), a disease that is usually fatal, must also be mentioned here. In the case of carp, carp erythrodermatitis (CE or ED), previously known as the ulcerative form of infectious ascites, and carp furunculosis are among the frequent bacterial diseases. Fighting these diseases is difficult for it requires exact diagnosis and demands special medicinal feeds, and often antibiotics which are, however, in many countries in Europe not approved for use in the fisheries sector. A promising method for reducing the curative use of antibiotics and medication is prophylactic vaccination which strengthens the fish’s immune system and provides protection against bacterial attacks.

Through the use of such vaccinations the Norwegian aquaculture sector has succeeded in being able to almost completely do without the use of antibiotics on salmon farms.

Viral infectious diseases in farmed fish are even more dangerous for there are up to now hardly any effective therapies or effective drugs to combat them. Neither VHS (viral haemorrhagic septicaemia) nor IHN (infectious haematopoietic necrosis) nor IPN (infectious pancreatic necrosis) is currently curable and the occurrence of these diseases usually involves partial or complete loss of the fish stock. This is also true of SVC, spring viraemia of carp, although a live vaccination against this disease already exists in some non-EU countries. The most important steps for avoiding

[ AQUACULTURE ]

In Norwegian salmon farming where large quantities of fishes have to be immunised automatic systems are even used for injecting the vaccine.

virus-caused fish diseases are thus strict hygiene, regular controls, and preventive disinfection measures within the aquaculture facilities. Fry should only be purchased from companies that are free from pathogenic viruses and whose status the vendors can verify with tests (for example IFAT, ELISA, PCR). This applies in particular to fry and food fish that are traded beyond national borders within the European Community. The appendix of EU Directive 91/67/ EEC lists all diseases that are notifiable and whose transmission and spreading are to be prevented through strict monitoring and control measures. Just how disastrous the effects of a fish disease that is allowed to spread unhindered are can be seen from the severity of the ISA crisis (infectious salmon anaemia) which nearly halved Chileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s salmon production in 2007 and 2008 and destroyed nearly 70ď&#x2122;&#x201A; of the Salmo salar biomass in the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s salmon farms. Because there are no effective drugs against a lot of virus diseases companies in which these diseases are rampant are mostly immediately isolated and it is not uncommon that the fish stock is destroyed. This ruthless method is often the only practicable way to prevent the spreading of the disease to other facilities and to wild fish stocks.

Global trade advances the introduction of fish diseases Taking care not to overstock, ensuring suitable water treatment and hygiene, high-quality feed and prophylaxis (which includes above all the regular disinfection of nets, buckets, animal transport containers and fish tanks) are the easiest, cheapest and most certain way to prevent outbreaks of fish diseases in aquaculture facilities.

The effort is considerable, but it pays off in the end for healthy fish stocks mean less losses and ultimately less expenditure for medication and treatment.

Special care should always be taken when importing foreign fish species. The list of diseases, parasites and other ecological and health problems that were carried with allochthonous fish and crustacean species to Europe and other regions is long.

With Directives 2006/88/EC and 2007/345/EC the EU Council is trying to prevent and combat some of the diseases that face aquatic animals today. Fish farms and processing companies have to be approved by the responsible authorities of

the member states, fish imports are only permitted if they come from authorized, controlled, disease-free countries and regions.

In spite of these precautionary measures the risk remains high, however, that a disease will break out in an aquaculture facility. In such cases qualified veterinary care and support become necessary as well as the use of drugs to help the infected animals and also protect the fish stock against further infection. But things look bleak in this area as the pink list of the EU (37/2010) shows. This list contains all the active agents and drugs that are authorized for animals that are used for human consumption. Fishes are considered â&#x20AC;&#x153;minor speciesâ&#x20AC;? and only a few drugs are authorized

for them. The pharmaceutical industry shows little interest in applying for drug approval since the procedure is a costly process. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fish drugsâ&#x20AC;? arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worthwhile because the market is relatively small. The consequences for aquaculture in the EU are dire: a state of emergency nearly everywhere where therapy is needed.

Necessary treatments can often only be carried out after clinical and diagnostic testing in the laboratory under veterinary supervision. Fishes and fish products are in the EU subject to national residue control plans. They are taken off the market if the drug residues exceed the authorized maximum permitted levels. This is in keeping with consumer protection requirements. mk

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[ AQUACULTURE ] Cobia – a rising star of global mariculture

Five-kilogram fishes within just a year Although cobia (Rachycentron canadum) is still unknown to most consumers it is generally considered to be one of the most promising candidates for marine aquaculture. It is an excellent food fish. It grows extremely fast and is relatively robust. Its firm, white flesh has a nutty, buttery flavour and is rich in Omega 3 fatty acids. Everywhere, where cobia is already available on the market, demand is growing. Aquaculture production is rising.

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he fish industry and trade have long been searching for a white fish with a value-adding potential similar to that of salmon. Tilapia has so far been unable to assert itself on the European market as originally hoped, and after a very promising start pangasius has lost a lot of its initial attraction. Cobia is now the next fish species that is said to have the potential to become as great a success as salmon. And indeed, cobia has all the prerequisites that make a fish popular – and successful – with consumers. Its white flesh is relatively firm and hardly falls apart when heated, and the fillets can be prepared in almost any conceivable way. It has a pure, delicate flavour typical of marine fish, and added to these advantages is the fact that it does not produce any unpleasant fishy smell when cooked. With an average fat content of 18 in the fillet, cobia is on the same level as salmon and it

even contains slightly more of the valuable Omega 3 fatty acids. In the face of these qualities it is not surprising that in some countries the fish is being traded as “tropical salmon” or “black salmon”.

Cobia, which also goes under the names black kingfish, crabeater, cubby yew, kingfish, lemonfish, runner, prodigal son, and sergeant fish is not, however, a salmonid but within the order Carangiformes is related to dolphinfish (Coryphaenidae), whose best-known species is probably mahi mahi (Coryphaena hippurus). Cobia fillet is in fact often compared to mahi mahi, although it would not be wrong to describe it as a kind of cross between swordfish and Chilean seabass. Although its culinary quality is coveted worldwide cobia was in the past rarely to be seen on restaurant menus. But that was due to the low availability of the fish for it is not targeted

Cobia’s thick, leathery, tough skin and its hard bones demand a lot of strength and expertise during filleting.

30

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specifically by the fishing industry but is only landed as by-catch.

According to FAO statistics less than 15,000 t of cobia are caught per year, particularly in Pakistan, Iran, the Philippines and Malaysia. The actual catch volume could be much higher, however, for the species is also a popular target of deep-sea sports fishing because the big fish (which can reach a length of 2 metres and a weight of 80 kg) put up a good fight on the hook. However, these catches are not correctly documented and do not appear in the catch statistics. Since cobia has been produced in aquaculture, however, availability has steadily increased. The fish is beginning to conquer the global market.

Now it is time for consumers to decide whether it might become a success story like salmon.

Deep-sea fish from warm oceans with worldwide distribution Cobia is a pelagic marine fish which is to be found in the tropical and subtropical regions of the three oceans – with the exception of the East Pacific. The species is not faithful to any one area and follows far-reaching routes through the deep sea that are nevertheless predictable. The fishes usually swim in small groups of up to 100 specimens and keep close to flotsam or in the vicinity of other underwater structures such as drifting sea grass, buoys, turtles or

boats, near harbour piers or oil and gas platforms. Occasionally schools of cobia are also to be found in shallower water along the coasts, in mangrove areas and estuaries.

Cobia has a cylindrical, almost shark-like body shape. Its head is broad and flattened, the eyes are relatively small, the lower jaw of the wide mouth protrudes slightly.

Seven to nine short spines which can be folded against the body into corresponding grooves form the first dorsal fin. The second dorsal fin is much longer and its front spines protrude pennant-like in adult animals. The anal fin on the lower side of the body is shaped exactly the same but is somewhat shorter.

In young fishes the tail fin is almost round like a plate but as the fishes grow older it takes on the shape of a crescent. The body surface looks relatively smooth because the small scales are embedded deeply into the firm, thick skin. Cobia is not spectacular in appearance but its colouring is striking. It has a dark brown back and a black colour band on the level of the eyes that extends from the nose to the tail fin which is flanked above and below by paler stripes. The characteristic colouring is often only found in juveniles, however, for at a later age it usually pales and is lost. Cobia is considered a carnivorous predator but studies of the stomach contents sooner suggest that the fish is an opportunist that hardly rejects anything that appears in its path. Its staple diet includes squid, crustaceans

[ AQUACULTURE ]

In upscale restaurants the few red muscle areas of the fillet are usually removed so that the individual portions are completely white.

and smaller fishes of any kind but it will also sometimes follow sharks and other large marine predators to eat up the remains of their prey.

Male cobia are mostly sexually mature already after one to two years, females after two to three

years. At spawning time which, depending on the region, can be at different times of the year and vary in length (for example off North Carolina in May and June, in the Gulf of Mexico from April to September) the mature fishes gather in large swarms off the

coasts. Individual groups probably also spawn in the open sea, however. Cobia has a protracted spawning season over the course of which it releases eggs about a dozen times at intervals of one to two weeks. The total fertility of the females lies between several hundred thousand and several million eggs, depending on size and age, but on average 75,000 eggs per kilogram of body weight. After they have swelled, fertilized cobia eggs reach a diameter of 1.2 to 1.4 mm and float freely in the water.

The yolk sac larvae hatch already 24 to 36 hours after fertilization and are at this time only 2.5 mm in size and glass-like or transparent. Two days later the yolk reserves have been eaten and the mouths and eyes have developed sufficiently for the young to start feeding independently. At an age

of 30 days the young fishes already resemble their parents with the striking longitudinal stripe standing out most. In this phase of life the juveniles often hide beneath floating carpets of algae and sea grass which offer protection from predators and at the same time a source of food.

Cobia is particularly well-suited for aquaculture The start of cobia farming is mostly given as 1975. At that time US-American scientists collected fertilized eggs off the coast of North Carolina and after they hatched raised the fishes for a few months. By the end of this period they had come to a clear conclusion: due to the fast growth and excellent flesh

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[ AQUACULTURE ] In the meantime Open Blue has probably nearly doubled its production.

Still reserves in the technology for cobia farming

The relatively firm cobia flesh keeps its shape well during frying or grilling and does not fall apart as easily as many other fish species.

quality cobia had all the prerequisites for successful aquaculture. Based on these studies research was then pursued further in the USA and Taiwan.

One of the first focus areas of research was reproduction. At first the rearing of the tiny larvae presented huge problems and mortality was very high.

Experienced fish farmers in Taiwan succeeded however in 1987 in closing the production cycle from the egg to the marketable fish. Since then the technology has been improved continuously and perfected in many details. Fry supply is still a bottleneck but it has stabilized significantly. Today it is basically possible to hatch cobia throughout the year. Around the turn of the millennium several countries began cobia farming almost simultaneously. Mostly for research but also for commercial purposes.

There are several reasons why cobia is particularly well-suited to aquaculture. One of the most 32

significant is its fast growth, for the fishes can reach a weight of five to six kilograms in just twelve months. Salmon takes three times as long. And the fish species is robust and can cope with various different environmental conditions. Cobia lives under deep-sea salinity conditions of between 32 and 35 parts per thousand but also for short periods in brackish water with considerably lower salinities. Experiments have shown that juveniles can be kept for several weeks at 5 parts per thousand without their growth suffering seriously. But what is much more important is the fact that the species is not very demanding with regard to diet. The carnivorous cobia has a high protein requirement but this can be partly satisfied with vegetable alternatives, for example with soy, hemp or yeast proteins. During rearing of fry, up to 40 of the fishmeal in the feed can be substituted without compromising growth.

Researchers from the University of Maryland have even tested a completely fishmeal-free, purely

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vegetarian feed successfully during rearing. They believe that cobia can utilize carbohydrates more effectively than most other carnivorous fish species.

China is the biggest producer of cobia in aquaculture. Chinese production is mainly located in the southern coastal provinces Guangdong and Hainan and has in the meantime reached a level of nearly 40,000 t. With that, according to FAO statistics China currently produces about 80 of total global volume, clearly ahead of Taiwan that ranks second with about 2,000 t. Of the 14 countries that the FAO lists as regular or occasional producers of cobia are the USA, Mexico, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, Belize, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, Indonesia and Brazil. Panama is listed with a total production of 2,459 t in 2014, all of this quantity coming from the company Open Blue which operates the world’s biggest offshore farm for cobia 12 km off the Caribbean coast.

The fry needed for commercial aquaculture facilities today comes without exception from hatcheries. Fry can be produced relatively inexpensively in open air ponds or in intensive recirculating systems which involves higher costs.

In Taiwan, that is particularly successful with cobia hatching, farmers prefer to use onshore ponds that are as a rule 400 to 600 square metres in size and 1.5 m deep. They are filled with up to 100 fishes that are ready to spawn in a sex ratio of 1:1 and these spawn naturally at water temperatures of between 23 and 27°C throughout the year so that freshly fertilized eggs can be harvested almost every day and transferred to the grow-out tanks. Cobia larvae are very tiny and measure just under 4 mm but, compared to other marine fish larvae of this size, they are amazingly robust and resilient. In the USA plastic tanks are used for spawning, mostly with a diameter of about 6 metres and just under 2 metres deep. They can be operated as raceways, recirculating systems or in a combination of the two techniques. The spawning act takes place either naturally or after photothermal manipulation during which the altered seasonal rhythm of light and temperature induce the maturation processes outside the usual spawning time. After the yolk sac has been consumed the cobia larvae are first fed on enriched live feed (rotifers, Artemia nauplii) but this is quite complicated and very expensive. That is why work is being done to bring the transition to dry feed as far forward as possible.

[ AQUACULTURE ]

A typical feature of cobia, in addition to its characteristic body shape, is the first dorsal fin with its 7 to 9 individual spines.

When they reach a weight of 100 to 150 grams the fry are usually transferred to grow-out tanks where they grow to a marketable size. Occasionally this takes place in recirculating systems but the majority of producers prefer floating net pens in the sea that are mostly anchored offshore close to the coast. Such nearshore facilities are easily and quickly accessible but are considered to be less ecologically sustainable, or sometimes even seen as a threat to the environment. When kept permanently in shallow water off the coast, deep-sea species such as cobia are more at risk from outbreak of disease and parasite infestation, and the quality of their meat is also said to be poorer. For that reason some producers favour offshore regions for cobia growout. This demands much higher production costs but offers the fish conditions that are more in line with their natural habitat. A prime example of this strategy is Open Blue which produces cobia in offshore net pens in an ecologically sustainable way, largely stress-free and without hormones, growth

promotors or antibiotics. In the world’s biggest offshore farm 12 km away from the coast the fishes are kept in what can be said to be their original natural environment. They swim constantly in a high-energy current and so they produce more muscle. Apart from that, offshore farms cause less environmental damage than fish farms located directly on the coast.

Excellent flavour in numerous variants With its round, almost cylindrical body cross section, cobia enables relatively high slaughter yields of over 50 percent.

However, processing this fish requires a great amount of strength, expertise and experience. The filleting knives that are usually used in fish processing are hardly capable of cutting through the tough, leathery skin and the very hard bones of the cobia. Anyone who has never filleted a fish before is probably well advised to pass this fish by for despite its size and allegedly favourable body proportions the

species is definitely not a suitable fish for practising on. Even cutting steaks, i.e. simple transverse slices from the fish’s body, is likely to be too much for many people. If possible one should leave the demanding job of filleting cobia to a knowledgeable expert, for example a qualified fishmonger. Anyone who follows the advice to buy ready fillets will soon be rewarded: whether with or without the skin is immaterial for when fried the skin (which had seemed so obstinate during filleting) becomes very tender, crispy, and delicious and is a pleasure to eat.

The culinary advantages of cobia include that this fish can be prepared in many different ways. In Asia, cobia is often traded live and only killed directly before consumption. Due to its high fat content the fish is very good for sushi and sashimi, particularly since the dorsal loins which are preferred for this purpose can be cut into extremely thin slices without tearing. Cobia also maintain this quality during frying, grilling and deep-frying. Whereas fresh cod fillet often falls apart into the individual muscle areas during frying, cobia pieces remain much more firmly intact.

Because the fish has a pleasant flavour and doesn’t smell fishy it is gladly used for raw or subtly marinated preparations, for example marinated tartare, ceviche or tataki for which raw or marinated fillet pieces are coated several times with a glazing containing sugar and then caramelized using strong, direct heat.

This leads to a tasty crust on the fish’s exterior whilst inside the tataki remains raw. Cut into thin slices tataki is served as a starter or small snack in between.

Ceviche originally comes from Peru but has in the meantime spread to almost the whole of Latin America and even to Europe. The production of this dish is reminiscent of tartare but with the difference that in the case of ceviche the finely cut raw fish is marinated in lime juice and afterwards mixed with chopped onions and other ingredients. The acidity of the lime juice denaturalises the fish protein so that strictly speaking the fish is no longer raw. Cobia can also be steamed, poached or cold smoked. The very fat-rich belly flaps are a particular delicacy – like the toro cuts of tuna – and are best eaten raw. In Taiwan the liver of the fish is used for pâtés, terrines and similar products.

Fast growth, great flavour, excellent flesh quality and the fish’s suitability for almost all farming systems make cobia one of the most promising candidates for aquaculture. Nearly all experts predict a clear production increase and many even expect that cobia can become one of the most important fish species for mariculture whose development is just beginning. What could hinder this expected market success is really only the fact that hardly any consumers in the western world are familiar with this fish which – on top of that – is not exactly cheap. The price for cobia will probably fall in the future when production increases further so that it will mainly be lack of familiarity that will be the problem. But that seems solvable, even without complicated marketing, for the fish will advertise itself. Anyone who has tried cobia will almost certainly recommend it to others. mk

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The Danish Agrifish Agency

Reconciling sometimes conflicting interests

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he Danish Agrifish Agency, part of the Ministry of Environment and Food, is responsible for creating the conditions necessary for the sustainable growth of fisheries, including aquaculture, and agriculture. The agency has three broad areas of operation – legislation, subsidies, and control – which are used to ensure that exploitation of the country’s natural resources balances the demands of the environment with that of industry. Bjørn Wirlander, Head of the EU and Fisheries Regulation Unit, and Anja

Gadgård Boye, Chief Advisor, speak here about some of the issues facing the Danish fisheries and aquaculture sector.

Today there is increased focus on getting the maximum value from the catch for both economic and environmental reasons. Ensuring the catch is treated well from the very start of the value chain is a way to achieving this. How can the administration best support the fishermen in this process?

This year although some of the quotas have declined, for

Bjørn Wirlander, Head of the EU and Fisheries Regulation Unit, Danish Agrifish Agency 34

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example cod in the Baltic, many of them have increased. For industrial species in the North Sea we are likely to have record quotas this year. Fishers are always interested in obtaining the best possible price for their catch and we are all part of a legislative framework that favours the sustainable exploration of stocks.

This places many obligations on fishers, motivating them to target those fish species, which give the best price. These requirements have increased with the implementation of the landing obligation, which necessitates clever fishing to maximise profits. As the administration, we can assist the fishermen to obtain financial support through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) for projects that can help them maximise value all along the value-chain, or develop ways of exploiting fish below the minimum size (the discard factor). In practical terms, we identify the possibilities they have and give them information about when they can apply and what they can apply for. For example, projects developing and testing more selective gear involving scientists, fishermen, and gear manufacturers have been funded. If they are found to work, fishers can seek a subsidy to switch to this equipment. Another initiative that is also funded through the EMFF is Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, which is something that we support very strongly, as in some countries, Germany for instance,

Danish fish or mussels do not get on to the market unless they are certified.

A new fisheries package that seeks to support the coastal fishery sector is currently being negotiated in the Danish parliament. What are the highlights of the package and what impact do you anticipate it will have on the coastal fishery sector?

Two things that we can say for sure is that it will mean that the amount of fish distributed to the coastal fishermen is being increased to DKK80m or four times the amount of fish that was distributed in each of the last three years, making the small-scale fishers very satisfied. The package also includes a measure aimed at ensuring the long-term sustainability of the coastal fisheries.

This will divide the coastal fishers into two groups, one which locks the fishermen in against certain incentives, and the other which is open. So far about 60 fishermen have joined the locked group and about 140 the open category.

Fishers who opt for the locked group will not be allowed to leave it. Their vessels, capacity, and quotas will enter the group and can only be sold to other members of the group. Renting quotas can also only be done within the group. These fishers will be entitled to an extra share of the additional amount that has been distributed to the coastal fishery.

We anticipate that this group will consist of fishers who are the most

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Anja GadgĂĽrd Boye, Chief Advisor, EU and Fisheries Regulation Unit, Danish Agrifish Agency

skilled at fishing. They are the ones who can expect to benefit the most from this arrangement as the extra share they will receive depends on how effective they are at exploiting their existing quotas.

The better the exploitation rate, the bigger the extra share. Fishers joining the locked group thus have to weigh the disadvantages of some restrictions against the advantages of obtaining free fish.

For the political parties behind the package, the important idea was to secure the future of the coastal fishery by allocating it a higher share of the quotas. A healthy coastal fishery is good for small village harbours, the tourist industry, and for coastal communities, but the question is how much fish to invest for these purposes.

Another part of the package is intended to make it easier for young people to establish themselves as fishers by distributing a certain amount of fish to them each year over a period

of eight years. After the fourth year, a quarter of the allocation is returned to the state which can then distribute it to another fisher who is starting a career. The state also encourages young fishers by providing them with fishing capacity. Fishers have to register their fishing capacity (the vesselâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tonnage and engine power) with the state and any unregistered capacity will enter a national trust, from which it can be distributed to young fishers.

The problem of seals for Danish coastal fishermen seems to be increasing as populations of the two seal species seen in Denmark, the harbour seal and the grey seal, continue to grow.

How can policies be designed that reconcile two apparently contradictory positions, satisfy the fishers, yet also maintain the seal populations?

It is correct that the seals are protected, but that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean they cannot be regulated. The

challenge that we face here in Denmark is that, unlike the rest of the Baltic Sea, here there are only a few areas, where seals reproduce. We are working with the problem by developing sealsafe gear, and fishermen can also apply for funds to buy these new gears. Currently the work is focused on the grey seal, which is increasing rapidly in the Baltic and which affects the line-fishery on the eastern coast of Zealand.

A sum of DKK6 million has been earmarked for seal initiatives and additional measures are being funded by the EMFF on developing seal-proof gear for the cod fishery. We are now at the stage, where some of this gear can be tested and evaluated in a real fishery. If they prove effective, it should be possible to apply to the EMFF for support to purchase these new gears.

Common Fishery Policy, because one needs to be in dialogue with all the Member States, that are affected by whatever initiative that one is launching. At the same time, we feel that it is a positive initiative within the CFP as it gives us a very close say in how policy is designed and implemented. If the EU lays down the overall goal, then we together with our scientists and legal advisors, as well as other stakeholders, can establish a system that will enable us to achieve this goal.

And if other Member States are affected then we collaborate with them so that at the end of the day we have a robust product that all the affected parties have helped shape. Of course, we always keep our national interests in mind, and if a plan compromises the national interest to an unacceptable degree, then it has to be reworked.

In addition to these efforts, the Environmental Protection Agency has launched an initiative whereby fishermen can apply for a permit to cull two seals if they threaten his gear or his fish. After eliminating two animals a new permit has to be sought for a further two. We also think it makes sense to tackle the problem at a regional level and have approached HELCOM to see if a wider solution can be devised.

Essentially, we need to have the right balance between the level of the seal population and the fishery.

Marine Protected Areas (MPA) are an example of this collaboration, where Denmark discussed with Germany and Sweden about the protection of reef structures. Other sites had to be agreed with all the Baltic Sea member states, which was more challenging because it meant negotiating with more partners.

And currently we are participating in discussions with the UK, Germany and the Netherlands regarding their proposals for MPAs.

The Common Fisheries Policy emphasises regionalisation as a way of ensuring that policy is tailored to the needs of groups of nations or of a particular sea basin. How has this decentralisation benefited Danish fisheries and could you illustrate this with an example?

Denmark takes over the presidency of Baltfish in July this year for a one-year period. What are the Danish priorities during its presidency? More generally, how does Denmark evaluate Baltfish and its achievements some five years after its establishment?

Regionalisation is a new and demanding task within the

Denmark take over the presidency of Baltfish from Germany

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and the Danish presidency will depend on what Germany manages to finalise during its term as Denmark will continue working on issues that remain outstanding. One of the issues Denmark will work on during its presidency is the quota regulation for the Baltic Sea which will be discussed in Baltfish in the hope of finding agreement and presenting a joint recommendation to the EU Council.

A joint recommendation is not always the case. There have been years when it has not been possible to reach an agreement in which case the Council has taken a decision. Another point is the regional implementation in the Baltic of regulations on technical measures. If Germany does not finalise this, Denmark will have to continue the work.

Over the next couple of months it will become more apparent how much leeway Denmark has to decide on its agenda for its presidency.

While there are several nonindigenous finfish species in Danish waters, so far there is only one, the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus), that is considered invasive.

How serious a risk does it pose and how can it be dealt with if it threatens commercially valuable species? In general, how is the threat from invasive species managed?

The round goby is indeed very aggressive and we have had our eye on it for quite a while now, because of its ability to spread rapidly. We have tried to help the fishermen exploit this species by letting them fish it indiscriminately and by funding initiatives that identify whether it can be used as fishmeal or for fish oil.

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Another project looked at the possibility of using turbot to prey on the round goby, but that has now been dropped. Catching and exporting it to countries, where it could be consumed is another idea. However, the fish is more of a problem in some areas than in others, and some fishers catch a lot of it while other do not. Additionally, the facilities at small harbours need to be improved if this fish is to be dealt with locally. We are also concerned about the impact it could have on stocks in the future given its tendency to feed on juvenile fish, an issue that needs to be researched. The new fisheries package that we discussed earlier also provides for the utilisation of new species, some of which are invasive.

For example, the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) is another species that has spread rapidly northwards and is known to take over mussel beds, which is a problem for mussel fishermen. These invasive species are typically dealt with using management plans developed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Starfish (Asterias rubens) is another species we are focused on though it is not invasive. They flourish when there are too many nutrients in the water and we are conducting trials on using starfish as a supplement to feeds for chicken and pigs. In general, we keep a close eye on species in our waters, whether we like them or not, with a view to sustainably exploiting them.

The Danish Eel Management Plan was implemented in 2009 to reduce the harvest of eels to allow more to escape to the sea to breed. What have been the results to date and what

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has been the impact of the plan on fishing communities that depend on eel as a valuable source of income?

The latest figures we have are for 2015 and they show that catches have fallen by 53 compared to the average in the reference period 2004-2006, so it is quite a substantial reduction. We continue to work on reducing the fishing gear, that is, the numbers of gears that the individual fisherman is allowed to use.

We know that the catch is disproportionately small compared to the capacity of the gears they have, suggesting that many of the gears are inactive. We are encouraging the fishermen to reduce this capacity voluntarily, and work closely with the fishermen’s association in this context. There is no real need for them to have the gear, it is not being used, and is very unlikely to be used in the future as existing regulations limiting eel catches are unlikely to be relaxed. Most eel fishermen are catching eel for cultural rather than commercial reasons and we try and accommodate this in the management of the species. Small fishers around the country are allowed to catch minor volumes of eel as it is a way of life for them. We recognise that many of them are older fishers who might find it difficult to give up their excess gear, but it is unlikely ever to be used again. Although we do not have the final figures from these efforts we are confident that we will meet the Commission’s targets.

The strategic objectives for Danish aquaculture include a 25 increase in production by 2020 compared with 2014. In addition, some 10 of production is planned to be organic by that year. Among other targets are to reduce legislative complexity and simplify procedures for obtaining

an environmental permit. Would you say that the sector is on track to achieve these goals?

We have a very ambitious, technically advanced aquaculture production in Denmark. In 2016 the government introduced a growth plan for Danish aquaculture, which increased the nitrogen quota for freshwater and marine farms with the aim of increasing production. The plan also intends to encourage the use of recirculation systems, which have little impact on the environment. Also foreseen is the identification of areas in the Kattegat that would be suitable for farming marine fish. Some of the groundwork for this has already been carried out such as the identification of shipping lanes, and inflow of nutrients into Natura 2000 sites. Other parts of the plan will reduce some of the bureaucracy and make it easier for smaller fish farms to get environmental clearances. There is also a legislative proposal that is being discussed that will allow fish farmers to use mussel or algae farming as ways to mitigate the impact of the fish production.

There are some who are against the aquaculture industry because of its impact on the environment, but we need to find a balance.

Denmark is a front runner in the production of equipment that reduces aquaculture’s impact and if we want to keep this position we need to have a domestic fish farming industry. The EU is also keen to increase the production of farmed fish in Europe. Our role is to provide an independent and credible scientific basis for decisions, but the decisions themselves – how much aquaculture production should there be, how much pollution are we willing to tolerate – are political.

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New package of measures to revive the Danish coastal fishery

Small fishing villages should benefit too Falling numbers of coastal fishers and the disappearance of several fishing harbours due to a lack of activity have prompted parties in the Danish parliament to launch a series of initiatives intended to bolster this segment of the fishing sector and secure its long-term future.

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ust over 2,360 Danish vessels were registered at the end of 2015. Of these nearly 900 were inactive, that is, they did not record any landing value. Of the remainder, 541 were commercial vessels, meaning they landed more than the threshold of EUR36,000, while almost 960 vessels were non-commercial, landing less than the threshold value. In terms of capacity, tonnage and engine power (measure in kilowatts), the commercial segment dominated the fleet with over 80 of the total tonnage and close to 70 of the total power.

The Danish fishery is highly diverse in terms of species targeted, vessel sizes, and gears used.

There is an important fishery for industrial species, the value of which amounted to just under a third of the total value of Danish landings. The remaining value can be attributed to pelagic and demersal species for human consumption including finfish, crustaceans, and molluscs. Fishing vessels are divided into multiple length classes by the Danish AgriFish Agency. The biggest vessels in the fleet are responsible for the bulk of the catches. Vessels above 18 m, 140 in number, take almost four fifths of the total landed value of DKK3.4bn (EUR456m), and vessels above 40 m catch almost half the total value, according to the latest report on the Danish fishing fleet from the AgriFish Agency.

The fleet uses a variety of gears including dredgers, passive gears, purse seines, pelagic trawls, beam trawls, as well as demersal trawls and demersal seines. Of these, demersal trawls and demersal seines are responsible for almost half (45) the total value of landings, while pelagic trawls catch 31. In terms of landed volumes, the largest vessels, those 40 m and above in length, catch two thirds of the total using purse seines, pelagic trawls, demersal trawls and demersal seines.

Introduction of tradeable quotas brought huge changes The Danish fleet has been significantly restructured starting in 2003, when individual transferable quotas (ITQ) were introduced in the herring fishery, and continuing for the next four years with the introduction of ITQs in the other pelagic fisheries, and of vessel quota shares (VQS) in the demersal fisheries.

This brought about a reduction in capacity in terms of numbers (-19), tonnage (-9) and power (-20), which was in line with the objectives of the (at the time) new management system. These sought to increase the sustainable exploitation of fish stocks and reduce discards; to enable the individual fisher to better plan fishing activities; and to increase the profitability of the fleet. The fleet management system further ensures that

Allan Buch wears several hats. He serves on the boards of a bank, a fishermen’s insurance company, a waste water company, and on the municipality council, in addition to being the chairman of Bælternes Fiskeriforening. He is also a fisherman.

capacity stays within the legally defined limits. However, the new management system contributed to the consolidation of fishery activities in the larger Danish harbours and the greater concentration of quotas and fishing capacity in the hands of fewer fishermen.

Fishing and related activities are important sources of employment directly and indirectly in many coastal communities, where small fishing harbours can attract tourists and thereby contribute to the local economy. The difficulties young people face in becoming fishermen is another cause of concern as it presages the hollowing out of the fishing segment.

Allan Buch, the chairman of Bælternes Fiskeriforening (the

Belts’ fisheries association) that is based in Middelfart on west Fyn, has observed first hand some of the changes in the Danish fisheries sector, first as a young fisherman and then over the 20 odd years that he has been chairman.

When his fishing activities were hit by sustained low prices and then by predators, Mr Buch put the fishery on hold and went to university instead, coming back some years later to become the chairman of the local association and to restart his fishing activities. But for many fishers going out and getting a degree may not be a viable option. If prices fall and stay down or if predators prove an overwhelming menace this may drive fishers from the business.

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opportunity for kids who are not bookish and are willing to work with their hands, he feels. Taken together, these factors all contribute to the shrinking of the sector.

Fewer fishers means fewer fish traders

Søren Jacobsen, chairman of the Association for Protective Coastal Fishing. Members of this association use fishing gear that has very little impact on the environment.

Coastal fishermen’s numbers decline for several reasons Back in the 80s, when Mr Buch got his first fishing vessel there were perhaps 15-20 fishers in many of the towns around the inner Danish waters – in Bogense, Fredericia, Juelsminde, Vejle Fjord, and Skærbæk. Even 20 years ago there were over 220 members in more than a dozen associations in an area stretching from southern Jutland to the island Langeland in the east. In 2003 the associations fused together into the body which he currently chairs adding members from southern Zealand as well. The number of members today totals some 55 fishers. The decline in the number of fishers he attributes to a variety of factors. When quotas became transferable it led to a degree of concentration as bigger fishers bought up quotas and vessels were taken out of service. But the size of the quotas also declined and that too means fewer fishers.

Fishermen also started getting put off by the unpredictability in the fisheries: quotas would fluctuate violently, bans on fishing certain species would first be introduced 38

and then relaxed. On top of the uncertainty, rules were getting more complex leading to more paperwork, which was a burden for many fishermen as not all of them were good at writing, yet mistakes could attract harsh fines.

The sector is thus squeezed between older fishers stopping and younger ones not joining – deterred by the investment needed in quotas and vessel, or by the fact that it is a physically highly demanding activity, or simply for want of interest. In this regard, the sector too has played a role in discouraging young people from starting as fishermen, says Mr Buch. Older fishers tend to focus on how tough it is being a fisherman now compared to what it was like when they started. This may be true for someone who started 30 or more years ago, but the younger generation should be allowed to make their own judgement, when they have the experience. Established fishers need to do their bit by having young people as apprentices, training them and treating them well, letting them try things and gather experience. Fishing could be a good

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In the past when more fishers were active the fish used to be packaged and driven to fish traders in local cities. Today however the volumes are smaller and most of the traders no longer exist as a result. When fish is sold now it goes through an auction or to one of the few national traders. Fishers need to think of how they can add greater value to their catch. Perhaps by gutting, skinning, and even filleting the fish on the boat itself.

Some municipalities are adding infrastructure to their ports, such as coldstores and ice machines, that also enhances the quality of the fish, and gives fishermen an incentive to land their catch at these ports. The association too tries to contribute by encouraging its members to come up with suggestions that could improve their conditions, for which the association will then try and find funding.

According to Mr Buch, creating the conditions that lead the fishermen to use a port are also in the municipalities’ interest, as active ports are a magnet for tourists particularly in summer. They put money into the local economy, take pictures and return home and spread the word among their friends and acquaintances.

New package combines carrots with sticks Fewer fishermen, less activity in fishing ports, lower tax revenues for municipalities, and a gradual waning of coastal communities were among the reasons that four of the parties in the Danish parliament put together a new

growth and development package for Danish fisheries. Among the suggestions were measures to strengthen the coastal fishery, among other things, by releasing additional quota shares, encouraging the use of environmentally friendly gear and high exploitation rates, making the activity more attractive for young people, and, by creating a segment that fishers can join voluntarily but may not leave, thereby securing the long term future of the coastal fishery sector. The new rules came into force at the beginning of March with a deadline on 17 March for fishers to register this year in one of the two schemes, a closed scheme whereby all a fisher’s quotas and capacity are permanently tied to the scheme.

As an incentive to join the closed scheme fishers will be allocated an additional quota share of 75 of their existing shares and further allocations are possible if they fish 100 of their quota the previous year. Fishers can also opt to join an open scheme that is limited from 2017 to 2019, and where the fisher can choose which of his quotas he wants to register. Fishers that earn less than EUR36,000 a year from fishing, the non-commercial vessels, also gain additional quotas of cod, plaice and sole. The schemes also have some built in restrictions: vessel sizes, for instance, are limited to 15 m for the closed scheme and to 17 m for the open scheme. Additionally, to qualify for the extra quota allocation a fisher will be expected to have fished at least 70 of the quota the preceding year. And, at least 80 of the fishing trips should be less than 48 hours in duration.

All fishermen need to cooperate for a successful sector The new fisheries package is not without controversy. Although the

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the country. In fact, in the future he would like to create a brand as a marketing tool that tells a story about the fish, and includes a quality element.

Gilleleje harbour has seen a steady decline in the number, value, and volume of fish landings between 2009 and 2015, according to the Danish AgriFish Agency, but is still among the biggest harbours in Denmark.

coastal fishers and their representatives are generally positive, other parts of the industry have their reservations. Mr Buch is broadly in favour of the new package, but he can see that it has the potential to create divisions among the fishermen. However, Mr Buch is

pragmatic. In his view, the different fisheries (coastal, off shore, small vessels, large vessels) are dependent on each other and despite the squabbles between them, they need to cooperate, however difficult it may be. Most fishers are represented by the Danish Fisheries

A package of measures put together in the Danish parliament for the coastal fishery is like a shot in the arm that seeks to inoculate it again long-term decline. Here, a fisher sells fresh fish at Gilleleje harbour.

Association Producer Organisation through their local associations. In 2014, however, some coastal fishers became members of a new body, the Association for Protective Coastal Fishing, whose chairman is Søren Jacobsen, a fisherman based in Elsinore. “Protective” refers to the gear that these fishermen use – pound nets, Danish seines, fyke nets, traps, and hooks, that have minimal impact on the environment, almost no by-catch, and the vessels have relatively low consumption of fuel compared with other types of gear targeting the same species. The fisherman is often out for only a day and the fish is therefore very fresh when landed. Members of this association typically catch fish for human consumption, including plaice, brill, turbot, sole, cod, lumpfish, haddock, hake. This kind of fishery has a very high rate of quota exploitation, says Mr Jacobsen, with a discard fraction of just 2 of which about 60 can be returned to the sea alive. He feels there is a market for this kind of very fresh, environmentally friendly fish, that contributes to the preservation of small fishing ports around

As a coastal fisher, he is very enthusiastic about the new package.

Indeed, many of the ideas in the package originated in his association. One of the key aspects for Søren Jacobsen is the need to preserve the diversity in the Danish fisheries sector with different vessels, gear, and fishing methods.

And both he and Allan Buch agree on one of the desired outcomes of the fisheries package, which is to maintain the fishing ports in the smaller Danish towns. In Mr Buch’s view this can only be done if there are different fisheries landing fish at different times of the year. This makes it interesting for buyers. Trawlers may have a poor reputation in some quarters, but without the trawlers landing their large volumes of fish, bigger harbours will not get the fish they need to justify the investments in harbour facilities like ice machines and cold stores. If the smaller boats are to have facilities, they depend on the large boats catching large volumes of fish and bringing it in periodically. The large vessels typically fish say the first three months of the year, where they catch a lot of cod and flatfish, this gives a turnover at the harbour, then they take off to Kattegat or Skagerrak, and fish for two quarters and then they come back in the last quarter and do some more fishing, when they catch less, but there is still fish coming into the harbours and this turnover is crucial to keep the harbours and their facilities going. Thus, the fisheries are all connected and all are needed to keep the harbours going, regular small landings interspersed with large landings, otherwise it cannot continue particularly as there are so few of the small fishermen left today.

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All the species in the catch should be exploited Finding markets for shore crabs and whelks completes his training Mr Buch hopes to employ another. Until a couple of years ago the fishery had taken a back seat partly due to Mr Buch’s various other commitments, but also because of the fishery itself. Cormorants were becoming a menace and prices of eel had fallen and had failed to recover. Many of the fishers who had been targeting eel in the area stopped. But Mr Buch’s apprentice wanted to revive the fishery and the number of pound nets employed was increased. Mr Buch invested in the restructuring of one of his vessels to facilitate the fish sorting process. Now the nets can be emptied into a sorting box from where the valuable

Allan Buch, the chairman of Bælternes Fiskeriforening, is also a fisherman. In 1985, he took over a coastal fishery in Middelfart, which at that point had existed for over 100 years, buying it from the owner who was the third or fourth generation to have fished.

It is a typical coastal fishery with pound nets for eel, herring, mackerel, garfish, lumpfish, flatfish, and cod, and a few fyke nets for eel and shrimp. The fishing is divided by seasons; herring is targeted from mid March to mid May, eel from August to November, and a little flatfish and cod in winter. Today much of the day to day fishing activity is left to his current apprentice, and when he

fish are removed, and the rest returned to the sea alive.

In the past, the fish would be sold to a trader, but Mr Buch prefers to deal with the final consumer directly as it gives him the best possible price for his catch. On an experimental basis, therefore, he has been sending some 400 potential customers in the area a text message when the catch is due to be landed. Interest in the fresh fish has been so great that Mr Buch is convinced that selling it directly is a feasible business.

It is not just the local residents, who form a potential market. In summer Middelfart attracts thousands of guest sailors each year,

and tourists come to play at the local golf course, and many of these people too may be interested in buying fresh fish. He is now investing in a coldstore and a room where the fish can be gutted and filleted to give a value-added product. Adding value and finding uses for new species are some of the ways fishers can improve the returns from fishing. One species Mr Buch is interested in is the shore crab. There is a bycatch of shore crabs in the pound nets, which has been increasing due to increase in population numbers.

There is potential for using the crabs as bait in common whelk fishery, as well as for selling directly to the consumer.

Nordisk Tang is creating a range of products using marine macroalgae

Making seaweed trendy While algae production and consumption is well established in Asia, in Europe it is less well known. However, as consumers focus increasingly on health and information about the benefits of algae become more widespread, this may be changing.

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or centuries seaweed has been consumed in parts of Asia, where it is known for its health benefits. Marine algae are a rich source of minerals, trace elements, healthy fats, and even proteins, and are highly appreciated in Japan, China, and Korea, among other east Asian countries. in Europe, however, in the past algae have been used mainly as cattle fodder, as a fertilizer, or dried as a fuel.

Seaweed has huge potential

removed from where they originated. Interest in seaweed is growing for a variety of reasons and researchers are investigating local waters to identify and analyse the species of marine algae that grow within them. In Denmark, there are over three hundred species of algae broadly categorised into red, green, and brown algae and research is ongoing to find out how they can profitably be produced and used, as a source of bioactive ingredients, fuel, feed for piglets and cattle, and, of course, for human consumption.

As the world shrinks, food habits are establishing themselves far

Nordisk Tang is a Danish company based in Grenaa in Jutland

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that is manufacturing a variety of products based on tang, the Danish word for seaweed. Kristian Ottesen, the director, recalls how, from the merger of two smaller firms, the company was formed in 2015 to develop an industry within gourmet products using seaweed.

Although seaweed has been used for many years in Denmark, it has mainly been for the production of carrageenan, a gelling and stabilising agent for foods. Unlike carrageenan, however, seaweed in Nordisk Tang products is not an obscure name featuring at the end of a long list of ingredients, but the unique selling point of the item. Seaweed is highly nutritious

with a number of natural benefits, and can be produced sustainably all around the country, says Mr Ottesen. As a smallish country with lots of islands no point in Denmark is more than 50 km from the sea, so a local supply of fresh seaweed should not pose a challenge. At the company the idea behind creating seaweed based products was not only to capitalise on the health aspects but also to exploit some of the other properties of seaweed, including mouth feel, flavour, salt reduction, and preservative. The line of products using seaweed started with pestos, salts, and spices, and today includes also flours, mustards, and oil.

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Kristian S. Ottesen (left), director and co-founder of Nordisk Tang, and Heine Max Olesen, co-founder, and the person responsible for marketing. They aim is to offer products that taste good, look appetising, and are healthful to boot.

Building a market for seaweed products The whole point behind these products is not only that they are healthy, but that they, unlike for example cod liver oil, also taste good, and we are working hard

at making it trendy and sexy to eat seaweed, says Mr Ottesen. To build this image the company has eschewed traditional retail chains as outlets for its products concentrating instead on delicatessen food shops, fishmongers, butchers, even interior design studios.

Combining organic production with seaweed and whole wheat pushes all the right buttons among the consumers Nordisk Tang is targeting.

For the moment at least, these points of sale harmonise well with the image the company is trying to create, and then there is the not insignificant matter of the price. At DKK50 for a jar of pesto the products are aimed at the upper end of the market, while the vast majority of consumers have not yet reached the stage where they will select a DKK50 jar as opposed to one for DKK15, says Mr Ottesen diplomatically. So far, some 150 shops across the country are selling the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wares. The next expansion to the range of items will cater to existing markets for seaweed products such as seaweed salads, seaweed chips, and the thin layers of nori seaweed that are used to produce sushi. The advantage of this range is that they do not have to be created from scratch nor does the market for them have to be developed. The new products will piggyback on similar items that already exist on the market, but will highlight their Scandinavian origin, and the fact that they are organically produced and sustainable to differentiate themselves.

Innovative and creative ways of using seaweed are helping to build a clientele for these upmarket products.

answer. The company is collaborating with a local partner as well as one in the Netherlands with regard to the cultivation and harvesting of seaweed. The Dutch company collects the seaweed spores from the water in Grenaa and takes these back to the Netherlands where they are grown in a hatchery. The lifecycle of marine macroalgae is often complex with several stages and different cultivation periods, with some species growing better

New products demand greater volumes of raw material The new line of products will demand much greater volumes of raw material than are currently being processed. While the pestos, flours, oils etc. consume about 10 tonnes of seaweed a year, the salad production will call for 1-2 tonnes a week. This means that the seaweed will have to be cultivated locally as opposed to being imported from Norway, which is the case at the moment, as the transport costs will be prohibitive. Seaweed can also be harvested from the wild, but this typically means trawling for it, which can have negative impacts on the environment. Since sustainability is an important selling point farming seaweed is the only

Bladder wrack is a variety of seaweed that grows close to the coast and is therefore relatively easy to harvest. Like many other types of seaweed It is associated with various health benefits.

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in winter and others in summer.

The product from the hatchery is brought back to the place of origin of the spores on lines and spends the next 3-5 weeks on shore before being introduced into the sea. The lines are attached to ropes that are suspended in the water and the seaweed is allowed to grow for about six months from October to March. From March to May the seaweed is harvested. The first crop is the best and is used for human consumption. If the lines are left in the water it is possible to get a second crop, but the quality is inferior and it can only be used for feed or as a source of bioactive ingredients.

Markets around Europe beckon Nordisk Tang uses seven different species of seaweed based on their flavour, the ease with which they can be accessed, and the colour.

As Mr Ottesen says, the product must appeal to the eye as well as to the palate and so it is important to have different colours of seaweed in, for example, the pesto.

Now that it has persuaded people in Denmark to eat its products the company is looking at expanding sales abroad, initially in the neighbouring countries, Sweden, Norway, and Germany, where a shop has just been opened in

Berlin, but in time also Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

In the long term, Kristian Ottesen, who has spent some eight years in China, would like to sell his

products there, where he feels an ancient tradition for eating seaweed combined with enthusiasm for European food products will help his case.

Nordisk Tang Grenaa Denmark Tel.: +45 33 603 603 info@nordisktang.dk nordisktang.dk Director: Kristian S. Ottesen Products: Seaweed-containing products including pesto, flour, mustard, and salt

Employees: 10 Sales: Delicatessen shops in Denmark Current markets: Denmark, Germany Target markets: Scandinavia, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands

Fisheries Local Action Group Djursland Fighting for a sustainable coastal fishery

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support from the FLAG because it fits well in the FLAG’s strategy, and because it has shown how it can rapidly create jobs.

Kattegat Seaweed is another startup, but one that sees potential at the start of the seaweed valuechain. It is planning to produce seaweed by cultivating it and by harvesting wild stocks. Kattegat Seaweed too has benefited from funding from the FLAG. In this case for a project to convert a vessel so that it could be used to harvest seaweed. Companies like these not only bring employment, but they give work to people such as fishermen, who have the right skills, yet who have lost their original livelihood. Supporting projects like those initiated by Nordisk Tang and Kattegat Seaweed will create sustainable jobs and sustainable growth in the area, which is one of the objectives of the FLAG, says Ms Breindahl. If we strengthen the value chain locally, we keep the jobs. Fishermen have

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Helle Bøge Breindahl

A peninsula on the eastern coast of Jutland on the doorstep of Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, Djursland comprises the municipalities of Syddjurs and Norddjurs. Under the European Fisheries Fund the first FLAG Djursland was established in 2007, while the second, under the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, started in 2014 and only covers the municipality of Norddjurs.

The vision of the FLAG is to make Norddjurs an area with an active and thriving commercial and social life in the towns and villages throughout the municipality. Projects that contribute to achieving this vision will be supported by the FLAG. Helle Breindahl, the FLAG coordinator, says that the FLAG, has three main focus points, the coastal fishery, which gets half the available support, marine resources, and tourism, each of which gets a quarter. Nordisk Tang has benefited from

Fishermen are a store of local knowledge that will be lost to the community if the coastal fishery fails to thrive, something that the FLAG is working hard to prevent.

important local knowledge that we need to keep in the community. If the coastal fishery shrinks and fishers can no longer work, their knowledge of local fishing areas and their skills as fishermen and as sailors will be lost.

However, companies like Kattegat Seaweed create opportunities

for fishermen, for example, to harvest seaweed instead of fish, thus giving the fishers new ways to use their skills and knowledge, and preserving them for future generations.

One of the main goals of the FLAG is the survival of the

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coastal fishery in Grenaa and Bønnerup, an activity that, according to Ms Breindahl, has been shrinking partly because of the falling quotas and the lower prices compared to those at harbours, for instance, on the west coast. The coastal fishery is an absolute priority and half the funding available to the FLAG

will benefit the coastal fishery in one way or another. The FLAG is looking at different ways of selling the catch so that the fishers can earn a higher price, and at methods that will add greater value to the catch, she says. At the same time, she is aware, that alternative sources of income also have to be considered.

Working with tourists could be one, harvesting seaweed could be another. In other countries synergies exist between fishing and seaweed cultivation so that fishers catch shellfish one half of the year and harvest seaweed the other half, and similar synergies may be possible in Denmark too.

It is a delicate balance the FLAG must strike between putting resources into maintaining the coastal fisheries and at the same time funding an escape route should the plan fail. For the time being, however, Ms Breindahl is categorical, “we are not ready to give up, we are not yet admitting defeat for the coastal fishery.”

Kattegat Seaweed explores the potential of farming algae and harvesting wild stocks

Leading from the front Kattegat Seaweed is part of Davai, a company specialising, among other activities, in the service and maintenance of physical infrastructure such as bridges, wind turbines, and transformer stations. Investing in seaweed stems from a conviction that a local company should be the first to find out whether a resource on its doorstep can be viably exploited.

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ased in Grenaa, Kattegat Seaweed is betting on the demand for seaweed increasing in the future as research reveals more and more about marine algae and its applications. Already Nordisk Seaweed, another Grenaa company, is using marine macroalgae in a variety of products for human consumption and is planning to expand production to items that will require even greater volumes. Kattegat Seaweed, however, is focused on the first part of the value chain – producing the seaweed by cultivating it or possibly by harvesting it from the wild.

To this end the company has invested in a vessel that will be used to test harvest at a site about an hour’s sailing away from Grenaa. The vessel was originally an oil boat supplying ships with fuel. Davai has converted it into a work boat equipped with a crane, a restructuring project that was partly funded by the FLAG Djursland. Farming seaweed is about putting out the

lines the anchors and the buoys and then waiting for the seaweed to grow. Kim Brueld Olesen, the managing director of Davai, and a former fisherman himself, feels that some of the methods used for traditional fishing might also be used to harvest seaweed. He thinks that harvesting seaweed is likely to be an overwhelmingly manual job, which for fishermen is hardly something they are unfamiliar with as fishing too involves much manual work. This is fortunate because, as he says, the pool from which people to do this work can be hired is largely one of fishermen.

Growing seaweed has to take unpredictable weather into account The site where the seaweed is grown is offshore in the open sea and is completely exposed to the elements so that there is only a limited window when the work can be carried out. The weather is too unpredictable to permit

Interest in cultivating seaweed is growing as its versatility becomes increasingly apparent.

activity over long periods. However, Mr Brueld Olesen, thinks that it should be possible to sail to the site, remove the lines growing seaweed from the bearing rope, heave them on board, and sail back again before the weather turns. The lines are brought ashore, the seaweed is cut off, they are then returned to sea and re-attached to the bearing rope. He emphasises that it is important to cut rather than tear

the seaweed off as the latter would destroy the root. And his calculations show that it is necessary to preserve the root so that a total of three crops can be harvested from the same root. Doing it this way rather than trying to carry out the entire operation at sea he thinks is more flexible and more convenient for the people who actually do the work. For a coastal fisherman working with seaweed

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like this is much like working with fish – instead of emptying his nets and bringing the fish back, he will be emptying the bearing rope and bringing seaweed back. Depending on how the regulatory framework develops, this model should work irrespective of the number of lines that are growing the seaweed.

There are synergies with fishing too in that the seaweed can be grown in areas that are ignored by fishermen because they are difficult to fish. Additionally, today when fishers capture seaweed in their nets it is a problem; the seaweed has no value and time must be spent cleaning out the nets. If the project leads to a market developing for seaweed, the fisherman could then sell the material that gets caught in his net. Even small coastal fishers could have a 1 cubic m tank on board the vessel, where they could collect the seaweed. This product would, however, not be for human consumption, but as a supplement to animal feed or as fertiliser. In other words, he may earn the same as what he would get for low-quality fish. Another idea is for fishers to use their old nets, which are no longer so efficient at catching fish, to catch seaweed instead. This is dead seaweed that rolls along the sea bed, and while it cannot be used for products that demand high quality raw materials, it can be used for other purposes.

Cultivating beats collecting in some respects Today there is plenty of wild seaweed available, but if a market for seaweed develops, wild seaweed may go the same way as fish stocks, which is why cultivating it is an interesting alternative. The advantage of cultivating is also that one can select the best species to cultivate, production can be controlled, supplies are reliable, and the result will be a high 44

Kattegat Seaweed has converted a former oil boat into a vessel that can be used to harvest seaweed.

quality product, that is used for human consumption or by the pharmaceutical or nutraceutical industry, and that commands a premium price. A high price is essential if the model is to work; 10-20 can be sold at a low price, but not more than that, he estimates. Collecting seaweed that is tossed by the sea on to the beach is another potential source of raw material, but one that will call for close cooperation with the municipalities. The seaweed will have to be collected each day to be usable, as within hours of arriving at the beach it starts to degrade.

In the old days, a bailiff used to be responsible for a section of the beach, a position that perhaps should be re-introduced. Keeping the beach clear of seaweed will make it more attractive for the tourists in summer, an outcome a municipality should be interested in, making it a win-win situation.

Running the converted boat would call for two people and the collection of seaweed from the local beach would call for another person in summer and with this effort the yield should be a tonne of seaweed a day, which is also the lowest volume needed for the business to be viable. Once collected the

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seaweed should be brought ashore and cooled within eight hours to prevent it from degrading. It is therefore often harvested and then placed in a net in the sea to keep it at the right temperature.

The alternative is to dry it so that it reaches a certain humidity and then to freeze it. Processed this way, the seaweed can be stored for up to two years. The company is therefore working on a container with sturdy shelves to hold the seaweed, which is quite heavy when it is wet. The main infrastructure needed to process the seaweed this way is drying machinery, such as dehumidifiers, that will need to be built, and a frozen storage. The dehumidifiers are no great challenge as this is equipment Davai is more than familiar with from its work maintaining bridges.

Ideas sometimes sparked by arbitrary events Yet another idea was inspired by a vessel used to clean up the harbour in Istanbul. Manned by two people the craft uses a conveyor belt to bring rubbish from the harbour on board the vessel. A similar system could be used to collect seaweed that is floating in the water after

a storm and before it reaches the beach. The advantage of collecting it this way at a depth of 1-2 m is that the seaweed is not covered in sand as it would be if collected from the beach, which saves on the expense of having to clean it.

Mr Brueld Olesen has been living in the Grenaa area all his life, and if other companies were to come in from outside and “do what we were supposed to do,” that is, starting activities that could just have easily been initiated by his firm, he would consider this an embarrassment. Too often, he feels, Danish companies sit back and let others do the pioneering, and then try and follow, rather than leading from the start. He acknowledges that the activities in his other companies provide an insurance policy that enables him to embark on this seaweed project even if it does not lead to anything. But there are other reasons too for settling on seaweed, the marine environment is one, with which he is very familiar, it is something that will benefit the local area, and at the moment it is not taking significant human resources away from the other companies. If the project takes off and collecting the seaweed in the right quality is shown to be

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feasible the next issue would be to find a market. While Nordisk Tang is an obvious customer, its current monthly requirements do not exceed what Kattegat Seaweed expects to collect in a day.

Other potential customers include seafood processing and exporting companies that are based in and around Grenaa. Turkey is also a potential market. Davai has just built three bridges in Turkey and now has a network of reliable

contacts, whom it can draw on, if it decides to sell the seaweed there.

The most important thing is to find the customers who buy into the story behind the seaweed – its healthfulness, quality, the fact that it is from clear Danish waters – and are willing to pay the price that will make it financially viable to produce it. The objective should not be to sell large volumes, but to find a level, where everything, price, quality, volume, is in balance.

Kattegat Seaweed Grenaa Denmark

Managing Director: Kim Brueld Olesen Activity: Cultivating seaweed, harvesting wild seaweed Products: Fresh and frozen seaweed Applications: Human consumption, animal and fish feed, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, fertiliser Expected volumes: 1 tonne/day

Tel.: +45 8630 1236 davai@davai.dk

Plastix’ products contribute to improving the environment

Recycling discarded fishing gear A company in Denmark, Plastix, has established a way to reuse lost or abandoned fishing gear by converting it into pellets that can be used to produce plastic items. This gives multiple benefits for the environment.

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s demand for finite resources continues to grow and as efforts to access them contribute to environmental degradation, it is becoming increasingly apparent that more efficient use and re-use of resources offers both economic and environmental benefits. The take-make-consume-dispose pattern of growth that has existed essentially since the industrial revolution1 is based on the assumption that resources are cheap and easy to dispose of, a belief that today is increasingly being questioned.

Better resource efficiency offers many advantages Opposed to this linear model is what is known as the circular economy where products keep their value for as long as possible within the economy by being repeatedly reused and thereby 1 A zero waste programme for Europe /* COM/2014/0398 final/2 */

delivering the maximum value and reducing waste. The circular economy offers potentially huge savings.

Studies have shown that improved resource efficiency in European industry could reduce raw material needs by 17-24 by 2030 and result in savings of EUR630bn per year.

The switch to a circular economy would create new products, new markets, and value for business, and companies are constantly working to improve resource management. One of the companies that is involved in this quest is Plastix, a Danish firm based in Lemvig.

Plastix takes discarded fishing nets and trawls and converts them into recyclates that in turn can be used to manufacture a number of plastic products. The problem of marine litter was highlighted in the declaration from the G7 meeting in Germany in 2015, which acknowledged that marine litter, and plastics in particular, posed a global challenge to marine and coastal life and ecosystems and potentially also to human health. While marine litter comprises many different

The Plastix operation that converts waste into value benefiting the environment in the process.

articles made of a wide range of materials, plastics are ubiquitous and represent a high proportion of the waste found in the water, on the seabed, on beaches, and increasingly now, also in the guts of fish. Recent research has even found evidence of chemicals used to make plastics present in organisms inhabiting some of the deepest oceanic trenches in the world.

Plastic waste is generated on land and ultimately the challenge is to prevent the generation of so many tonnes of waste and to intercept the flow of waste from land to sea.

Significant reduction in CO2 emissions Removing plastic trash from the ocean is thus laudable from

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Collaboration with stakeholders to get the raw material Plastix converts discarded fishing gear into a product called OceanIX (HDPE, PP and PA).

Fishing gear is a source of high quality plastic that is designed to withstand the stresses and strains of fishing and therefore must have high tensile strength and be resistant to physical abrasion, and to chemicals. These properties also contribute to the quality of the recyclate. According to the company, using for example, 1 tonne of the recyclate OceanIX HDPE as opposed to virgin plastic gives a saving of 1.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Achieving these savings is only possible if the raw material, the discarded fishing gear, can be collected for the recycling process. Plastix has implemented a system that involves collaborating with the maritime and fishing industry, NGOs, harbours, etc. for the collection of nets, trawls and ropes that can be used to produce the recyclates. Partnerships have been established with organisations in Denmark and the Netherlands such as harbours and fish auctions, for the supply of the raw material.

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any perspective, and the effort of turning it into products that can replace virgin raw materials, contributes to the goals of the circular economy. Concretely, the benefits of recycling plastics mean carbon dioxide emission savings, the conversion of waste into a valuable resource, as well as all the collateral advantages that come from removing plastic from marine ecosystems. A life cycle assessment (LCA) comparing the carbon footprint of recyclates with that of virgin plastic showed that PA (polyamide) recyclates were more than 20 times better than PA equivalents, and more than 5 times better for PE (polyethylene), and for PP (polypropylene) equivalents. Lost or discarded fishing gear presents its own set of challenges. In addition to being party to all the problems of plastic waste, abandoned fishing gear, such as nets that float in the sea, is a hazard for marine life, fish, sea mammals, reptiles, and even sea birds, that can get trapped in the meshes.

Free floating nets can also wrap around propellers causing problems for vessels. Removing nets and other fishing gear from the water to convert them into recyclate would therefore fulfil several purposes.

Derelict gear continues to injure and kill marine life. Here a diver from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rescues a turtle entangled in a net.

As an incentive Plastix has created an awards programme that issues certificates in three categories (bronze, silver and gold) to its raw material suppliers that enables them to document and market their efforts to clean up the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, removing equipment discarded or lost at sea, and by saving valuable resources. However, the raw material has to go through a sorting procedure at the collection point

to ensure that it is homogenous and then needs to be transported from the collection point to the Plastix facility in Denmark both of which are associated with costs.

At Plastix the material is further sorted by polymer type and colour, then shredded, washed, dried, and finally processed in an extruder to give the final product, plastic pellets of OceanIX. It is through individual efforts like this that the goal of circular economy will finally be reached.

Plastix A/S Lemvig Denmark Tel.: +45 9782 2000 info@plastixglobal.com plastixglobal.com

Nets and trawls are reduced to this plastic recyclate, which can be used to manufacture plastic products.

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Chief Executive OfďŹ cer: Hans Axel Kristensen Activity: Generating plastic recyclates from discarded ďŹ shing gear Products: Pellets of PA (polyamide), PE (polyethylene), and PP (polypropylene) Brand name: OceanIX Applications: Manufacture of plastic raw materials

[ SAFETY ] Safety at sea is priority for the EU’s more than 150,000 fishermen

The most dangerous occupation in the world: fishing at sea With 38 million people engaged in capture fisheries globally and 4.6 million fishing vessels around the world, there is plenty of room for things to go horribly wrong on the heaving deck of a ship at sea. Injury and death can result.

That’s easy to understand. Human beings are terrestrial. People drown in swimming pools and even in bathtubs. Fishermen work on moving, oscillating, and inherently unstable platforms surrounded by an often hostile sea. They perform hazardous work on uneven, slippery, and cluttered decks, or in cramped workspaces, with dangerous equipment, gear, and machinery. And there is always the danger of being struck by lightening.

Statistics on casualties According to the European Marine Casualty Information Platform (EMCIP), 976 persons were injured in 2015, leading to 115 fatalities. A total of 3,296 casualties and incidents were reported, 91 of which were deemed “very serious casualties”. In all, 3,669 ships were involved, with 36 ships lost. In its annual review of marine casualties and incidents, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) reported that, in the period 2011–2015, half of all marine casualties were navigational in nature, such as contacts, groundings/strandings, or

collisions. Among occupational accidents, 39 were caused by slipping, stumbling, and falling.

Human error caused 63 of accidents and 675 of accidents were linked to shipboard operations.

EMSA reported that, despite an increase in the number of fishing vessels lost, fatalities and injuries decreased significantly.

A large number of injuries are not even reported, for example, injuries that do not lead to prolonged loss of work, such as cuts, wounds, sprains, and contusions, or that led to financial compensation. Such injuries are impossible to quantify or classify, but it is accepted that they are common.

Worldwide, the registration and classification of personal injuries and fatalities in fisheries are inadequate and not comparable between countries, because of different systems of data collection and classification. Indeed, some of the damage to fishing vessels and losses or injuries to crew are regarded as unavoidable casualties of unpredictable and often treacherous working conditions at sea. Indeed, hazards that seem to be accepted in fisheries would be considered intolerable in most land-based professions.

Risks in the fishing environment In the same way that the sea has no borders, injuries at sea share

Iain Butterworth, Marine Accident Investigation Branch, UK

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ishing at sea is probably the most dangerous occupation pursued by man. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that in 1999 fishing caused more than 24,000 deaths per year, approximately 80 fatalities per 100,000 fishers per year.

In the period 2011–2015, half of all marine casualties were navigational in nature, such as groundings/strandings, contacts, or collisions, reports the European Maritime Safety Agency.

many commonalities. The most catastrophic event leading to loss of life is loss of the vessel. If the vessel is lost, it is probable that some or all of the crew will lose their lives too. The most common causes of fishing vessel loss include capsizing, foundering, collision, and fire and explosion.

Sometimes shifting loads lead to capsizing or loss of people overboard. Poorly maintained and ageing vessels are at greater risk of being lost. On small vessels, the risk of capsizing while pulling in a large catch, being flooded in heavy seas, run down by a larger vessel, and even attacked by dangerous marine animals can be considerable. Even when maintenance is at its best, the vessel’s design, construction,

and operation all directly affect safety and health. Risks vary with each type of fishing and fishing grounds, weather conditions, and vessel size. Certain gear types, especially on larger vessels, are inherently very dangerous, particularly in bad weather. Bad weather and loss of engine power constitute major risks to every vessel, but are perhaps greater to small boats, which are more easily damaged and flooded.

These dangers cause constant physical strain and contribute to long-term fatigue, which itself increases the danger of injuries.

Excessively long working hours further increase fatigue. Often fishermen must perform tasks for which they have limited training Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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Dustin Williams, US Coast Guard

[ SAFETY ]

Fire and explosions are among the chief causes of losing a fishing vessel

and lack of knowledge about the equipment. Common, usually non-fatal injuries in the fishing industry include: musculoskeletal injuries caused by heavy lifting; slips and falls caused by wet, slippery surfaces, fish slime, and other debris; cuts and lacerations caused by knives and other equipment such as hooks; cuts and puncture wounds caused by lobster and fish with sharp teeth and fins. A Danish study of fatal poisoning in industrial fishing found that the air composition in holds, compartments, hulls, and engine rooms contained dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide.

Life at sea tends to exacerbate health problems Conditions specific to working at sea increase the seriousness of non-fatal injuries and increase the mortality rate, such as poor availability and increased delay of medical assistance, poor life-saving facilities, and no possibility of evacuation to land-based medical care. In addition to high accident rates, personal health issues pose risks equally as dangerous. The relationship between occupation and smoking and the related risk of cancer was studied in Italy. The 48

study showed that the greatest health hazards to Italian fishermen were lung and liver cancer.

Similar studies in the same region found a correlation between patterns of smoking and working hours. Frequent intoxication was also found to result from the stress of working at sea, and pre-existing heart conditions are made worse by the conditions at sea, not to mention the poor possibilities of medical evacuation. Mental stress caused by frequently being alone in the cabin and long work shifts led to suicide, homicide, and mental and nervous system disorders.

Poland and issues of health Poland is unique in the many studies into the health of fishermen that have been conducted. Some health factors, such as high levels of smoking and heart disease, have been identified in the Polish fishing population and should be considered in other countries. Since the 1960s, the character of the Polish fishing fleet has changed with a steep decline in the number of shipping vessels operating at long distances. At present the Polish operator with ships operating in the North Atlantic has two fishing vessels with crews of more

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than 60 persons. On each of those ships a doctor is employed and the crews are employed in accordance with Polish law.

Several large employers dominate the industry, leaving few selfemployed fishermen. However, all fishermen undergo regular routine medical examinations to assess their fitness for work.

Despite routine medical examinations, illness, particularly cardiovascular disease, is more common than injuries. Some health factors, such as high levels of smoking, have been identified in the Polish fishing population. This should be considered in other countries.

Such health issues may be related to the common factors across the world’s fishing industries: being at sea in a confined space, thus increasing passive smoking; limited storage for fresh food; and working long hours with disrupted sleep patterns. Alcohol may have also contributed to other factors, such as human errors in navigation, loss of balance on deck, or being swept overboard. Alcohol may be implicated in at least onequarter of the accidents. Timely diagnosis of these health issues might have saved lives.

Fishers on some fleets more vulnerable than others In contrast to Poland, Turkey’s marine capture fisheries

concentrate their efforts close to home in the Mediterranean, Black, and Aegean seas, and the Sea of Marmara. Turkey’s fleet, which seldom ventures out on the high seas, numbered 16,437 in 2013. By far, most fishermen are employed in the small-scale fishery sector, where most fishing vessels (12,138) are between 6 and 12 metres. A typical twoman operation uses an 8-metre open boat, and larger units use 10-metre boats with three fishermen. The larger-scale operations include trawlers, purse-seiners, and beach-seiners. Aegean– Mediterranean trawlers are 15–25-metre wooden boats of the schooner type, with a usual crew of 7 or 8. Although Turkey has not yet ratified the Torremolinos Protocol (1977), it follows the safety standards defined in the protocol.

But these apply to vessels longer than 24 metres, leaving most of Turkey’s self-employed fishermen unprotected.

Reduce casualties through prevention Risk will always be part of fishing; however, measures to reduce risk at sea have had some success, particularly in Europe, which enjoys a technological advantage and has spent decades striving for improved safety. Although many improvements have been made on a voluntary basis, the consensus among safety promoters is

EU fishing fleet capacity by length, category (2015) Length

Number of vessels

Gross tonnage

Engine power in kW

Average age

< 12

72,301

182,989

2,603,689

25

12–24

9,998

399,193

1,830,772

24

> 24

2,855

1,041,399

2,035,719

19

TOTAL

85,154

1,623,581

6,470,180

22.6 EU Fishing Fleet Register

US Coast Guard

[ SAFETY ]

Small vessels are more vulnerable to bad weather or loss of power. In this case the boat started to flood due to a crack in the hull.

that obligatory safety measures are prerequisites for success.

Further, unsafe conditions can be corrected by the technical

refinement of ships, upgrading professional qualifications of the crew, and tightening the requirements and health criteria for candidates for work at sea. Mandatory training

in fire-fighting, first aid, and basic seamanship are also required.

The EU plays its part Since the establishment of the EEC by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the European Union has attempted to promote the health and safety of its workers. Specifically, through Article 153 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the EU works to improve the working environment to protect workers’ health and safety. This includes working conditions, social security and protection, protection of workers whose employment contract is terminated, the information and consultation of workers, representation and collective

defence, equality between men and women, and the integration of persons excluded from the labour market, among other goals. Most recently, EU Council approved a directive regulating working conditions in the fisheries sector, which transposes the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Work in Fishing Convention 2007 (C188) into EU Law. The EU Directive will formally be adopted at a forthcoming Council session.

(See box for a short history of EU efforts to make fishing at sea safer) Regardless of EU directives and voluntary safety precautions, however, the sea is unpredictable and will always be a dangerous workplace.

William Anthony

Highlights in preventing injury and fatality at sea The EU Parliament emphasises the need to protect workers’ health and safety. It has adopted many resolutions calling for all aspects affecting the physical or mental well-being of workers to be covered by EU legislation. Also, it has adopted or become a party to acts, treaties, and charters that protect workers. Some are legally binding, some are not. The Single European Act (1987) introduced health and safety at work into the EEC Treaty for the first time in an article laying down minimum requirements and allowing the Council to adopt occupational health and safety directives by qualified majority.

The Amsterdam Treaty (1997) strengthened the status of employment issues by introducing the title on employment and the

Social Agreement. For the first time, directives setting out minimum requirements in the field of health and safety at work and working conditions were adopted by both Parliament and the Council by means of the co-decision procedure. The Lisbon Treaty (2007) contains a ‘social clause’ under which social requirements must be taken into account in the Union’s policies. Upon the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union became legally binding.

Directive 89/391/EEC (1898), also known as the Occupational Safety and Health “Framework Directive”, introduces measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers.

They include:

r avoiding and evaluating risks, and combating them at source; r adapting the work to the individual; r adapting to technical progress; r replacing the dangerous with the non- or the less dangerous; r developing a coherent overall prevention policy; r prioritizing collective protective measures (over individual protective measures); r giving appropriate instructions to the workers.

According to the directive, the employer shall: r evaluate all the risks; r improve the level of worker protection and integrate them into all activities;

r consider the worker‘s capabilities as regards health and safety; r consult workers on introduction of new technologies; r designate worker(s) to carry out activities related to the protection and prevention of occupational risks; r provide first aid, fire-fighting, evacuation of workers, and action required in the event of serious and imminent danger; r list occupational accidents and report occupational accidents; r inform and consult workers and allow them in discussions relating to safety and health; r ensure that each worker receives adequate safety and health training.

Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

49

POLAND

Gadus Fishing and Processing is still a family business

Modern, diverse and growing Gadus, a fishing and processing company based in Gdynia, has grown from a small, local company to the the biggest Baltic fish producer in Poland and a leading processor of whitefish selling its products on the domestic and export markets.

Gadus has a fleet of 17 vessels catching cod, flounder, sprat and herring in the Baltic Sea.

G

adus was founded in the small seaside Karwia, a town located several kilometres to the west of Władysławowo, by 19-yearold David Sztormowski. The beginning was really hard, says Mr Sztormowski. Visiting fishing ports, together with his brother, the two were buying the raw material directly from the fishermen. After two years the brothers earned enough to buy their first fishing boat and started to hire 50

their first employees, many of whom are still working with them.

The Baltic Sea is an important source of raw material Over time the brothers began to serve a wider group of customers, delivering fish to processing plants and individual clients.

Their goal from the beginning, however, was to build a company whose structure would

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include both fishing and delivery of the final product to the customer. In 2001, this goal began to take shape with the founding of the fishing and processing company, Gadus Ltd., in the industrial district of Gdynia, near the container and ferry terminals. The company specialises in catches from the Baltic Sea, cod, flounder, sprat and herring. In addition, two production sites in Gdynia process every year over 18,000 tons

of different types of fish (mainly Atlantic cod, Baltic cod, saithe, salmon, flounder, trout).

Sprat and herring are currently sold directly to Polish processors dealing with these species. But that will change soon, when the company moves to a new processing plant with an area of over 16,000 square meters, which is being constructed at the moment.

It must be remembered, says Mr Sztormowski, that the fish

POLAND

Ready meals are a small but growing part of the company’s product range.

A Gadus delicatessen shop, one of 17 the company owns in Pomerania and in Warsaw.

industry is quite specific: one not only needs to know how to sell a product, but also – which is much more difficult – how to get the raw material. Access to the raw material, unlike in other sectors, is not regular. Catches are limited, and the fishing is largely dependent on changing weather conditions. To ensure the regular supply of raw material and to be less dependent on resources from the Polish Baltic Sea, the company owners established a subsidiary in Norway, Gadus Norway, which is the owner of two packing stations in northern Norway.

Located in Henningsvaer and Kongsfjord, they receive the best quality fresh fish directly from the local fishing boats, and forward it immediately, with Gadus-owned trucks, to Gdynia. With these arrangements and our long-term cooperation with other vessels operating in the north-east Atlantic, there are no gaps in our production, and the quality of raw materials and the final product is always excellent, says Dawid Sztormowski. The company is

market in the Polish capital – Bazar Koszyki. Mr Sztormowski attributes Gadus' success to the minute attention to detail and to the fact that every link in the value chain, from fishing through transport and logistics, to processing at the company’s facility, sales to individual customers, and distribution of the final products, is under the company’s control.

the first, and only one in Poland, involved in the snow crab fishery in the Barents Sea with three Polish ships to start fishing there this year. All the landings will be in Arctic Norway, while part of the catches will go, of course, to the Polish market.

Products are sold through delicatessen shops and hypermarkets The company produces both fresh and frozen products, including cod fillets, loins, as well as ready meals, such as fish dishes based on cod in sauces and packaged in modified atmosphere. The company also supplies the market with fish fingers, croquettes, dumplings, salads and sushi and is increasing the scale of its processing operations with particular emphasis on the relatively small ready-to-eat category. Today Gadus’ products can be found in the hypermarkets, as well as in the seventeen Gadus’ fish delicatessens in Pomerania and in Warsaw, as well as in the most fashionable

Today about 35 of Gadus’ sales are to the domestic market and the remainder is exported to several countries around the world, in the EU, Serbia, China, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. With its focus on quality, regular supplies, and timely delivery, the list of countries Gadus exports to can only get longer over time.

Gadus Sp. z o.o. ul. Unruga 111 81-153 Gdynia Poland Tel.: +48 58 663 45 26 info@gadus.pl www.gadus.pl Owner: Dawid Sztormowski Activity: Fishing, processing, sales and distribution Turnover: EUR46m (PLN200m) Annual catches: 1,600 tons of cod, flounder of 1,000 tons,

7,000 tons of sprats, 4000 tons of herring.

Fishing fleet: 17 Baltic fishing vessels Raw materials processed: 18,000 tonnes Processed products: Fresh and frozen, cod fillets, cod loins, ready meals, and other products Facilities: Two processing factories in Poland, two packing stations in Norway Markets: Poland, EU, Asia, US

Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

51

PALESTINE

Fishing in the Gaza Strip

A small industry faces formidable challenges

L

ocated on the Mediterranean Sea, the Gaza strip has an area of 360 sq. km and is home to some two million people.

The coastline is 40 km long and has supported fishing activities for many years. Today, however, the fishing sector faces a number of environmental challenges including coastal erosion, high salinity of the water, excessive sediment (particularly around the port of Gaza), and human impacts such as the large volumes of wastewater that flow into the sea, and overfishing.

Between 1967 and 1978 Gaza experienced its golden age of fishing. From an area of around 180 km, starting from Gaza beach to Bardawil Lake near the Egyptian city Al Areesh, the catch reached 60 tonnes per day. Gaza sent fish, specially sardines and rock hind (lokos, Epinephelus adscensionis), to the West Bank and to 48 countries until 1986. From then exports declined both in variety and volume before stopping completely in 2000.

Shrinking area in which to fish As a result of Israeli restrictions, the fishing limit – the distance out from shore – was gradually decreased to around 82 km, then to 20 miles. Under the Oslo Accords the limit shrank further, to 3 miles at one point, then stabilized at 6 miles, although the best fishing is further offshore, starting at 9 miles.

Today the number of officially registered fishermen is between 52

Fishermen displaying their fish at one of the markets on the beach. Annual catches amount to between 2,500 and 3,000 tonnes of fish, the bulk of which is sardines.

3,600 and 3,850. However, it is thought that there are some 2,000 seasonal fishermen operating without a license, so the true number is probably much larger. Ten percent of the fishermen operate big launches, and another tenth are new fishermen who used to work previously as farmers. The rest work on small boats, inherited the profession of fishing from their parents, and consider fishing as their only source of income. In addition, some 500 people are in fishingrelated employment including traders, maintenance workers, vessel construction workers, and fishing equipment suppliers.

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Institutional framework needs strengthening The fisheries sector is administered by the General Directorate of Fisheries which is part of the Ministry of Agriculture. It is the competent authority responsible for the management of fishery resources and the development of fish farming systems. In addition, the directorate licenses fishermen and vessels, oversees the sustainability of fishing activities, and introduces new species for farming. The Al Tawfiq cooperative society of fishermen has 400 members who are owners of big launches, while the Fishermen

Association represents all fishermen and provides them with services including conflict resolution, and distribution of food parcels when necessary, against a membership fee of ILS20 (EUR5).

The municipalities run fish markets, where prices are determined by supply and demand. Sellers on the market pay a fee of 3 of sales, while buyers pay a fee of 4 of their purchases. The infrastructure at fish markets varies – Rafah, Khanyounis, and Deir Al Balah markets are simple and located directly on the beach, while Gaza market is more sophisticated. Other institutions include the General

PALESTINE

Different species including shrimp, goatfish, rock hind, striped seabream, and bonito are fished in Gaza.

Federation of Trade Unions which provides health insurance for fishermen for an annual fee of ILS20.

The fishing license fee is ILS25 per year and is issued by the General Directorate of Fisheries. The annual vessel license fee is ILS300 or ILS70 for a small vessel and is issued by the Ministry of Transportation.

Despite the hardships fish is still landed Several species of fish are targeted by the fishermen. Sardine is one of the most popular species accounting for 40-70 of the total catch.

Goatfishes, rock hind, and shrimp are infrequently caught and are

therefore highly valued, while bonito, and striped seabream are seasonal. The most commonly farmed fish is gilthead seabream.

Prices per kilo range from ILS1520 for sardines, to ILS120 for rock hind. Shrimp and goatfishes reach ILS100, while gilthead seabream costs ILS40. Mullet and other fish that reach Gaza through tunnels tend to be cheaper at ILS20.

According to Nizar Ayyash, chairman of the fishermen’s association, fish production before 2001 reached 4,000 tonnes/year, enough to meet the needs of the local market and for export.

Fishing vessels in Gaza include traction vessels used to catch shrimp, goatfishes, and striped

seabream, and shanshioleh vessels that are used for sardines, tuna, and other fish types. The traction vessels usually have a 400 hp motor, are equipped with cranes, and use about 300 litres of fuel per day. Small vessels have lights and smaller cranes on board.

During the sardine season the revenue per trip for a vessel with a crew of 15 is around ILS4,000 and a vessel can make about 50 trips, while for a small vessel with an 8-person crew the revenue per trip is about ILS2,600. Among the risks the fishermen face are sudden changes in weather, especially during winter, when storms, or even hurricanes, strong winds, and high waves are not

Fishing vessels in Gaza, 2016 Floka

Small motor

Small Shanshioleh

Shanshioleh

Traction vessel

Total

Gaza

200

265

80

42

15

602

Deir Al Balah

70

100

30

1

0

201

Khanyounes

50

120

25

4

0

199

Rafah

60

120

30

5

0

215

Total

380

605

165

52

15

1217

uncommon. In addition to this, there can be unexpected accidents such as fire or equipment malfunctions. The crew on board should therefore have a number of qualifications to cope with these risks, including, swimming skills, familiarity with equipment such as GPS, fish detectors, and weather forecasting tools, as well as patience, and the ability to respect the captain’s orders. Fishermen are also subject to other risks related to the political status of Gaza.

Seabream is the main farmed species There are two types of aquaculture activities in Gaza. One involves fixed or floating cages in the sea, however funding for this lacking. Fishponds, on the other hand, are fairly common on the Gaza Strip and are used to farm gilthead seabream and mullet.

Among the projects are three ponds which produce around 100 tonnes/year, or 300,000 fish.

This project created 30 jobs. The cost of each fishpond is around USD50,000 (EUR46,400), while Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

53

PALESTINE

Flashes of hope punctuate a generally desolate scenario

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the overall cost of the project is USD1.2m. Although successful the project faces a number of challenges such as, the lack of a steady supply of electricity and problems obtaining feed and eggs. Another four similar projects produce about 300 tonnes of gilthead seabream.

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&ŝƐŚŝŶŐ WƌŽĚƵĐƚŝŽŶ

Fisheries data from the Gaza Strip.

54

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For the people of Gaza fish is an essential source of animal protein and a food that is rich in phosphorus. Seafood is cooked in different ways: frying, grilling, and as a shrimp bowl. Fish is one of the most common basic meals in the restaurants and hotels scattered on the beach. The vast majority of the population in Gaza eats locally-caught sardines or imported frozen fish from time to time. Other fresh fish is expensive and hard to get. Canned fish too is popular and is an essential component of food parcels during crises and wars.

The political situation in Gaza presents a number of direct and indirect challenges to the fisheries sector. In addition, however, trawling in nursery areas, the build-up of sediment in the port area, the lack of properly functioning institutions, and poor coordination between them, nepotism, misallocation of aid, and the lack of legal mechanisms to protect and compensate fishermen, as well as unlicensed fishing, poor inspection and control, and overfishing are among the many difficulties faced by fishermen in Gaza. Individual fishermen also suffer from the high rate of attrition of their equipment, the high cost of maintenance, and rising fuel prices.

Some NGO’s such as PARC (Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees), Mercy Corps, and Qatar Charity try to help matters with projects that, for example, provide fishing equipment such as motors and lights. Or they will pay off fishermen’s debts related to the living costs of a fisherman’s family, or the purchase of equipment or maintenance. The fishermen also need infrastructure including markets in the southern governorates, an upgrade to the port, especially the removal of sediment, and floats for the vessels to prevent collisions.

Many of these circumstances contribute to the risk that marine resources in Gaza may be wiped out altogether. Fishermen think that creating artificial reefs in the water may attract more fish to the area, but as long as some of the other problems remain unresolved, it is unlikely to help beyond a point.

Tayseer Muhaisen Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, February 2017

[ TECHNOLOGY ] New kinds of packaging solutions enhance sustainability

Less material input, improved functional properties Fish and seafood are sensitive products that mostly require packaging for transport and presentation at the retailer’s. Whether simple plastic bags or intelligent case-ready concepts, the packaging should be easy to handle, it should ensure product quality, and it should provide customers with information. Choosing between the numerous packaging options is quite a challenge for manufacturers since today packaging also has to be recyclable and climate-friendly.

T

he days when the fishmonger wrapped a piece of fresh fish deftly in a sheet of newspaper before handing it to his customer are long gone. Although nothing has really changed with regard to the basic functions of packaging, i.e. to protect goods and products and ensure their safe transport, over the course of time a number of new requirements and functions has been added. What was once merely a kind of protective covering for sensitive products today also has to be hygienic, drip- and odourproof, offer good insulation, fulfil legally stipulated declaration obligations on the pack contents, and attract the customer’s interest,

as well as being environmentally compatible, climate-friendly, and recyclable.

Fish processors and packaging manufacturers take up the challenge and attempt the balancing act between on the one hand fulfilling all the requirements made on product packaging and on the other hand meeting the growing demand for environmental compatibility. Put simply that means reducing packaging volume, enabling as far as possible multi-use of packaging, and using recyclable materials to produce it. The motto “reduce, reuse and recycle” is an apt description of the concept which involves not only

In skin packs a shrink film forms a second skin around the contours of the product and – just as important – it can be pulled off easily to remove the food.

the avoidance of packaging waste but also the use of lighter materials with new kinds of improved functional properties.

Environmentally friendly nondrip and grease-tight fresh fish packaging made of solid or corrugated fibreboard is, for example, very hygienic and easily disposable. Expanded plastic trays offer optimum thermal insulation and also stand out for their low weight as well as versatile usage options.

And trays, tubs and other containers made of aluminium foil or special plastics do not only provide protection during transport: some fish and seafood products can also be cooked in their packaging in

the oven or the microwave. Even the wrapping paper which has replaced the fishmonger’s newspaper is today almost a high-tech product, for the film-laminated wrapping paper does not only protect the fish but is also tearresistant, drip-proof, fairly puncture-proof, absolutely hygienic, pliant and flexible.

Product safety is always the top priority of the packaging industry in all its efforts to develop innovative packaging. But at the same time, new food packaging solutions should also lengthen shelf-life, reduce losses and be more sustainable, i.e. make more sparing use of resources.

Transparent plastic bags and folding cartons with a window are among the particularly popular packaging types for seafood products in the frozen foods sector.

Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

55

[ TECHNOLOGY ] packaging concepts and to look for suitable materials that fulfil the sometimes very special requirements. Every potential target group has its own preferences, be it catering, home service or gastronomy, street food and the growing take-away business or the retailer or final consumer.

Packaging under modified atmosphere (MAP) lengthens the product’s shelf-life but the method involves the use of special packaging machines.

Demand for specific packaging solutions is increasing There are two basic application areas of packaging. On the one hand, packaging is needed for the storage and transport of fish products within the chain from the producer to the further processor, sometimes even to the trader, and these packaging solutions usually consist of larger containers such as plastic crates, insulated tubs or barrels. The second application area covers the variety of packaging in which the products are sold to the final customer at the retailer’s. The two areas share some similarities but there are also some very 56

significant differences. Among the similarities are the fact that fish, fish products and seafood must be reliably protected in their packaging so that their quality and integrity is preserved.

The requirements of packaging at the retailer’s are much greater.

Sales packaging is intended to attract the customer’s attention, provide information on the product ingredients, its shelf-life or its preparation and at the same time it should be user-friendly, safe, hygienic, and preserve product quality.

The growing number of prefabricated and pre-packaged products forces manufacturers to develop more and more new

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Depending on the application area and intended purpose, packaging manufacturers make use of some very different materials.

Among the classic materials in the fish sector are above all aluminium, tinplate and glass which stand out for their special material properties such as strength, food safety and suitability for recycling. Glass, for example, is made of natural domestic raw materials such as quartz sand, sodium carbonate, potash, feldspar and lime and these are available naturally in almost unlimited quantities.

Glass is chemically “inert” and in no way influences the flavour of the foods with which it comes into contact. The only disadvantage is really the relatively great weight of glass containers and their susceptibility to breakage. Like glass, paper, cardboard and carton are all based on renewable raw materials, either as primary fibres from renewable wood or as secondary fibres from recycled waste paper.

The advantages of these materials include their relatively low weight but high resilience which offers protection, enables the stacking of the products, and prevents damages during transport.

Folding cardboard boxes made of single layer corrugated or solid cardboard are today the common standard in the packaging sector.

Fresh foods are packed, for example in film coated composite cardboard cartons. Moisture-proof insulated cartons made of corrugated or solid cardboard can even be used for road or air transport of fresh fish.

Plastics enable packaging solutions to suit the product In addition to these traditional materials plastics are of outstanding importance for the packaging of fish and other foods. Polyethylene (PE) accounts for over 30 per cent of global production of plastics. PE is available in a hard (HDPE) and soft (LDPE) variant and is extremely versatile in its usage. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a thermoplastic which is easily formable when heated and can be produced in almost any shape, can also be used for a wide range of applications.

The thermoplastics also include polypropylene (PP) which in its molecular structure is fairly similar to hard polyethylene (HDPE). Like polystyrene (PS), which is known in the fish sector above all from the extremely light polystyrene insulating boxes, polypropylene can also be processed to form shaped pieces of various kinds which consist of expanded but mainly closed-cell bead foam particles (expanded polypropylene EPP).

The EPP particles are usually supplied loose and then poured into foaming machines for processing to shaped parts.

Plastics that can be considered for packaging are usually lightweight, are easy to mould, ensure a long shelf-life of the food, and enable attractive product presentation. Plastic packaging, whether as single or multilayer film, in foamed or dense form, has amazing properties, as the variety of shaped trays, skin packs, barrier shrink film and MAP sealed trays shows. Some plastics even meet demanding thermal requirements and are equally suitable for the deep freeze and the oven. The art is ultimately to find the right

[ TECHNOLOGY ] stipulates that at least 55 per cent of all packaging on the market in the EU member states has to be recycled for material recovery.

The recycling quotas for the individual materials differ, however: 22.5 of plastics, 50 of metals, 60 each of glass, paper, cardboard and carton.

Changes in consumption behaviour demand new kinds of packaging The requirements of packaging that is not only for storing the food but also for cooking it, are particularly high.

material for the intended packaging purpose. Even problems that can occur when opening sealed plastic packaging, for example, (often a source of annoyance in the past) have – at least in theory – now been solved. Easy opening concepts with lasting adhesive seam and zipper-like closing mechanisms make it possible to reclose the pack after opening.

Perforated tabs can be opened easily by hand without the use of a knife or sharp scissors.

Reduction of packaging waste and mindful recycling The biggest problem with plastics is probably their recycling, as the increasing pollution of the oceans dramatically shows. In spite of this, replacing plastics with paper would hardly be the answer, for both materials have their own advantages with regard to energy and material. The fact that paper and cardboard can be recycled or composted does not automatically mean that they are more environmentally compatible and less detrimental to climate. Paper is heavy and cumbersome, its transport often requires more energy than the production of plastic. Apart from that, toxic chemicals are still used during paper production. Drawing an

objective environmental and climate balance must take into consideration all the effects on the environment, from the raw material to emissions, from toxicity to waste.

Like all packaging, plastics can be collected after usage and, once thoroughly sorted, can be reused as a material or at least for energy.

The number of techniques with which recyclable fractions of tinplate, aluminium, cartons and various types of plastic (PE, PP, PET, PS) can be separated in sorting plants is almost as high as the variety of available packaging options.

But the effort is worthwhile; for example, in Germany alone about 17.8 million tonnes of packaging were collected in 2014. With 2.9 million tonnes, plastics were in second place after paper, cardboard or carton (about 8.1 million tonnes). Some plastics are used to make new packaging or textiles.

Even laminated cartons which were long considered a problem can be recycled today. In England empty drink cartons are collected and then sent to Sweden as filling material for gypsum plates.

In order to counteract the rise in packaging volumes and reduce the burden on the environment the EU adopted the 1994 Packaging Directive 94/62/EC which

Just under half of the packaging waste occurs in the households of private end consumers. The fact that the volume of plastics in this sector is constantly rising is mainly due to the consumers’ changed living conditions which have led to changes in their consumption habits. The share of senior, single, and two party households is increasing. These customer groups buy smaller quantities and portion units which increases packaging consumption. Changing eating habits, above all street food and fast food or the to-go sector and the rising convenience grade of foods and ready meals also impact the quantity of packaging. Out-ofhome consumption also leads to increased demand for packaging.

In addition, the mail order sector with purchases via the internet is growing – slowly but surely in the fish sector, too. These developments work against the efforts to reduce packaging waste or better still to avoid it altogether. It is very difficult to counteract this trend.

Designers and product developers are constantly working on finding ways of giving packaging new additional “abilities” on top of their original functions of protection and separation. Packaging is today no longer only for keeping the products but it also makes handling, dosing and portioning

easier as well. With the right trays and dishes it is today possible to not only present precooked fish meals in an attractive way at the retailer’s but they can also be heated in and eaten directly from the packaging. Even traditional jars with screw lids which play an important role particularly in the fish sector have moved into the focus of innovative designers who are for example equipping the screw top lid with plastic inlets in which powdery, pasty or liquid components such as dips, sauces or other side dishes can be packed separately. This means that the consumer can mix them into the product himself immediately before consumption. These sections of the lid are also suited to the enclosure of recipe inserts and small gimmicks.

New kinds of materials with optimized functional properties at least enable a reduction of packaging in some application fields, or they can make the packaging lighter weight, smaller or thinner or they can replace expensive heavy materials. A good example of this are the skin packs in which a shrinkable film forms a second skin around the contours of the product and – just as important – it can be easily pulled off to remove the food. Flexible plastic packaging such as vacuum bags, ready-to-seal stand-up pouches, flat bags or flat bottom bags with gussets are among the most efficient and most environmentally friendly packaging forms on the market. They are suited to chilled and frozen products, they are non-drip and odour-tight and relatively inexpensive. Since the introduction of metal-laminated films with high barrier properties that are stable and sufficiently puncture-proof, pouches made of this material today even often replace the traditional tin cans. mk Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ TRADE AND MARKETS ] Post-summer harvests in Norway bring only temporary relief from high salmon prices

Strong demand likely to keep prices up Seafish, www.seafish.org

As biomass on Norwegian farms pushed regulatory limits in late summer 2016, markets have had to absorb relatively larger volumes of farmed salmon with the prevailing exceptionally high prices falling somewhat as a result. The global supply situation remains extremely tight, however, with reduced production forecasts for both Chile and Norway, and in the longer term the new price plateau is set to stay.

Strong demand for salmon in many countries around the world combined with reduced supply is likely to keep prices high for the foreseeable future.

A

ccording to figures from the Seafood Norway Production Forum released in August, farmed Atlantic salmon production in Norway fell by 45 000 tonnes, or 9 percent in the first seven months of 2016, with an overall drop of 5 percent forecast for the year.

This situation has seen export prices for fresh whole Atlantics, as measured by the NASDAQ salmon index, above NOK50 (~EUR5.5) per kg since the 58

beginning of the year, and reaching multiple peaks above NOK75 per kg in mid-year. Seasonal post-summer harvests caused a spike in Norwegian supply volumes, which is the result of trying to keep biomasses below regulatory limits after summer growth in the pens. This peak in supplies pushed down prices to NOK52 per kg in midSeptember, but this is still some NOK10 above the same period in 2015, reflecting the significantly

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larger gap between supply and demand in 2016.

In line with the reduction in production volumes, Norwegian exports were also down in the first six months of 2016, to 458 000 tonnes, or 6.8 percent lower than the same period last year. High prices more than offset lower volumes, however, and total value exported was up 29 percent for the same period, to NOK27.9 billion (EUR3.3 billion).

These revenues have translated into bumper profits for many Norwegian aquaculture companies, although price volatility and high raw material costs have squeezed the margins of supply chain intermediaries. Exporters, however, have been protected to an extent from passing on high costs to buyers by the weakening Norwegian krone over the last few years, now down by approximately 11 percent since the beginning of 2014.

[ TRADE AND MARKETS ] Poland still the biggest market for Norwegian salmon The major markets for Norwegian salmon have remained largely the same for a number of years, with Poland the number one destination. About 70 percent of Polish exports are processed and re-exported, underlining the importance of the Polish processing industry, particularly as a supplier of smoked salmon to Germany. Norwegian exports to emerging markets in Southeast Asia continued to grow, as did the proportion of total production directed to the US market, which was supplied with a combination of fresh whole Atlantic salmon and an increasing quantity of fillets that competed directly with Chilean product.

As per the typical seasonal pattern, salmon prices were expected to rise again going into the last quarter of the year as supply tightened and end-of-year demand began to put upward pressure on prices. In fact, forward prices at FishPool put the weighted average price for fresh whole Atlantics above NOK60 per kg from November until mid-2017 at least. Norwegian authorities introduced a new flexible Maximum Allowed Biomass rule, which Nordea analysts predict will cause a 3-5 percent increase in Norwegian production in 2017. However, continuing low supply from other sources and strong, growing demand in markets across the world will likely prevent any significant reduction in the current price level.

Regulations limiting growth in Chile aim at greater stability The Chilean salmon industry, which was significantly affected by an algae bloom during the first

half of 2016, was now trying to control production through new regulations. These regulations were being challenged from some quarters, but the current rules limit production growth to 3 percent per year in an attempt to lessen the impacts of worldwide fluctuating prices and unstable production.

According to some estimates, this 3 percent limit led to a 25 percent reduction in salmon production for 2016 to around 650 000 tonnes.

This volume is far below Chileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s record production year in 2014, when production totaled nearly 955 200 tonnes. However, this reduction estimate is not agreed on by all. One expert in the sector claimed that with the new regulations, Chile could produce at most 400 000 tonnes. Other analysts noted that though production would not reach 650 000 tonnes, they predicted that until 2018 supply will be more limited at around 500 000 tonnes.

Weaker pound helps UK exporters Scottish farmed salmon production was expected to rise 3.5 percent in 2016, to 177 900 tonnes.

Exports out of the UK bounced back in 2016 after a drop in production in 2015, with an increasing proportion headed for France where it has a positive image amongst consumers. The severe depreciation of the British currency following the Brexit vote was also beneficial for exporters, making Scottish salmon cheaper for foreign buyers.

This may help to reverse the ongoing decline in exports to the USA where competing Canadian producers have been increasing their share of the market. However, due to new regulations introduced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Scottish producers must work to reduce the number of seals killed in culls to zero by 2022.

The weaker British pound is, however, not good news for importers. The UK imported almost as much salmon as it exported, primarily from the Faroe Islands and from Norway through Sweden, although domestically produced fish now looks relatively more appealing to buyers. The effects have yet to be reflected in reported import volumes, however, and volumes were up in the first half of 2016 even as prices rose.

pressure on what are already considered extremely high prices.

Slower growth on some markets cuts demand

The image of farmed salmon, particularly of Norwegian origin, appears to have improved amongst consumers, helped by the increasing quantity of Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certified farmed salmon appearing on French supermarket shelves.

As salmon prices continued to soar, it is worth noting that the full impact of the current supply shortfall is in fact being mitigated by economic declines and weaker demand in what were previously the largest emerging markets for salmon. The economic struggles of Brazil, and the associated high inflation and unemployment, has certainly negatively impacted demand for salmon over the last two years, although a combination of reduced Chilean production and the influx of large numbers of tourists for the Olympics temporarily pushed prices and total import value up in 2016.

In the Russian Federation, meanwhile, imports of salmon have declined dramatically since the introduction of the trade ban in 2014, as even suppliers not covered by the ban have seen demand wane in the face of economic recession and spiking inflation.

China, although not experiencing economic difficulties to the same extent, has also seen economic growth slow somewhat and imports of increasingly expensive farmed Atlantic salmon fell in 2016.

Given that the scope for increased global production is limited, the return to previous rates of demand growth in these three countries in the future can be expected to exert considerably more upward

Even as average import prices of fresh whole Atlantics approach â&#x201A;Ź7 per kg, French demand for salmon remained largely unabated. Increasing import volumes even as the availability of fish is reduced, French buyers were looking for product wherever they could find it, supplementing Norwegian and Scottish fish with imports from Chile and China.

Salmon remains popular in Germany for the second year running As in France, German demand for salmon is still firm despite the price level, although the growth of what was a previously rapidly expanding fresh salmon segment has slowed. Interest in the traditionally popular smoked salmon product remained strong, with the market supplied by Polish processors. Salmon consumption overall was on the rise, driven by discount retailers, and continuing product innovation focusing on convenience, more modern branding and increasing use of modified atmosphere packaging.

Market research recently conducted by the Fisch-Informationszentrum e. V (FIZ) showed salmon as the most consumed seafood product in Germany for the second consecutive year.

FAO GLOBEFISH. The report analyses the market situation over the period January-October 2016 Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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[ TRADE AND MARKETS ] Bivalves tend to be consumed on the markets where they are produced

Limited shelf life limits international trade in bivalves Seafish, www.seafish.org

Over 14 million tonnes of bivalves are produced by aquaculture every year. However, the share of bivalves entering international trade is relatively small, as most of the production is consumed within the producing country.

In the EU mussels are generally grown on lines in the south and on the sea bed in the north. Here a grower checks mussels in the UK.

T

his is especially true for the top world producer, China, which produces over 80 percent of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bivalves, but consumes almost all of this production domestically. The amounts that do enter into international trade include about 200 000 tonnes of mussels per year, 180 000 tonnes of clams, 150 000 tonnes of scallops, and 50 000 tonnes of oysters. These figures demonstrate that less than 5 percent of world bivalve production enters international trade, one

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EU an important player in the bivalve trade

from Spain, UK and the Netherlands to the French market, while France exports huge quantities of oysters to neighbouring EU countries. There are only 13 nonEU countries authorized to send live bivalves to the EU market, which stresses the strict sanitary controls on this type of seafood.

The EU is one of the main markets for bivalves responsible for one-third of the total bivalve trade. There is a significant share of intra-EU trade, for instance

The French market is very representative of the whole European market for bivalves as demand in this country is trend setting for the entire EU trade of bivalves. France

of the lowest proportions in the whole seafood trade. This is due to the very nature of bivalves, which are highly perishable and potentially risky for human health if not properly handled.

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is both an important producer of bivalves, especially for oysters, as well as a significant importer and consumer of bivalves from EU and non-EU countries. France also sets the trend in terms of bivalve prices of bivalves in the EU market.

Only a small fraction of mussel production enters international markets Total world production of cultured mussels is 2 million tonnes,

[ TRADE AND MARKETS ] with China producing about half of this volume. Other important producing countries are Chile and Spain, which produce about 230 000 tonnes each. Ten percent of the world mussel production enters international trade.

In 2016, the performance of the Chilean mussel industry was impacted by red tide. Indeed, in the first six months of the year, Chilean mussel exports totalled only 34 500 tonnes, 7 000 tonnes less than in 2014. Spain and the USA are generally the main markets for Chilean mussels, and both markets contracted in the first months of 2016.

EU production of mussels is divided between rope culture and bottom culture. The northern countries, especially the Netherlands, concentrate on the latter, while Spain and Italy are mainly culturing mussels on ropes. In Spain, culturing mussels is a small-scale activity in Galicia, which in the past supplied the local canning industry.

In recent years, frozen mussels from Chile were instead replacing the domestic Spanish mussels. This created an uproar in the Spanish mussel industry and forced several small-scale

In the USA, oyster production is the most significant in value of the bivalves produced by aquaculture, valued at over US $150 million. Oyster farming takes place in the Pacific coast of the USA as well as in the northeast, southeast and Gulf of Mexico.

Total production of cultured oysters in the USA was 125 000 tonnes in 2014.

the emergence of new breeds of disease-resistance oysters has led to a revival of small-scale oyster farming. Farmers have focused on selling oysters to the raw market, due to the higher profitability. Some small-scale farmers sell directly to high-end restaurants, where oysters are shucked by hand and served on the half-shell. This resurgence in small-scale growers has been fueled by a growing number of American consumers interested in eating local and highquality seafood, which has also led to the popularity of oyster bars in urban areas. In the state of Maine in the northeast USA, raw oysters abound on local restaurants menu, with some restaurants serving more than eight local varieties. Although domestic production is the most significant provider for consumption, the USA is among the main importers of oysters. In the first six months of 2016, about 5 000 tonnes of oysters were imported, in line with imports during previous years.

In the 1990s, the wild oyster beds on the US East Coast were severely impacted by outbreaks of the MSX parasite. Since then,

In the EU, France, Spain and Italy are the main importers of oysters, while France is among the top exporting countries as well.

producers out off business. At present, the remaining producers have found an eager market in France, especially during the off season of the French bouchot mussel.

Oysters in the US experience a surge in popularity Total annual production of cultured oysters is 5.1 million tonnes, with China again as the main producer accounting for more than 80ď&#x2122;&#x201A; of the supply. Similar to mussels, trade in oysters is relatively limited to about 60 000 tonnes per year.

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Trade in clams and scallops on even keel Overall the clam and scallop trade remain stable. For the first half of 2016, scallops imports into the EU were 21 500 tonnes, which is on par with the same time period in 2015. France is the main importer of scallops, but imports contracted sharply from 8Â 600 tonnes in the first half of 2015 to 6Â 200 tonnes in the corresponding period of 2016.

This sharp decline was exclusively due to fewer arrivals from Peru, where the scallop producing industry, like many others in the fishery sector, was impacted by El NiĂąo.

Japan and the Republic of Korea are the main importers of clams in the world, with about 60 000 tonnes imported annually by each. The first half of 2016 saw a 13 percent decline in Republic of Koreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imports, while Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imports were about stable. Both countries thus reported 30 000 tonnes of imports during the first half of the year. China is the main supplier of clams to both markets supplying more than 90 percent.

FAO GLOBEFISH. The report analyses the market situation over the period January-October 2016

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[ TRADE AND MARKETS ] El Niño has negative impact on landings in Latin America

Positive trend in certain cephalopod stocks Cephalopod stocks have grown over the past five decades. According to a researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Spain, global warming may have benefited cephalopods stocks as temperature changes and the disappearance of certain upwellings have forced some predator species away from cephalopod habitats.

In China cephalopod landings were expected to decline in 2016 due to poor squid catches. Forecasts show that production from overseas fishing operations will drop dramatically, from 879 000 tonnes in 2014, to an estimated 450 000 tonnes in 2016. One would expect that this dramatic fall in domestic and overseas fishing operations would lead to increased imports, but this is not thought to be the case due to the lack of low-priced raw materials available. Cephalopod imports are expected to drop from 635 000 tonnes in 2015 to approximately 510 000 tonnes in 2016. Consequently, China’s processing industry had a lack of raw material in 2016, and thus cephalopod prices, mostly for squid, were expected to rise dramatically on the Chinese market.

El Niño affected squid landings in Chile and Peru significantly in 2016 during the winter and spring.

As a consequence of poor catches, prices of squid have risen by up to 30 percent in these countries.

Argentina has also had a terrible squid season, although this is part of a longer-term trend. In 2016 landings dropped for the third year in a row. Comparing only the first four months of 2016 and 2015, landings fell by 57.6 percent, from 75 200 tonnes to just 31 900 tonnes. Due to the very tight supply situation, prices were up by 62

Spanish imports of squid increased from almost all suppliers bar the main one, the Falkland Islands,

29 percent, so that the total sales value dropped by 32.2 percent, a significant reduction.

Spain registers growth in squid imports Squid imports into Spain during the first half of 2016 increased by 5.9 percent to 52 400 tonnes.

Though there were reduced amounts being shipped by the main supplier, the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) by -19 percent, the second largest supplier, India, shipped 11 500 tonnes, up by 46 percent compared with the same period in 2015. Of the other

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important suppliers, Morocco, China, the USA and New Zealand all increased exports of squid to Spain during the review period.

Japan saw a decline in imports of squid during the first half of 2016, from 38 200 tonnes in 2015 to 34 500 tonnes in 2016 (-9.7 percent). All of the major suppliers to Japan shipped less squid during this period. China, which still accounts for about half of Japanese squid imports, reduced shipments by almost 6 percent to 17 400.

Chile and Peru reduced shipments of squid to Japan by 19 percent and 37 percent respectively.

US imports of squid seem to be relatively stable. During the first six months of 2016, the USA imported 33 400 tonnes of squid compared with 33 500 tonnes during the same period in 2015.

However, looking at developments over the past three to four years, US squid imports have been rising. In 2015, total US squid imports amounted to 72 150 tonnes compared with 66 500 tonnes in 2010.

FAO GLOBEFISH. The report analyses the squid market situation over the period JanuaryOctober 2016

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An international foundation dedicated to understanding and promoting the Mediterranean Diet

Far more than just a nutrition pattern The International Foundation of Mediterranean Diet (IFMed) was established in 2014 to research and popularise this dietary pattern and to counter the spread of the western food model with its emphasis on meat and dairy, refined sugar and flours, and speed. Based on fruits and vegetables, pulses, nuts, seafood, and olive oil and limited quantities of meat, the Mediterranean diet is associated with a reduced risk of contracting several diseases. Prof. Lluis Serra-Majem, President of the foundation emphasises here the point that, more than just a pattern of nutrition, the Mediterranean diet is a way of life.

UNESCO has designated the Mediterranean diet an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity with several attributes including skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions.

It is thus far more than a diet in the conventional sense. What do you see as the main threats to this way of life and how can they be combated?

cultural dimensions imply important qualitative and quantitative differences between countries that should be maintained and respected (alcoholic beverages, pork consumption,…). We do not want to globalise the Mediterranean diet. And neither do we not want to convert the MD into the diet of the wealthy or the diet for tourists.

I was the person who initiated and led this initiative that represented a crucial step in the evolution of the Mediterranean diet itself. Up to that point, it had been traditionally considered as a medicalised dietary pattern but then it was starting to be considered as cultural heritage, a true way of life. Medical doctors, epidemiologists and nutritionists were working together with anthropologists, sociologists and other professionals to vindicate the full understanding of the Mediterranean diet.

What are the main features of the Mediterranean diet and what has enabled this diet to develop as a concept? Why does one never speak of, for example, a Baltic Sea diet or a Black Sea diet?

The Mediterranean is a vast area encompassing over 20 countries that are very different economically, politically and culturally.

With such significant difference within the region, is it possible to speak of a common Mediterranean diet?

We (from IFMED) do not intend to speak of a unique and common Mediterranean diet; these

The Mediterranean is the cradle of modern civilization. The confluence of many different cultures has germinated in this unique and traditional dietary pattern which is the result of this convergence together with a favourable geography and climate. We are speaking of a diet that was prevalent circa 1960 in many Mediterranean areas, but that evolved from Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Greeks, Romans, Arabs,… Now some governments are building the new Nordic diet to reflect the current Nordic food system, but its scientific evidence is extremely weak and non-comparable with ours. And it holds little tradition.

Prof. Lluis Serra-Majem, President, International Foundation of Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet is probably the only one to have an entire organisation (IFMeD) devoted to it. Why was IFMeD established and what are its functions?

There are other small and regional organizations dedicated to the promotion of the products of the MD but none like IFMED at international level with a unique

objective: serving to better the understanding and promotion of this dietary pattern in its entire meaning — nutritionally, culturally, economically and environmentally. IFMeD was established in London in 2014 with a clear international vision and leadership. Food globalization, and above all what we call fast food or western food, precisely represents an erosion of Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017

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the Mediterranean diet’s cultural values. Not only because of what the globalised western food model represents – based mainly on meat, refined flour, sugars, dairy and food transported from anywhere in the world with international free trade laws – but also because of how all these foods have an impact on the ways in which they are consumed: in the traditional recipes themselves, in landscapes, crops, and even in the markets. These are our concerns.

Seafood is an important component of the diet, yet the Mediterranean is one of the most overfished seas in the world with over 90 of the stocks overexploited according to a speech

by Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, in February last year. How can the Mediterranean diet be promoted and at the same time link to sustainability?

That’s our main concern. The traditional (out of date) medical or epidemiological vision of the Mediterranean diet was neglecting this important aspect regarding the environmental impact and sustainability. We should discuss all these issues when formulating recommendations and try to combine traditional and respectful fishing practices with sustainable aquaculture farms to make available necessary fish and shellfish. We should avoid the introduction in the Mediterranean recipes of fish from remote and contaminated rivers that do not provide any benefit to our culture and health.

Technology and globalisation have brought about huge changes across the world. What impact have these two factors 64

had on the Mediterranean diet?

How has the diet evolved over the years, and what do these changes in the diet reflect?

The Mediterranean diet is a globalised pattern. It competes with the Western dietary pattern that is focused on meat, dairy and sugars and in a certain way, it converges with the Japanese diet which is also experiencing important diffusion internationally. The Mediterranean diet represents a highly sustainable pattern and some indicators that are determinants of climatic change and environment deterioration (water and land use and energy expenditure) are much lower when following the traditional Mediterranean diet than when consuming the Western diet.

And this could have important implications on a global scale.

Diet plays a role in consumer’s health, but other factors such as lifestyle, genetics, and the environment are also very important in determining the health of an individual. Should the Mediterranean diet advocate for a healthy lifestyle rather than focusing on food?

Yes. This is a key point. The interaction between certain genes and the Mediterranean diet is interesting. The PREDIMED study has shown us that a high adherence to the Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil (and to a lesser extent also with nuts) reduced the risk of heart disease and stroke, arrhythmia, peripheral vascular diseases, diabetes, depression, breast cancer,… The protection against stroke was very important. And the comparison group was the low-fat diet. Moreover, an interesting finding was that those genes

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that increase the risk of stroke and diabetes were only active in the low fat diet group but not in both Mediterranean diet groups (with olive oil and nuts). Lifestyle eclipsed the negative effect of genes.

Food habits in the Mediterranean can trace their roots back to agricultural and fishing practices in the region and have evolved over centuries.

How easy will it be to transfer this heritage to other countries and other regions in the world, and what tools will it take to do so?

Biophysical and environmental drivers mostly influence value chain actors and their activities, as well as the food environments. Fundamental features of production systems such as land, soil, and water are key resources to diets. Land is one of the most important inputs and drivers of food production because it is the source of soils, which are the main source of nutrients and support to plants.

Water bodies, whether natural or manmade, on the other hand are essential reservoirs for fisheries production. Water is also an essential input in crop and livestock production, as well as in food processing and preparation.

Production systems are affected by climate, making climate an important driver of food systems.

Land and climate characteristics convey endowment, resulting in comparative advantage in production systems. Traditional (Mediterranean) food systems were extremely respectful to the biophysical and environmental drivers and with biodiversity….

Older people tend to be bigger consumers of fish and seafood than younger ones. How can the

message of the Mediterranean diet be packaged so that young people also adopt the healthy eating habits that the diet recommends?

This is a question of education.

And education means effort and commitment. We always try to facilitate the process modifying the foods we serve to children in a way that is more common than other cultures. Children should be taught to taste and love our traditional recipes of fish. We are not doing things properly when we use a catfish or pangasius (from the Mekong river in Vietnam) we bread and fry it served up with a tonne of ketchup. This is not nutrition education, this is taking the easy way out. The education of our children deserves our commitment and our efforts.

As chairperson of IFMed you embody an organisation that champions a healthy diet. How does this reflect in your own preferences for food and drink?

What elements of the diet are your personal favourites?

I adore fish and shellfish. Olive oil, good bread and tasty salads and vegetables are also among my preferences, along with rice and pasta dishes. And good ham,…. But what I like the most is the process of learning a recipe, buying its ingredients in a local market and preparing it, sharing all the process with my family and friends. Many vendors at my city market in Vegueta, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, are my friends. I share my culinary experiences with them. I also have many friends that are cooks. Nutrition and cooking need to go togetherthat’s still the way of the future, or the present, isnt’t it?

DIARY DATES 24 April 2017 6th European Tuna Conference Brussels, Belgium Tel.: +31 6 30 33 02 08 support@europeantunaconference.com www.europeantunaconference.com

7-9 June 2017 POLFISH Gdan´sk, Poland Tel.: +48 58 5549 362 monika.pain@mtgsa.com.pl www.polfishfair.pl 27-30 June 2017 World Aquaculture 2017 Cape Town, South Africa www.was.org

25-27 April 2017 Seafood Expo Global / Seafood Processing Global Brussels, Belgium Tel.: +1 207 842 55 04 customerservice@divcom.com www.seafoodexpo.com

26 April 2017 GLOBALG.A.P. News Conference at Seafood Expo Global Hall 11, Room 1123, 3rd Floor, 15.00-16.00 www.globalgap.org/events

15-18 August 2017 Aqua Nor Trondheim, Norway Tel.: +47 73 56 86 40 mailbox@nor-fishing.no www.aqua-nor.no

5-7 September 2017 Seafood Expo Asia Wanchai, Hong Kong Tel.: +1 207 842 55 04 customerservice@divcom.com www.seafoodexpo.com

13-15 September 2017 Icelandic Fisheries Exhibition Kopavogur, Iceland Tel.: +44 1329 825335 icefish@icefish.is www.icefish.is

10-12 May 2017 Seoul International Seafood Show Seoul, Korea Tel.:+82 2 6000 2800 Fax :+82 2 6000 2805 info@seoulseafood.com www.seoulseafood.com

3-5 October 2017 Conxemar Vigo, Spain Tel.: +34 986 433 351 Fax: +34 986 221 174 conxemar@conxemar.com www.conxemar.com

11-13 October 2017 DanFish International Aalborg, Denmark Tel.: +45 9935 5555 info@akkc.dk www.danfish.com

8-11 May 2017 TuttoFood Milan, Italy Tel.: +39 02 4997 6239 info@tuttofood.it www.tuttofood.it

9-11 May 2017 Atlantic Fair Klaksvík, Faroe Islands Tel.:+298 582910 info@fair.fo www.fair.fo

27-29 September 2017 Expoalimentaria Lima, Peru Tel.: +51 1 618 3333 spulache@adexperu.org.pe www.expoalimentariaperu.com

14-16 September 2017 Russian Fisheries Forum Moscow, Russia Tel.: +7 906 731 92 79 reklama@rusfishexpo.com www.rusfishexpo.ru

17-20 October 2017 Aquaculture Europe Dubrovnik, Croatia mario@marevent.com www.marevent.com

9 November 2017 International Cold Water Prawn Forum Reykjavik, Iceland Tel. +45 40 79 10 11 icwpf@gemba.dk http://icwpf.com/

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Insulated containers ONE OF THE MAIN MANUFACTURES OF PROCESSING MACHINES FOR BIG, SMALL AND VERY SMALL PELAGIC FISH Nobbing down to 110 pcs/kg Filleting down to 100 pcs/kg Up to 450 fish pockets per min Slånbärsv. 4, SE-386 90 Öland Sweden info@seac.se WWW. SEAC.SE

Polystyrene compressors

6WD\ DÀRDW

with the latest information

Salmon slicers Pelagic fish processing

Nobbing machines and Auto-packers for sardine and mackerel Vredenburg South Africa Mobile: +27 83 2620362 E-mail: easycancc@gmail.com Website: www.easycan.co.za

SALMCO Technik GmbH Reinskamp 1 D-22117 Hamburg Tel.: +49-40-713 14 72 Fax : +49-40-712 98 70 Internet: www.salmco.com E-Mail: info@salmco.com

Pick up your copies at Hall 7 - Stand 1416 SEG, Brussels 25-27 April 2017