Around half of people worldwide working in the seafood industry are women – but despite this figure, there is very little by the way of equality as women’s jobs are overwhelmingly at the lower-paid end of the scale. A new organisation, the International Association for Women in Seafood Industry (WSI), has been established to raise awareness of the industry’s gender imbalance.
A group of international scientists is currently looking into whether the fisheries in Northern European waters are now seriously under-fished. Dr Henrik Sparholt, who for many years held a senior position within ICES, recently presented an outline of a research project to understand this development with more precision, to a meeting of the Executive Committee of the North Sea Advisory Council.
The EU hosted the fourth high-level ‘Our Ocean’ conference in Malta on 5-6 October 2017 aimed at bringing together world leaders to propose commitments to face global marine challenges and sustainably use the seas and oceans. Europêche members were honoured to contribute concrete actions, through commitments, to address these emerging issues. These pledges notably focused on the reduction of marine litter, improvement of fisheries management and fight against illegal fishing.
PescaDOLUS, the network specialising in studying and exposing transnational crime in the fisheries sector, has released a detailed report supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (Norad).
In a dramatic step forward for Asia-Pacific and global ocean conservation, the Philippines has begun implementing sustainable fishing reforms with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as a partner providing critical support on science and policy.
Mikhail Ivanik, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo), told the International Fishery Congress currently taking place in Vladivostok that the fishing sector needs to make the transition to electronic logging and remote licensing.
The International Fishery Congress taking place in Vladivostok has a strong presence of Icelandic companies taking part, and Berglind Ásgeirsdóttir, Iceland’s Ambassador to Russia, held a keynote speech during the opening session that attracted significant interest.
MEP Linnéa Engström and Europêche, representing the fisheries sector in Europe, are calling on the EU Commission to make commitments on control and imports of fish at the Our Ocean conference in Malta this week.
The European Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries is holding a public hearing on the sustainability of supertrawlers later this month to examine the various impacts of these fishing vessels.
The agreement over access to the Loophole, the area of international waters in the Barents Sea between the Norwegian, Russian and Svalbard zones, is no longer functioning, according Norwegian vessel operators’ federation Fiskebåt.