US businesses are backing Peru’s mahi mahi fishery in a big way. The Peruvian government recently received a letter from 26 major US-based seafood buyers and importers pledging their support for the Peruvian mahi mahi fishery improvement project (FIP) and urged officials to actively participate in the advancement of the fishery toward the MSC standard. The US is the top importer of mahi mahi from Peru, so this level of economic demand for responsibly sourced seafood is especially significant.
The U.S. government issued new regulations in December 2016 to restrict the import of seafood caught by vessels engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
WWF’s fact sheet on the IUU regulation provides an overview on how the rules are changing, what it means for the seafood industry, and the benefits that companies can expect as a result.
Kien Giang province is nestled in the southwest of Vietnam, featuring a prominent coastline along the Gulf of Thailand. Here in these tepid waters lives the blue swimming crab, a crustacean with an olive-green body and front claws the color of the sky on a clear day.
By all accounts, Glenn Pritchard and Mia Isaacs should be rivals. They each own a seafood processing plant and exporting company in The Bahamas, and both stake a claim to the lucrative spiny lobster business. Their products reach restaurants at home and massive markets in North America, Europe, and Asia.
But one unmatched necessity brings these two competitors together without a second thought: a healthy and robust lobster population in Bahamian waters.
At the break of dawn on a warm February day, I was travelling in a van heading south along the Peruvian coast to the small port town of Pucusana. This is a place rich in culture and tradition, and home to a mahi mahi fishery where the community is working to conserve and secure its fish stocks for future generations of family fishers.
My colleague Samuel Amorós, WWF Peru fisheries officer, and I were working together to build up WWF Peru’s newly reinstated marine program. This trip was a small window into our engagement with the community to help establish a fishery improvement project (FIP) for mahi mahi.
It’s like something from a spy novel. A caravan of seven cars moving illegal goods – the first car is a decoy with legal product and paperwork. As inspectors check that car, the others loaded with contraband pass without even slowing down. They aren’t moving jewels, stolen art or weapons. They’re moving fish.
That’s right. Black market fish.
