The revelation, by the national broadcaster NRK, has sparked a major debate in Norway, with fishermen and environmentalists calling for action.

The country’s Directorate of Fisheries has admitted that the number of escapes has been rising year on year.

Last year, the figure was around 160,000, while in 2017 only 17,000 salmon escaped. Nesvik has expressed his concern at the rising numbers, but wants to hear from the industry what action it plans to take.

The communications manager of industry body Seafood Norway, Øyvind Andre Haram, agreed that the sector should have to pay when fish escape.

Source: Fish Farmer Magazine

The number of fishing boats operating on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria has increased from 14,365 in 2016 to 16,183 in 2019, a new study has revealed.

The number is the highest recorded since the year 2000, sparking concerns about the sustainability of current fishing activities in the lake.

The increase in the number of fishing boats was recorded across all the counties that border the lake. Also on the rise is the number of fish cages set up in the lake.

Source: Standard Methods

PHNOM PENN - Cambodia is planning to cap hefty recruitment fees imposed by labor brokers on people seeking jobs abroad in a bid to curb illegal migration and protect workers from modern-day slavery.

More than two million Cambodians are estimated to be living and working abroad - most of them in Thailand - where hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are undocumented due to the high costs and therefore vulnerable to labor abuses, activists say.

Cambodians who migrate to Thailand through official channels pay recruitment agencies about USD 650 to facilitate the move, while those who make their own way across the border spend as little as USD 30, said advocacy group the Mekong Migration Network.

Source: Reuters

A biodegradable bioplastic made from red algae and waste products from the fishing industry has won the UK section of the 2019 James Dyson Award.

Created by Lucy Hughes, MarinaTex is an alternative to the single-use plastics such as those used in sandwich packets.

BBC Click’s Lara Lewington reports.

Source: BBC

Scotland's Rural Economy Minister suggested on September the 19th of 2019 that he would intervene to accelerate fish farmers’ licence applications.

The current licensing system is a blockage to expansion that needs to be tackled head on, said Fergus Ewing, addressing the British Trout Association’s annual conference, held over two days in Stirling.

The minister expressed his frustration over what he called a ‘major problem’, and promised to lever his authority to try to achieve a solution.

In answer to a question from Alastair Salvesen, owner of Dawnfresh, the UK’s biggest trout farmer, Ewing said the issue had been raised often by salmon farmers.

Source: Fish Farmer Magazine

Parliament in the tiny South Pacific country of Tuvalu elected a new prime minister on Thursday, making a change that analysts say could give China a chance to further undermine Taiwan in a region that has been a pillar of support.

The surprise change in Tuvalu has lengthened the shadow over Taiwan’s standing in the South Pacific after the Solomon Islands earlier this week cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan, leaving it holding formal relations with just 16 countries.

Having retained his seat at a general election earlier this month, Tuvalu’s pro-Taiwan leader Enele Sopoaga had been expected to keep the premiership, but the 16-person parliament instead selected Kausea Natano, whose position on Taiwan was not immediately known.

Source: Reuters

Metal pollution from mines, mills and smelters is a hotly contested issue, especially when water passing through contaminated sites leaches metals into local waterways. The issue has become a major aggravation between miners and Indigenous peoples along many Canadian lakes and rivers.

Now Seabridge Gold of Toronto and the Gitanyow Fisheries Authority (GFA) are collaborating on a project applying ‘omic’ approaches to learn more about the impact of heavy metals on aquatic ecosystems. This method will apply environmental DNA (eDNA) to the potential effects of Seabridge’s proposed KSM copper-gold mine 65 km northwest of Stewart, British Columbia.

The project is funded by Genome BC and GFA, under the leadership of Dr. Vicki Marlatt at Simon Fraser University. The team will develop and implement eDNA methods to detect the presence or absence of fish species in the Nass watershed. They will also examine the costs of using eDNA compared to traditional, labour intensive visual or fish trapping surveys.

Source: Mining Dot Com

Planning a salmon barbecue? Your options will be limited this year. With a complete 2019 closure on Fraser River sockeye, due to dismal returns, your options are to buy Alaska sockeye or farmed Atlantic salmon.

And, as the world’s population grows, and wild-capture fisheries either are maxed out or declining, farmed seafood options will become an increasingly important source of animal protein, according to a new Nature Conservancy and Encourage Capital report.

Towards a Blue Revolution is largely aimed at the investment community and lays out the opportunities and risks, noting that certain next-generation systems such as land-based recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) or ocean-based fish farms will require impact investors to take the lead before more risk-averse investors follow.

Source: Prince George Matters

Researchers have published the first experiments to gauge the ability of a biologically inspired robotic fish to induce fear-related changes in mosquitofish. Their findings indicate that even brief exposure to a robotic replica of the mosquitofish’s primary predator—the largemouth bass—can provoke meaningful stress responses in mosquitofish, triggering avoidance behaviors and physiological changes associated with the loss of energy reserves, potentially translating into lower rates of reproduction.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study using robots to evoke fear responses in this invasive species,” says Maurizio Porfiri, professor at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. “The results show that a robotic fish that closely replicates the swimming patterns and visual appearance of the largemouth bass has a powerful, lasting impact on mosquitofish in the lab setting.”

The team exposed groups of mosquitofish to a robotic largemouth bass for one 15-minute session per week for six consecutive weeks. The robot’s behavior varied between trials, spanning several degrees of biomimicry. Notably, in some trials, the researchers programmed the robot to incorporate real-time feedback based on interactions with live mosquitofish and to exhibit “attacks” typical of predatory behavior—a rapid increase in swimming speed.

Source: Futurity

MINAMI-BOSO, Chiba Prefecture - Tons of seafood, including expensive delicacies for gourmet dishes, have been thrown away because of the prolonged power outage caused by Typhoon No. 15.

The Chiba prefectural government said typhoon-related damage to marine products totaled about JPY 139 million as of Sept. 13 2019, but the number is expected to increase.

The typhoon hit the Kanto region on Sept. 9, but many parts of Chiba Prefecture, particularly in the south, remain without power.

At a facility of Higashi-Awa fishery cooperatives in Minami-Boso, Chiba Prefecture, staff noticed an awful stench emanating from the fish preserves after the typhoon passed.

Source: The Asahi Shimbun