Senegal has ordered three OPV 58S offshore patrol vessels from France’s Piriou, which will start construction in early 2020. The vessels will be used for surveillance, interception and security missions.

The contract was signed on 17 November by Senegalese President Macky Sall and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Piriou said the construction of the vessels would take place over a period of 44 months, with the vessels to be supported in Senegal by Piriou subsidiary Pirou Ngom Senegal, created in October 2017 through a partnership with Ngom & Freres. This facility is dedicated to the maintenance of naval and commercial vessels as well as the construction of small fishing craft.

The OPV 58S offshore patrol vessels for Senegal will be 62 metres long, 9.5 metres wide and have a maximum draft of 2.9 metres. They will have steel hulls and aluminium superstructures with a 360 degree panoramic bridge, a rapid deployment/recovery system for two boats and be each able to accommodate up to 48 people, including 24 crew members. Top speed will be 21 knots with a range of 4 500 miles at 12 knots, for a 25 day endurance.

Source: Defence Web

An agreement has been reached by a broad majority of the Danish Parliament on a coastal fishing scheme which offers advantages for fishing with low-impact gear such as static nets and seine nets.

Under the scheme, fishing quotas are reserved for coastal fisheries and fishing with low-impact gears, with open and closed options, with fishermen in the open sector able to opt out after three years if they prefer not to be permanently committed.

The closed sector has been made more attractive with larger quota supplements when low-impact fishing gears are used. The open sector of the coastal scheme will be evaluated after three years.

Source: Fisker Forum

“Fisheries are facing an important crossroad and the world needs a new vision in the 21st century”, the UN agency lead with in a press statement, echoing the main message by it’s Director General, Qu Dongyu, at the opening of a major conference on the matter, which opened Monday 18th of November 2019.

By 2050, humans will be nearly 10 billion in number, and “land alone will not feed us”, Mr. Donguy explained, thus, the world will need to increasingly rely on aquatic species to eat.

The International Symposium on Fisheries Sustainability, taking place from 18 to 21 November at FAO’s Rome headquarters, convenes researchers, business people and members of various other sectors to identify how to maximize food from the world’s rivers and oceans, without compromising the health of aquatic ecosystems.

Source: UN News

Commercial fishers are "bulldozing" ocean floors, says Greenpeace.

Its calculations show that in the 2017-2018 fishing season, New Zealand commercial fishing vessels destroyed up to 3000 tonnes of coral and other vulnerable species through bottom trawling.  

Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond said they're "scraping the sea floor clean", and showed no signs of stopping.

Source: Stuff

An advisory panel recommended Thursday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve expanding the use of a fish-oil derived drug to reduce the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes in high-risk patients.

The panel of outside advisers voted 16-to-0 to enlarge the approved use of the drug, named Vascepa, from Amarin PLC. The FDA isn’t bound to follow the advice of its advisory committees, but it usually does.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Two important aquaculture studies on New York’s marine waters will be administered at Stony Brook University through New York Sea Grant (NYSG). These projects are part of a national suite of 42 research projects and collaborative programs supported by USD 16 million in federal funding by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to advance sustainable aquaculture in the United States.

SBU’s Bassem Allam is the lead PI on a study of hard clams (photo by Bassem Allam); Inset photo: A worker at Norm Bloom & Son Oysters offloads shellfish harvested from the company’s beds in Norwalk, CT (photo by Judy Benson, Connecticut Sea Grant).

“Aquaculture as a source of sustainable food, healthy habitat and clean water, and economic opportunity has gained considerable, and growing, national and global attention in the past several years. However, there is still much to learn. New York Sea Grant is pleased to be able to participate with diverse partners on a suite of grants supporting collaborative research aimed at understanding and informing the potential of shellfish, finfish, and seaweed aquaculture across the state,” said NYSG Director Dr. Rebecca Shuford.

Source: Stony Brook University

KIÊN GIANG - An island commune in the C?u Long (Mekong) Delta province of Kiên Giang is expanding marine aquaculture in combination with tourism and other services to further the incomes of local farmers.

Hòn Ngh? commune in the province's Kiên Luong District aims to have 1,000ha of marine aquaculture next year.  

Located about 15 kilometres off the mainland, the island commune has 619 households that live mostly on fishing and marine aquaculture.

Source: Viet Nam News

Fish permeate the culture of the Pacific Northwest (PNW). In particular, the iconic salmon has been an important part of the region for thousands of years, from ancient Native American trade routes and legends to modern fishing and sporting. In the area of the Salish Sea—inland waterways including Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca—the cultures, economies, and technologies there are all impacted and influenced by salmon. It is no wonder, then, that salmon are of high conservation interest and constitute a large proportion of hatchery-raised fish in the region.

A recent study in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecosphere examines hatchery practices in regard to how the Chinook salmon that are released back into the natural waterways in the PNW are affecting wild populations.

Source: Phys

ISLAMABAD - The government was determined to take the export of fish up to three billion dollars, from USD 400 million, said Parliamentary Secretary for Maritime Affairs Jamil Ahmed Khan in the National Assembly.

Responding to a supplementary question during question hour on Thursday, he said, “Pakistan fishing market has the capacity to export about USD 2 to 3 billion fish, while we are earning only 400 million dollars through exporting fish."

He said : “The government is determined to achieve the target by following the international standards."

Source: Brecorder

The salmon sector used 1,011.3 kilograms in 2018, a decrease based primarily on a reduction in the number of treatments required in the seawater phase of production.

This overall use equated to 6.5 mg/kg of production, slightly higher than the ambitious target of 5mg/kg established by RUMA’s Targets Task Force in 2017, but antibiotic treatments are still relatively infrequent in the salmon farming sector. The figure for 2017 was 16.1 mg/kg.

The report noted that as poikilotherms (cold blooded fish), salmon can see their health compromised by variations in the quality and composition of the water, including the presence of potentially harmful organisms such as algae and plankton.

Source: Fish Farmer Magazine