Boats have been tied this month on Poyang Lake, the country’s largest freshwater lake, and on tributary rivers in the southerly province of Jiangxi. The water-surface area of the lake shrank to less than 200 square kilometers this month, or five percent of its full size.

With water being piped and trucked in from neighboring regions for 1 million residents around the lake, the drought has been blamed on a 20 percent drop in rainfall from 2010 to 2011. Dredging of local river beds for sand has also caused water levels to recede. Water levels on the Ganjiang River, the largest river feeding the lake, has seen water levels in its middle and lower reaches drop to a record low.

The drought is also pushing the prices of freshwater fish: the per-kilo price of carp, the key freshwater staple in China, has climbed from RMB 12 to RMB20 between 2010 and the end of 2011 in Jiangxi, according to data published by the Nanchang Evening News, a leading daily in the provincial capital of Nanchang. A March-to-May ban on fishing the lake enforced since 2002 will likely run for the entire 2012, suggested the newspaper, drawing on interviews with local fishermen.

Having seen their average annual income has shrunk from a peak of RMB 4,000 to RMB 1,000 in 2011, many Poyang Lake fishermen have abandoned fishing to look for manual work in major cities. Some have used their boats to fish for scrap metal, using magnets to detect and collect metals to sell to local steel furnaces.

Demand for water in China’s drier northern regions suggests a bleak outlook for fishing in southern regions like Jiangxi. Worringly, the water resources of key inland freshwater fish-producing provinces like Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan will be further curtailed by a pipe diverting water from the south to Beijing, according to a leading local water expert in an interview.

“China’s water crisis will affect central agricultural provinces like Jiangxi and Hunan,” said Hu Kanping, director of the Department of Research and Communication in Chinese Ecological Civilization Research and Promotion, a think-tank under the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The first phase of the South-to-North Water Diversion will be completed in 2013. While the massive diversion project is projected to supply Beijing with 1 billion cubic meters of water per year, “there’s still 700 million cubic meters which will have to be found somewhere.”

Hu points to statistics from the Beijing Water Conservation Office, which show the city has experienced a long and serious dry spell since 1999, cutting usable water supplies in half. Trees have been planted in the dry riverbed of Beijing’s Chaobai River to prevent desertification. In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was a source of carp fish supplies to city markets.

Another river, the ironically titled Qinghe (translates as Pure or Clean River) has become a receptacle of sewage from housing in the north of the Chinese capital after the local population swelled from 800,000 to 2.9 million between 2003 and 2011. City authorities have promised to have extra sewage treatment capacity in place by summer.

To ease the water crunch, Hu believes major cities like Beijing have to restrict “luxury water consumption” activities. There are now more than 3,000 spas and bathhouses, compared with just 39 at the end of 1989, with each bathhouse using an average 15,000 tons per year, according to Hu. Similarly, he said, the city needs to regulate more than 9,000 car wash companies in Beijing, which use more than 30 million tons of water a year. Hu Kanping said raising the price of water isn’t the sole solution to China’s water crisis — rates for households has been raised from 3.7 yuan per cubic meter to 4 yuan per cubic meter, “but some people want to get their money’s worth when they go to bath clubs and take their time.”

Source Seafood Source.com

After floods in September, many hatcheries in An Giang, Dong Thap province (the key pangasius farming areas in the Mekong River Delta) are encountering a lot of hardships due to massive loss and shortage of juveniles for restocking. These factors are combining to outlooks for the scarcity of raw material for processing and exporting in the upcoming time. Shortage of pangasius seed According to Mr. Nguyen Huu Nguyen in An Giang Fisheries Association (AFA) who have 2 affected pangasius hatcheries in the past floods said, because of a lack of fish seed in An Giang, there is a limited supply for the local fish farmers.Many hatcheries lost 50-90 percent, leading to a shortage of fish seed for restocking, Mr. Nguyen said. Mr. Nguyen Hoang Minh, a fisheries expert also agrees with Mr.Nguyen’s analysis.The raw material supply expected to downturn it is sure that the current lack of seed will lead to shortage of raw pangasius next year. Raw pangasius for processing and exporting next year will continue to be deficient, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) Duong Ngoc Minh said. Although the supply of raw pangasius is forecasted to go down, its price will still keep firm, Mr. Nguyen Huu Nguyen said.

Source: Vasep

The corp said it will receive small orders first to assess the market demand and improve production technologies before establishing an entire Collagen plant with a total capacity of 1,000MT/year at mid 2012.

Just two days after the inauguration ceremony of the workshop, the executive board of Vinh Hoan Corp decided to establish Vinh Hoan Collagen 5 JSC with the registered capital of VND80 billion, 85% of which belonged to the Corp. The new company will specialize in gelatin extraction, hydrolyzed Collagen production, pharmachemicals, cosmetics, functional food, etc.

Ms. Truong Thi Le Khanh – Chairwoman of Vinh Hoan Corp – was appointed the representative of the corp’s 6.8 million shares in the new Collagen company.

When Collagen is successfully produced under this VND200 billion project, the product will be sold in both domestic and foreign markets.

In 2011, Vinh Hoan expects to earn VND300 billion in after-tax profit. In the first nine months of the year, its profit already exceeded the year’s target of VND250 billion by 15%.

By the end of October, Vinh Hoan Corp shipped US$122.3 million of Pangasius, becoming the country’s largest Pangasius exporter and the second biggest seafood exporter, just after Minh Phu Seafood Corp. Currently, the US remained its most important market.

Source: VASEP

The World Bank estimates the flood will cost Thailand about 1.4 trillion baht ($44.5 million), slashing the country’s economic growth to 2.4 per cent this year. Sandbags are still stacked in doorways, but the city is slowly, surely, returning to its chaotic normal self.

On Monday the Thai cabinet approved a plan to disburse 20 billion baht rapidly for initial post-flood rebuilding and to stimulate the economy, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said.

“This is part of an emergency plan of the government’s flood relief program. It is part of 60 billion baht budget approved earlier,” Yingluck told reporters after a special meeting. The remainder of the budget would be approved in stages later because affected provinces and government agencies have to review the funds needed for post-flood recovery to avoid any duplication, Yingluck said.

Shrimp farming areas by and large have escaped damage from the floods.

According a report from Diamond V, which markets shrimp feed additives in Thailand, overall shrimp farming has not been significantly affected. From May through November 2011, the floods slowly swept southward from the Central Plains into Bangkok and then into the Gulf of Thailand. The major shrimp producing regions for the export market are in the far south and southeast and were not much affected.

“There has been some effect on the inland, low-salinity production of Penaeus vannamei. This sector produces no more than 20% of the national output, and my estimate is that a quarter of this may have been destroyed by flooding. Total loss to the low-salinity sector should have been no more than 5% of national production. Much of this shrimp does not enter international markets due to persistent off flavor. Most of it is sold domestically,” said Brian Hunter of Diamond V in an email to Bob Rosenberry, of Shrimp News.

Their was some concern when the government talked about closing Highway 2 due to projected flooding during the first weeks of November. This closing would have affected shrimp processing, as the major processing plants are located 2-3 hours south of Bangkok in the Mahachai and Petchaburi regions on or near Highway 2. As it turned out, there was no closure to Highway 2.

Đinh Hà

As the European Union goes through a difficult period, is seafood becoming the common currency of Europe? Although the Spanish may traditionally enjoy seafood at this time of year there are clear indications that elsewhere in Europe appetite for seafood is rising rapidly and that this consumption reaches new heights at Christmas.
Consumers in the UK are choosing seafood in preference to traditional Christmas turkey according to recent media reports Much of this will be farmed and points to the increasing appetite of consumers to experiment with new and unusual foods. These reports emerge as a trend toward higher seafood consumption generally is becoming clear and to some extent explains the competition among supermarkets over getting their seafood marketing right. Consumers are buying ‘ethically’ sourced fish more than ever before but there remains a high level of confusion, according to the latest seafood supermarket survey carried out by the Marine Conservation Society . They identify poor labeling as being a major source of much of this confusion.

Polyphosphates – how they may affect fish quality?

Polyphosphates are legally permitted additives that are widely used to aid processing or to improve eating quality of many foods, particularly meat and fish products. The main value of polyphosphates lies in improving the retention of water by the protein in fish but their effect is mainly on the surface of the fish through an immersion treatment. Longer immersion time leads to unjustified increase in weight and the risk of flavour or texture deterioration.

Polyphosphate treatment of fish before freezing often reduces the amount of ‘thaw drip’, i.e. the liquid released when frozen fish is thawed.  Whilst this isn’t necessarily a problem in good quality frozen fish, poor quality fish, when thawed, will drip more, therefore application of polyphosphates in stale fish will ultimately mask the original quality. In chilled fillets the addition of polyphosphates in high quality fillet will reduce the amount of ‘drip loss’ during processing and distribution but can also improve the dull appearance of stale fish – thus similarly masking poor quality.

Most polyphosphates added to food are broken down to single phosphate units in the stomach when the food is eaten; indeed, many are converted to single units in the food before it is eaten, for example in chill storage or during cooking. Thus it is clear that most phosphates added to food are nutritionally equivalent to the phosphates naturally present in food, and are likely to present little hazard to health.  Some countries do have limits on the amount that can be added during processing and exporters must bear this in mind. This subject is under regular review both in the UK and in the EEC and it is possible that restrictions will be imposed in the future.

See related article

http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/tan/x5909E/x5909e01.htm

Fish glazing – is it misleading customers?

Glazing – the term used to describe the application of a protective coating of ice to frozen seafood products – is used during frozen or cold storage to prevent surface drying or dehydration or ‘freezer burn. There is no maximum of glaze allowed however product labelling should include a gross weight and a net glaze weight i.e. initial weight of product before glazing in order to prevent misleading customers.

See related article

http://www.seafish.org/media/Publications/FS2-05_08-Glazing.pdf

Concern over the use of polyphospahtes and excessive glazing in seafood products has recently come to the forefront. An article from SeafoodSource.com  ‘Will the cheating ever stop?’ Reports that, in the near future, the use of polyphosphates to bind in water to pangasius fillets in Vietnamese processing plants will be stopped, if the country’s government passes legislation to limit the water content (including glaze) in exported products to 83%.