How sustainable are eco-certified fisheries?

Alaskan salmon processors dump MSC

2012-01-31T19:13:00.000-08:00

This is already old news, but it may be instructive to lookat the reasons given by the Alaska salmon industry for dumping MSC after more than a decade, and the responsefrom MSC, now that the fish guts have settled somewhat, so to speak.

Among the reasons given by the Alaskan salmon industry, theAlaskan Fisheries Development Foundation and the Alaskan government, asreported by http://thefishsite.com andother media, is that MSC certification does not, in itself, make Alaskan salmonsustainable. They consider the salmonfishery to already be sustainable because it meets State and Federalconstitutional mandates for sustained yield, a commitment to scientificresearch and the need serve public good.

According to http://www.upi.com/the industry were also frustrated with the increasing complexity of MSCcertification. No doubt cost is also a factor– not only for the certification itself, but also for annual audits and theright to display the eco-label. Althougha non-profit, MSC has been able to fund considerable global expansion over thelast decade through fixed annual fees and variable royalties based on how muchMSC-labelled seafood is sold, as well as through donations.

MSC has not welcomed being dumped and has been quick to express its chagrin. It considers that whatever alternativecertification and eco-labelling scheme the industry comes up with, it will beinferior with regard to independence, transparency, traceablity and quality,attributes MSC has put forward to establish global brand identity.

Is the Alaskan salmon industry in the vanguard of a swingaway from MSC certification? There is no doubt that MSC certification is highlycomplex and expensive. Is MSCcertification necessary for a fishery to be considered sustainable?

It all depends. Nations like the United States and New Zealand have clear standardsembodied in policy and legislation regarding when overfishing is taking placeor when a stock is overfished. If afishery does not meet both of these standards then it is, by definition, not a sustainablefishery. This is typically determined byfederal or state scientific stock assessments through an independent peerreview process in a transparent manner. Providedthe providence of products from sustainable fisheries is made clear in the labellingby indicating the fishery geographic stock location, scientific species nameand capture gear type, the consumer has sufficient information to make aninformed decision.

Typically MSC accredited consulting companies do no newanalysis in reaching their sustainability determination. Rather, they piggy-back on the federal orstate scientific assessment, adding additional qualitative insights regardingecological impact of the fishery and governance considerations. In an MSC assessment a fishery on anoverfished stock or a fishery that is overfishing the stock can be granted “conditional”sustainability certification and can carry the MSC eco-label provided it hasplans to become sustainable with regard to the MSC standard within a prescribedperiod. Thus a fishery can be deemed provisionallysustainable under MSC while considered unsustainable under USA or NZ federal standards.

Does the MSC label provide sufficient information for the consumerto make a wise choice? Typically it doesnot. There are 5 choices of text thatMSC provides to accompany their blue eco-label. None of these contain any information on the geographic stock locationof the fishery, the scientific name of the species, or the fishing gear used. There is also nothing to distinguishfisheries that have conditional sustainability certification from those thatmeet all the MSC criteria. Consumers must take the MSC eco-label on faithor visit the MSC website and do their own research to determine these importantdetails.

Marine fish stocks are a public resource and it is theresponsibility of governments to manage this resource for long term publicgood. Nations like the USA and NZ arewell advanced in this regard and don’t have need of third partyeco-certification to augment their own legislation, policy and procedures. They only need to work on improving thecommunication of this information to the public. Detailed product labelling, including whetheror not the product meets both sustainability criteria (not overfished andoverfishing not taking place), would allow consumers to make wise choices onsustainable seafood.

MSC Sustainable Fisheries Certification Works says new report

2011-11-17T18:35:00.001-08:00

In October2010 MSC announced that it had selected,from the various contract bidders, MRAG Ltd to undertake the first detailedanalysis of the environmental impacts that have resulted from the first tenyears of MSC’s fishery certification program. MRAG was supported in this contract by Poseidon Aquatic ResourceManagement Ltd and Meridian Prime Ltd.

Theseconsulting companies have recently submitted their joint report. You get what you pay for so no surprise thatthe report concluded that MSC eco-certification really works.

The media release states that this is an “independent” study. Not so. MRAG Ltd. is a consulting company heavily engaged in the MSC certification game. Further, one of the report authors, DavidAgnew, is a long time MSC insider as Chair of the Technical AdvisoryBoard and is now on staff as MSC Director of Standards.

The studyfocuses on improvements in eight outcome performance indicators: stock status;population reference points; stock recovery; retained species; bycatch species;endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species; habitats and environments.

Improvementswere purported to have been evidenced over the period commencing with thesecret MSC pre-assessment, through assessmentand into the certification.

Theconclusion from the study was that MSC works.

ErikStokstad, writing in Science is not convinced. Scoring is subjective and thereis no control study (i.e. how did fisheries not under MSC certification progress over thesame period?).

While MSC continues to certify fisheries thatare data-deficient, clearly not sustainable or which cause unacceptablecollateral damage on other components of the ecosystem we, the resource owners,should reserve judgement regarding the efficacy of the program.

Objections stall MSC certifications of US and Canadian swordfish

2011-11-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Two bids for MSCsustainability certification by pelagic longline fisheries on swordfish have run intoobjections. These objections are currentlyunder “adjudication” by an MSC appointed“Independent Adjudicator”.

The two fisheries seeking certification are the North WestAtlantic Canada Longline Swordfish backed by the consulting company IntertekMoody Marine Ltd. and the Southeast US North Atlantic Swordfish Fishery backedby the consulting company MRAG Americas.

These consulting companies are heavy hitters who don’t takekindly to obstacles being placed in the way of their clients and they arefighting back.

Moody was acquired by Intertek for US$730 million in March2011. Moody itself swallowed smallerCanadian competitor TAVEL Certification Inc. in December 2009.

MRAG Americas is sister company to MRAG Ltd. in the UKwhich is owned by Sir John Beddington, chief scientific advisor to the UKGovernment. Sir John is not withoutcontroversy. The president of MRAG Americas is AndrewRosenberg, a post doctoral assistant to Beddington at Imperial College Londonin the early 1990s. Rosenbergwent on to become the deputy director of NOAA’s NMFS before leaving to formMRAG Americas. He is currently also specialadvisor to Jane Lubchenco, Undersecretary of Commerce and Administrator of NOAA.

The objection to the Canadian longline fishery certificationwas filed by The Ecology Action Centre (EAC),The David Suzuki Foundation, Oceana and the Sea Turtle Conservancy on 20 September 2011. The objection to the US Longine fishery wasfiled by the Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) on 27 September 2011 and is supported by WiderCaribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST), Oceana, Center forBiological Diversity, Ecology Action Centre and the Animal Welfare Institute.

The objections cite what have become standard concernsregarding the “lowering of the bar” by consulting companies in favor of theirclients when it comes to MSC Principle 1. Thisprinciple requires evidence of sustainable management strategies that meet theUNFA Precautionary Approach requirements. Procedural issues with regard to the certifications are also raised in the objections.

More importantly, the objections take task under MSCPrinciple 2 regarding the impact, and lack of monitoring, of indiscriminate pelagiclongline fisheries on bycatch species, particularly those species that fallinto the ETP category (endangered, threatened or protected).

Of particular concern are species like Shortfin Mako shark,Porbeagle shark, Loggerhead turtle and Leatherback turtle. The Committee on the Status of EndangerdWildlife in Canadaconsiders Shortfin Mako shark to be “Threatened” while Porbeagle shark, Loggerhead and Leatherback turtles are considered“Endangered”. Under the US EndangeredSpecies Act, Loggerhead turtles are considered “Threatened” and Leatherbackturtles “Endangered”.

In addition to ETP species the additive impact of swordfishlongline fisheries on overfished tuna species is a concern, especially onBluefin tuna, off both the US and Canada.

As MSC appointed andsalaried lawyer Wylie Spicer mulls over both objections, as well as stakeholdersubmissions and the ardent counter-responses of Intertek Moody and MRAGAmericas, before coming to his “verdict” as the "independent adjudicator" under the complicated pseudo-legalobjection procedure put in place by MSC, remember what isat stake.

Swordfish and bycatch species are publicproperty and should be managed for our long-term public good, and those of ourchildren and their children. This includes non-use value such as biodiversity. If bycatch species are threatened by pelagic linetrawl swordfish fisheries then we are the losers if these objections fail.

If you like to eat swordfish, remember that there is analternative to the indiscriminate pelagic linetrawl that you can source. The North West Atlantic Canada harpoonswordfish fishery was certified sustainable by MSCin June 2010. It has zero bycatch.

Additional information on the Southeast US swordfish certification objection here

Should MSC revoke Newfoundland Grand Bank shrimp certification?

2011-11-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Can a fishery be considered sustainably managed whenthe scientific advice is consistently rejected by the management authority infavour of larger TACs?

Clearly the Marine Stewardship Council and MoodyMarine think so because the fishery in NAFO area 3L is still certified.

Since 2009 NAFO fisheries managers have set TACshigher than those recommended by NAFO scientists. In addition,

Denmark

in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland, unhappy with their share of the TAC, set their own additional quota in several years, a unilateral actionallowed under NAFO rules.

The latest incident is the 2011 decision for the 2012 TAC. Scientific advice from NAFO wasthatthe TAC for 2012 should be less than 9,350 t toreduce the risk of continuing decline. NAFO fisheries Managers instead set the TAC at 12,000 t whichwill incur a relatively high risk of continuing decline.

This resource peakedin biomass in 2007 and has been in steady decline ever since based on bothCanadian and EU survey data. The declineis expected to continue under the 2012 TAC set by NAFO. Is this a sustainablymanaged fishery?

BC Dogfish Fishery - Certified sustainable

2011-09-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

There are acouple of interesting aspects to the recent MSC certification of the inside and outside fisheries in the British Columbia hook and line spiny dogfish fisheries.

This isapparently the first shark fishery to get MSC certification. Sharks tend to be long-living, slow-growing,late-maturing, low-fecundity species. This combination of life-history traits means that they are vulnerableto overfishing.

A poorlymanaged commercial fishery on low productivity species like spiny dogfishtypically ends up as a “mining operation” and is seldom sustainable. This seems to have been the case with the BCspiny dogfish.

The fisherydates back to 1870. Catches in the liveroil fishery peaked at over 12,000 t for the inside fishery and over 25,000 tfor the offshore fishery in the 1940s.

Although indicesof population abundance are not available over this early period, it can bereasonably assumed that the resource was essentially “mined out” in the 1940sand 1950s. Catches dropped off sharplyin the 1960s and have remained low.

Since thelate 1970s, spiny dogfish has been fished as a source of food (including finsfor soup) rather than liver oil, using longline and trawl gear, with totalannual landings averaging about 1,500 t in the inshore and about the same inthe offshore.

Scientificsurvey and commercial catch rate indices of abundance are all from the 1980sonwards, well after the initial “mining” period had ended, so are uninformativeabout the big decline from overfishing in the 1940s and 1950s. In 2010 the Canadian Department of Fisheriesand Oceans (DFO) carried out the first attempt at an assessment of stock statussince 1987, This was prompted by theeco-certification bid being made by the fishing industry and a concurrent andpending species-at-risk (of biological extinction) evaluation by COSEWIC underCanada’s Species at Risk Act. A strangeconcurrence of events!

Theabundance indices in the DFO assessment showed no clear trends and did notsupport the fitting of a mathematical population model to the data. Conclusions were therefore drawn from expertopinion and subjective evaluation. Theassessment did not conclude that the fishery was sustainable, but rather that “Thereis no immediate conservation concern”. Given no evidence of a recovery from the decline that must have occurredin the 1940s and 1950s from overfishing, it seems likely that the populationremains in a depleted state.

MSC eco-certification begun under contract to the consulting company TAVELin 2008. TAVEL was taken over by MoodyMarine Ltd part way through the assessment. Moody initially indicated they would apply thedefault assessment approach. Thisrequires quantitative estimates of stock size and the impact of the fishery underPrinciple 1 of the MSC process. However, when Moodyrealized in 2010, based on the new DFO stock assessment, that the data weresparse and uncertain, they switched to the so-called “Risk Based Framework”(RBF) for evaluating Principle 1.

RBF was introducedby MSC in 2009 to enable scoring offisheries in data deficient situations, particularly for the “outcome” performanceindicators associated with Principles 1 and 2.

MSC states on its website that “Thefirst years of MSC certification have shown that the strong focus on quantitative data, toprove a fishery is operating sustainably, can make it difficult for smaller andmore traditionally operated fisheries to become MSC certified. This is particularlytrue for, but not limited to, small-scale and Developing World fisheries.”

The lastsentence is particularly pertinent. Application of an RBF type approach to artisanal fisheries inunderdeveloped countries which have a history of supporting small catches (thusproving the fishery to be sustainable) seems justified. It would be unfair to discriminate in themarket place against such fisheries because they are unable to meet thequantitative criteria applied in a standard quantitative MSC assessment of stock status andimpact of the fishery.

Should RBF also beused for industrial scale commercial fisheries in developed countries such as

Canada

which have access to governmentresearch programs and modern methods of data collection and analysis? Some would argue that data deficiency in sucha fishery would be reason enough for it to fail a sustainability assessment.Under “reversal of burden of proof” the fishery is guilty until proveninnocent. At best, RBF, by its nature, canonly provide weak evidence that a fishery is sustainable. It can’t make up for thelack of data and quantitative analysis.

Two methodsare applied in the MSC RBF approach: a system based on expert judgment (Scale IntensityConsequence Analysis- SICA), and a semi-quantitative analysis to assesspotential risk (Productivity Susceptibility Analysis - PSA). SICA is based on the structured collection of qualitative informationfrom a diverse group of stakeholders.

Similarsubjective risk-based approaches have been around for a while but have alwaysremained on the periphery of the scientific evaluation and management offisheries. They are generally considereduseful in a first-pass or triage approaches to select priority high risk cases formore comprehensive scientific analysis. Generally they are used to identify “near death” cases, not the“healthy” ones.

In the caseof BC spiny dogfish, RBF was applied to MSC Principle 1: “A fishery must be conducted in a manner that does not lead to over-fishingor depletion of the exploited populations and, for those populations that aredeplete the fishery must be conducted in a manner that demonstrably leads totheir recovery.”

When RBF isapplied to MSC Principle 1, the focus is on the performance indicator PI 1.1.1 which has to do with stockstatus. Other PIs under Principle 1 areeither automatically given a passing score of 80 or are not applied in thescoring, except one. This PI, “stockrebuilding”, is only scored if “stock status” is given a score of 80 or morebut will be noted under “conditions” in the assessment document if the scorefor the first PI is less than 80.

Both theinside and outside stocks of spiny dogfish achieved scores of 80 for SICA butonly 68 for PSA leading to conditions being place on the sustainabilitycertification. Under MSC rules, a fishery is only eligible touse the RBF for PI 1.1.1 in subsequent MSC assessments if the MSC scores resulting from both the SICAand PSA analyses are 80 or greater. This means that RBF may not be used for anysubsequent MSC certifications for the BC spiny dogfish fishery. They have used their "get out of jail free card".

The conditions placed on the BCspiny dogfish certification require that measures be putin place that will reduce the RBF risk score for PI 1.1.1 within the currentcertification and that by the time of reassessment in 5 yrs there needs to be adirect measure of stock status that can be compared with biologically basedreference points.

To sum up, MSC has certified a fishery on a species with a life history that makes itvulnerable to overfishing, on a population that is probably still depleted fromhistoric overfishing, and in the absence of a quantitative estimate of stock andacceptable harvest levels.

RBF cannot be used in the next assessment of the stockin 5 yrs time according to MSC's own rules. Unless new surveys and additional research are initiated by theDepartment of Fisheries and Oceans or the stakeholders, this certification willhave been premature and temporary. Itwill not build public confidence in the MSC eco-label for sustainable fisheries.

MSC Surveillance Report - South African Hake Trawl Fishery

2011-09-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

The first MSC surveillance audit for the recently certified (2010) South African Hake trawl fishery has been completed by Moody Marine Ltd. and the report is now available on the MSC website.

The assessment is for both the inshore hake fishery on Mercluccius capensis, and the offshore fishery on Merluccius paradoxus. The offshore fishery is the more important of the two but this stock has been in a severely depleted state since the early 1970s as a result of overfishing.

Although fisheries on both stocks obtained a score of more than 80 under each of the three MSC principles, a condition was placed under Principle 1 for the offshore hake fishery. This condition required that there should be improvements in stock status showing trends of recovery.

The Moody Marine team based their audit on the latest assessment by MARAM (Marine Resource Assessment and Management Group). This is the consulting company contracted by the South African government to do the assessments and develop the management strategy.

The latest MARAM assessment is not consistent with a recovery trend in spawner biomass for the offshore stock. Spawner biomass is only at about 60% of the estimated BMSY management target and female spawning biomass has recently shown a declining trend.

The Moody team suggested that the continuing low spawner biomass indicated the need to develop a new, more effective, management strategy but concluded that there was nevertheless enough evidence that a recovery was underway for the fishery to pass the audit.

It should be noted that this stock has been managed under various different management strategies (locally called operational management procedures) developed by MARAM since 1991, but all of them have proved to be ineffective in rebuilding the stock.

The certification of the South African offshore hake fishery as sustainable by MSC in 2010 and the passing of the first surveillance audit by Moody in 2011 is misleading. Consumers should not be fooled by the MSC eco-label applied to products from this fishery. These products are not from a sustainably managed fishery. South African offshore hake remains severely depleted, there is no sign of significant recovery, and the current management procedure appears to be flawed and needs to be replaced by one that may be more effective.

Is the Newfoundland Grand Bank shrimp fishery sustainable?

2011-07-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

The large boat northern shrimp Pandalus borealis fisheries off the east coast of Newfoundland and Labrador (

Canada

) have just received MSC eco-certification as sustainable. Small boat fisheries on the same stocks were certified sustainable by MSC in 2009 as the “inshore fishery on Canadian northern prawn”.

The shrimp fishery on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland (NAFO Divisions 3LNO, Canadian Shrimp Fishing Area 7) was considered separately in the certification process because it is a straddling stock that extends beyond the 200nm EEZ and is therefore managed by an RFMO, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO).

Given the serial depletion of most Grand Bank fisheries through rampant overfishing by

Spain

Portugal

Canada

and other nations over the last 60 years, one would think that sustainable management of the shrimp fishery by NAFO would be a high priority and that passing MSE certification would be a walk in the park.

Well, it was a walk in the park. Moody International Marine Ltd., the for-profit consulting company that did the assessment under contract to the fishing industry, awarded the fishery scores of 84.4% for Principle 1 (Sustainability of Exploited Stock), 84% for Principle 2 (Maintenance of Ecosystem) and 81.6% for Principle 3 (Effective Management System).

There were some low scores within these overall averages that led to conditions being placed on the sustainability determination. The fishery is certified and products can carry the blue MSC logo, but to ensure ongoing certification MSC requires some progress to be demonstrated in annual audits by Moody towards improving these areas.

So where were some of the low scores? Harvest control rules and tools – 70%. Turns out there aren’t any. Neither are there any exploitation targets or limits. Fishery specific objectives (management objectives) – 60%. Again, there aren’t any.

“Decision making processes” got a score of 80% and “Compliance and enforcement” got 90%. This is inconsistent with reality.

Scientific advice on a sustainable TAC for 2009 was 25kt. NAFO went against the scientific advice and awarded a TAC of 30kt.

Denmark

in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland did not agree to their share of the TAC and therefore set their own quota in excess of what they were allocated. This is allowed under the NAFO Objection Clause.

Scientific advice for 2010 was that the current exploitation rate of 14% may be too high and scientists urged caution in the exploitation of the stock because it was declining. They advised that exploitation rates should not be raised, but kept below recent levels. Given that the stock was declining this would require a reduction in the TAC but NAFO decided to keep the TAC at 30kt. Again the scientific advice was ignored. Again

Denmark

in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland set their own quota in excess of their allocation.

Scientific advice for 2011 was that TAC options at 14% exploitation rate or higher would be associated with a relatively high risk of continued stock decline. A 14% exploitation rate corresponded to a TAC of 17kt. NAFO set the TAC for 2011 at 19.2kt. Again the scientific advice was ignored.

The biomass of shrimp halved between 2007 and 2009. This decline is expected to continue unless NAFO reduces the TAC in accordance with the scientific advice. It doesn’t look like this is going to happen before it is too late…again.

How can this fishery be considered sustainable?

Opting out of MSC mackerel recertification because of cost and threats

2011-05-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

A group of mackerel handline fishermen from Mevagissey Cornwall (South West Hand Line Fishermen's Association) have decided to opt out of MSC recertification according to a news item from thisisdevon.co.uk

The primary reason given is the “staggering” cost of £12,000 plus VAT that must be paid to the consulting company Moody Marine Ltd for recertification. Fishermen also cited MSC’s threat to withdraw accreditation of all north east Atlantic mackerel fisheries in early 2012 unless

Iceland

and Faroes stop overfishing the mackerel stock.

If MSC follows up with this threat, it seems highly unlikely that the Mevagissey handline fishermen would be refunded their recertification fee by Moody.

Fishermen are considering alternative cheaper ways of promoting their catch as sustainable, such as the grass routes “Responsible Fishing Scheme”.

The large fees charged by consulting companies like Moody for secret pre-assessments (up to $35K?), full assessments (up to $150K?), annual audits and recertifications (up to $20K?) reflect the value placed on the MSC brand by large players in the fishing industry.

It is not clear that smaller low tech fisheries such as the mackerel handline fishery can continue to afford the high prices charged for MSC certification, even though these smaller fisheries are often the most sustainable with least bycatch and impact on the ecosystem.

Alternative grassroots schemes like the Responsible Fishing Scheme or schemes provided by concerned environmental groups such as Seafood Watch and SeaChoice may prove to be increasingly attractive.

MSC and the mackerel certification dilemma

2011-04-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Marine Stewardship Council is facing a bit of a dilemma over its sustainability certification of NE Atlantic mackerel fisheries.

MSC announced April 13 2011 that the independent adjudicator (retained under salary by MSC to hear objections) had decided to uphold an objection to the certification of the Faroese Pelagic Organisation North East Atlantic mackerel fishery to the MSC standard.

The objection was lodged by Marine Scotland (government agency) against the assessment completed by the consulting company Det Norske Veritas. The objection was that the Faroese fishery was not abiding by the management framework rules that were in place.

From 2000-2009 the Faroese were part of an international trilateral mackerel agreement with the EU and Norway which respected the scientific advice on sustainable catch levels provided by the International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES).

Recent changes in the distribution of mackerel in the NE Atlantic has made the stock more available and hence more attractive to Faroese and Icelandic fisheries and these two countries have unilaterally increased their catch levels outside ICES advice and the management framework.

Unless the EU or

Norway

reduces their own catch, which they are unlikely to do, the total catch in 2011 will exceed ICES recommended sustainable levels and will put the resource at risk.

Iceland

does not seem to care because it is not certified by MSC nor is it applying for certification. But what of the other mackerel fisheries? There are 8 separate fisheries already certified by MSC and a 9^th in the assessment process.

fishnewseu.com reported on 13 April that MSC has stated that the decision should have no effect on already MSC certified mackerel fisheries which all fall within Norwegian or EU jurisdiction.

This contradicts an earlier MSC news release of July 16 2010 that “Unless the situation is resolved by the end of 2011, the unilateral quotas and increases in fishing activity will result in suspension of MSC certification of fisheries committed to harvesting the stock sustainably.”

So which is it? Will all the mackerel fisheries be punished by MSC because two fisheries are being bad?

On the face of it, they should. ICES considers the NE Atlantic Mackerel fishery to be one stock, albeit composed of three spawning components. ICES estimates that fishing mortality has exceeded Fmsy (the fishing mortality that gives maximum sustainable yield) since the early 1990s, so technically NE Atlantic Mackerel already has overfishing taking place. However, the biomass is relatively healthy, above MSY Btrigger, a biomass reference point that triggers a cautious response when stocks fall too far below Bmsy (the biomass associated with maximum sustainable yield).

ICES estimates that catch in 2010 was 930kt and that this would have to be lowered to below 672kt in 2011 to be consistent with management objectives under the MSY approach. This is unlikely to happen with Faroese and Icelandic fisheries not abiding by the rules.

So now the dilemma: can the existing certified fisheries, who are abiding by the rules, still be considered sustainable if two non-certified fisheries are breaking the rules such that the sum of all the fisheries on NE Atlantic mackerel results in overfishing and stock depletion?

MSC is waffling on this issue.

Turtles and sustainable swordfish

2011-04-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Marine Stewardship Council deadline for stakeholder comments on the draft sustainability assessment report for the Canadian swordfish longline fishery is just days away.

Although there are inadequacies in the scientific assessment of the swordfish stock and the management of the fishery by both ICCAT and

Canada

, swordfish are considered to be at or above the biomass that gives maximum sustainable yield and fishing mortality is below the level that achieves maximum sustainable yield. In

fishery parlance, the stock is not overfished and neither is overfishing taking place. On the face of it the primary requirements for consideration as a sustainable fishery under international best practices are met.

The big issue is bycatch of other species such as turtles and sharks.

Concern is greatest for the loggerhead sea turtle. Estimated bycatch in the Canadian pelagic longline fishery is about 1,200 turtles annually out of a population of 17,000. This species was determined by COSEWIC to be endangered in Canada in April 2010 because it is “declining globally and there are well documented, ongoing declines in the Northwest Atlantic population from which juveniles routinely enter and forage in Atlantic Canadian waters. The Canadian population is threatened directly by commercial fishing, particularly bycatch in the pelagic longline fleet, and by loss and degradation of nesting beaches in the southeastern

USA

and the Caribbean.”

A decision by the Canadian Government on whether or not to list loggerheads under the Species at Risk Act has yet to be made. In its initial response on December 2010, Government stated that “A voluntary Code of Conduct for Responsible Sea Turtle Handling and Mitigative Measures has been developed by the Canadian swordfish and tuna pelagic longline fleet. This Code of Conduct includes measures such as avoiding areas of high sea turtle capture rates, gear hauling protocols to minimise harm to turtles, sea turtle handling guidelines, and usage instructions for de-hooking gear.”

A Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans recovery potential assessment published in 2010 found that “Reduction or elimination of mortality in Canadian waters alone is highly unlikely to be sufficient to achieve recovery.”

Although not the sole culprit, and despite efforts being made in

Canada

to reduce bycatch and increase survival of released loggerheads, the Canadian longline swordfish fishery is contributing significantly to the potential extinction of loggerheads.

The Canadian harpoon fishery for swordfish has zero bycatch mortality and provides a certified sustainable alternative source for consumers to consider.

Marine Stewardship Council - Acceptable time frames for rebuilding depleted fish stocks

2011-03-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

In the fall of 2010 MSC consulted with partners and stakeholders on acceptable rebuilding timeframes for certification of depleted stocks. MSC defines a depleted stock as one which has a biomass below BMSY (the biomass that gives maximum sustainable yield) or equivalent target level, but is still above a precautionary limit level. Fisheries on stocks which are depleted can become MSC certified, however certification of such fisheries requires that there be a rebuilding plan in place which leads to the recovery of the stock within a specified timeframe.

The MSC Fisheries Assessment Methodology addresses rebuilding under Performance Indicator PI 1.1.3. Currently, a conditional pass score of SG60 merely requires “reasonable expectation of success” with regard to rebuilding to the target biomass of BMSY within a specified timeframe.

An unconditional pass of SG80 requires evidence that rebuilding strategies “are rebuilding stocks, or it is highly likely based on simulation modelling or previous performance that they will be able to rebuild the stock within a specified timeframe”.

A perfect score of SG100 requires that “strategies are demonstrated to be rebuilding stocks continuously and there is strong evidence that rebuilding will be complete within the shortest practicable timeframe”.

It is good that MSC is considering revising its methodology with regard to depleted stocks; however the consultation document only addresses a clearer definition of the timeframes for rebuilding to be associated with each of the three scores.

MSC certification of fisheries on depleted stocks as “sustainable” is highly controversial. See for example the ongoing saga of the conditional certification of the fishery on the collapsed offshore South African hake stock.

It can be argued that the current SG100 requirement should be the minimum required in order for a fishery to be considered for a conditional pass score (SG60) and that an unconditional pass score (SG80 or 100) should only be given to a fishery on stock that has already rebuilt and is fluctuating around BMSY or above under a fishing mortality of FMSY or lower (the fishing mortality rate consistent with maintaining the stock at BMSY or above).

A fishery on a depleted stock should never be considered sustainable.

MSC Surveillance audit – South African hake trawl fishery

2011-02-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

It is one year into the recertification of the South African hake trawl fishery. Moody Marine Ltd has sent a team to South Africa to undertake the first surveillance audit of the fishery as required under the MSC eco-certification procedure.

The recertification the South African hake trawl fishery was not plain sailing for Moody. The unit of certification includes an inshore and an offshore fishery component on different species. The offshore hake, Merluccius paradoxus, is the main contributor to the fishery. It is in a collapsed state and did not improve during the previous certification period.

One of the independent reviewers of the Moody recertification strongly argued against calling a fishery “sustainable” when one of the components remains in a severely depleted state. This was overruled by Moody in their assessment, but did lead to “Condition 1” in the certification – a requirement that a recovery trend be demonstrated in M. paradoxus within the certification period.

So is there evidence that M. paradoxus is recovering? It is hard to tell. The last public-domain stock assessment document is a 2008 paper by Rademeyer and colleagues at the MARAM consulting company based in the Mathematics Department of the University of Cape Town. This assessment showed the spawning biomass trajectory up to 1999 and there is no evidence of rebuilding.

The Moody 2010 certification report provides the public with a rare look at the assessment process and the state of the stock. According to the report “models developed and implemented by MCM and its contractors are subjected to various reviews and debates through MCM’s Demersal Working Group. Industry, through their consultants, participate in the debates of the Working Group and have been influential in guiding the research.”

MCM is the South African federal government department of Marine and Coastal Management. MCM is a bit of a black hole. Nothing in the way of useful information is released to the public. The “contractor” to MCM is MARAM. MARAM developed the assessment model and also carry out the assessments using the model, apparently because of a lack of quantitative expertise at MCM. MARAM is also responsible for the development of the Operational Management Procedure which is used by MCM to manage the stock. MARAM does not produce public documents related to its contracts with MCM.

The assessment in the Moody certification report extends the spawner biomass series to 2007. Spawning Stock Biomass continues to decline, reaching the lowest estimated level ever. Projections under the MARAM management procedure predict that recovery will take place following 2007, however such projected recoveries are notoriously optimistic and routinely get postponed in subsequent assessments. There needs to be actual realized evidence of recovery to satisfy Condition 1, not merely a projection.

One assumes that the Moody team for the current hake surveillance audit will have MARAM and MCM documents at their disposal in order to evaluate whether or not Condition 1 is being met.

There should be full public disclosure by Moody of all relevant MCM and MARAM documents on M. paradoxus used in the audit, otherwise the public are being kept in the dark and have a right to be suspicious.

A comment on the NE Atlantic mackerel objection

2011-02-21T05:47:00.000-08:00

From the comment section - the following anonymous comment on the NE Atlantic mackerel certification raises some interesting issues and is repeated here.

Two things strike me regarding this.

Firstly, MSC has always said that it is not directly involved in decisions regarding who gets certified and who does not. It argues that it merely sets the standard for the assessment criteria and then it is up to an independent consulting company to determine if a fishery meets the standard. The proclamation on the MSC website regarding removal of certification by 2012 unless the whole NE Atlantic mackerel fishery meets the standard sounds like direct interference in the process to me.

Secondly, the concept that not only the enterprises seeking certification need to be abiding by the criteria, but also those outside the certification, will pose problems for other fisheries currently seeking certification, such as the offshore northern shrimp fishery of Newfoundland/Labrador. In this fishery Faroe Islands have unilaterally increased their own shrimp quota outside the overall quota set by the responsible RFMO, NAFO.

NE Atlantic mackerel – MSC policies and international governance

2011-02-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

The NE Atlantic mackerel fishery is presenting some interesting insights into the evolving policies of the Marine Stewardship Council and its relationship with existing governance structures.

It can be argued that Marine Stewardship Council eco-certification program only has added value in situations where national and international fisheries governance structures are not doing their job of conserving fisheries and ecosystems through sustainable management in the interests of long-term public good.

Given the poor practices of many governments in both developed and developing nations, and regional fisheries management organizations, there has been much for MSC to get their teeth into over the last 10 years. Some of the cases they have taken on have been controversial – best known of all being the recent Ross Sea Antarctic Toothfish fishery certification. This fishery is in international waters and is being pursued by a number of fleets from around the world. A subset of these fleets applied for certification and achieved it despite strong objections from conservation groups (but not the responsible RFMO, CCAMLR). Other fleets outside of the certification engaged in the same fishery have reputations as pirates and rogues responsible for serial collapses of the conspecific Patagonian Toothfish fisheries in various parts of the world. This did not seem to matter to MSC then.

But it matters now. MSC has announced that unilateral quotas and increases in fishing activity by Faroese and Icelandic fisheries on NE Atlantic mackerel will result in suspension of MSC-certification for those seven fisheries already certified. Ongoing certification and any new certifications of fisheries on this stock will require establishment of a mechanism for monitoring and managing the combined catch of all the nations before the end of 2011. If not, all seven certificates will be suspended in January 2012.

The mackerel bubble was burst, not by an environmental organization but by the tweed jackets at Marine Scotland, part of the core Scottish Government set up in 2009 to manage

Scotland

's waters. They recently ponied up the £5,000 required to object to the assessment by the for-profit consulting company Det Norske Veritas that the Faroese mackerel fishery smelt like roses.

So two three things of note (1) MSC threatens removal of certification unless the whole fishery including those not in the program are behaving; (2) A government challenges the outcome of the MSC process; and (3) An objection is actually sustained by the MSC appointed Independent Adjudicator.

Too bad about the Ross Sea Antarctic Toothfish though.

De-coding eco-labels, flaws and inadequacies - Food&WaterWatch

2010-12-24T08:32:00.000-08:00

Food&WaterWatch describes a number of flaws and inadequacies with eco-certification and eco-lables in their recent publication De-coding Seafood Eco-Labels: Why we need Public standards.

Two issues that stand out are whether the public or private sector should oversee eco-certification and the certification of flawed fisheries.

Private sector eco-certification, for example the program run by the Marine Stewardship Council, limits the public right to fully determine the standards and conditions related to the labeling of their own property, the fish in the ocean. If governments and RFMO's lived up to their responsibility to ensure only sustainable fisheries are permitted, there would be no need for expensive private sector certification schemes to second-guess the process.

Certification of flawed fisheries on condition that they undertake to improve and become sustainable in the future is very controversial. As Food&WaterWatch point out - this deception regarding a sustainable fishery can be exploited by "free-riders" who get to ride on the reputation of the label. Nobody should purchase a Toyota that is provisionally deemed safe provided the company figures out a way of fixing that brake problem over the next couple of years!

Seafood eco-labelling criticised

2010-12-09T04:35:00.000-08:00

An interesting article by Clare Leschin-Hoar on the website slashfood.com on 8 December draws attention to a recent publication by Food and Water Watch on De-Coding Seafood Eco-Labels: Why We Need Public Standards.

Clare notes that among the concerns expressed by Food and Water Watch are the certification of fisheries that have only pledged improvements over ones that meet all criteria, the high costs of certification which leads to a pay-to-play environment, and the predominant use of labels as marketing tools. Concern is also expressed about groups such as the Marine Stewardship Council setting sustainability standards rather than governments.

MSC Certification Fail! St Helena pole & line and rod & line tuna fisheries

2010-11-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

The MSC accredited certifying body (CB) Food Certification International Ltd based in Inverness, Scotland, has given the St Helena Island pole & line and rod & line tuna fisheries for albacore, bigeye, yellowfin and skipjack tuna a failing grade for MSC certification as a sustainable fishery. The assessment was carried out using the qualitative Risk Based Assessment approach developed by MSC for data-poor stocks. The CB failed the fisheries on all four tuna stocks under Principle 1: Sustainability of Exploited Stock.

Should the St Helena fishery wish to still pursue certification, it is required by the CB to ensure that a number of improvement are carried out in order to achieve a passing score under Principle 1. These include the development and implementation of target and limit reference points as well as harvest strategies incorporating harvest control rules that respond to the state of the stock relative to the reference points.

Other fisheries have in the past been certified by MSC as sustainable while having conditions applied requiring improvements in these areas. This is only the second fishery that has entered full MSC certification to not reach a successful conclusion (the other was apparently a UK lobster fishery some time ago). Does this "fail" indicate a new approach by MSC in response to mounting public criticism that "conditionally sustainable" does not make sense (a fishery should meet all sustainability conditions before it is certified sustainable)? Or is it just the result of a consulting company that lacks the business savvy of successful certifying bodies such as Moody Marine Ltd?

MSC’s ball – the eco-certification game

2010-11-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

The recent Pew Environmental Group criticisms and email campaign directed at the controversial certification of the Southeast North Atlantic swordfish, yellowfin and bigeye tuna fisheries based in Florida drew a strong defence from Jim Humphreys, MSC Fisheries, Regional Director Americas, in a posting on the MSC website.

Humphrey’s posting was picked up by Natalia Real in a FIS.com editorial 20 August 2010 (“Pew's email campaign misleading: MSC”), prompting Lee Crockett, Director of Federal Fisheries Policy for the Pew Environment Group (PEG), to submit a response to FIS.com in the form of an opinion piece.

Humphreys defends the independence of the certification process arguing that “The MSC does not conduct the fishery assessment and the MSC remains impartial throughout the process, which is crucial to preserving the trust and reliability that come from an independent, third-party assessment, and maintaining the global credibility of the MSC certification program.”

According to Crockett, MSC elaborated on its “independence” in correspondence with him, stating that “the assessment of the fishery is independent of the MSC - the MSC doesn't take part in the scoring and determination of a fishery assessment.” The implication seems to be that the MSC is absolved of any blame when an assessment ends up drawing public criticism. Simply put, “Don’t blame me hey, I didn’t do it!” Non est mea culpa! The finger should rather be pointed at the consulting company (accredited to the MSC Standard) that undertook the assessment.

Crocket quite rightly takes issue with this claim: “In fact, MSC developed the entire assessment process and the criteria used for the assessment. Moreover, after a fishery is certified, it is eligible to display the MSC label, not the logo of the company that conducted the assessment, in this case MRAG Americas. To use a sports analogy, the fishery applying for and paying for certification plays the entire game on the MSC’s field, using the MSC’s ball, the MSC’s rules, in order to receive the MSC’s prize. The MSC is clearly not a disinterested third party.”

Not only that, any public objection to the sustainability determination is also played on the MSC’s field with the MSC’s ball, with an MSC salaried “referee”, the Independent Adjudicator! Objectors to controversial sustainability determinations have yet to win a game.

Ross Sea Toothfish Fishery Certified Sustainable

2010-11-19T04:51:00.000-08:00

A controversial fishery in the pristine Ross Sea has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) based on very little scientific evidence.

The MSC's "Independent Adjudicator", Michael Lodge, has overturned public objections to the certification based on the assurances of a private consulting company, Moody Marine Ltd, contracted by by a group of fishing companies to prove that their portion of the exploratory Ross Sea fishery is sustainable and worthy of the MSC eco-label. Note that other nations involved in this fishery not covered by the certification have previously been identified as being involved in pirate fishing leading to the collapse of other toothfish stocks.

Scientists claim that too little is known about the population dynamics of Ross Sea toothfish and the potential impact of catches to properly determine what would constitute a sustainable fishery. Toothfish are highly vulnerable to overfishing as demonstrated by the collapse of a number of stocks.

With this ruling MSC further lowers the bar (see other controversial certifications) on the evidence required to determine sustainability against it's standard. It provides support to the perverse notion of "fish now and do the science later" - the antithesis of a sustainable approach.

Consumers should exercise caution in accepting the MSC eco-label as evidence of a sustainably managed fishery and in particular avoid all toothfish or sea bass products.

BC Spiny Dogfish – Sustainable Fishery or Species at Risk?

2010-11-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

Will BC Spiny Dogfish be the first shark fishery to be deemed sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council? Or will it become another species on the growing COSEWIC Species At Risk list?

MSC accredited certifying body, Moody Marine Ltd, is part way through a sustainability determination and COSEWIC is presently reviewing the extinction risks.

IUCN previously assessed the Spiny Dogfish as near threatened globally. A proposal by

Germany

in 2004 to list Spiny Dogfish under CITES Appendix II tabled at a pre-CITES meeting was rejected by European member states.

The MSC assessment process started in 2008 under another private consulting company, TAVEL, which has subsequently been taken over by rival Moody.

Things moved very slowly on the MSC dogfish assessment and on 2 March 2010 Moody announced that it would be using the MSC “default assessment tree”. In other words, the full-blow sustainability determination with multiple criteria under three Principles as given in “Marine Stewardship Council Fisheries Assessment Methodology and Guidance to Certification Bodies”.

However, once the Moody assessment team started to dig into the available data on this fishery, they found that it was very data-poor. The last time the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) had attempted to assess the status of the stock was back in 1987, so Moody had very little that was current to work with. Moody and other MSC accredited consulting companies typically “borrow” extensively from the latest government or RFMO scientific assessment in order to arrive at their sustainability determination.

DFO dutifully commissioned a new stock assessment for BC spiny dogfish held May 17, 2010 in Nanaimo, BC. The ensuing DFO report, “Science Advisory Report 2010/057 – Assessment of Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthius) in British Columbia in 2010” has yet to see the light of day with regard to the general public. However, one must assume that Moody got a sneak preview and didn’t like what it saw, because on 8 October 2010 they announced that they had changed their mind and rather than apply the default assessment tree, they are opting for the alternate back-door route to certification by applying the MSC “Risk Based Framework” (RBF).

The RBF was developed by MSC as an alternative assessment approach for data-deficient situations; particularly for Principles 1 and 2 (in other words, the important stuff like stock status, management strategy and ecosystem impacts). Initially the motivation for such an approach was the idea that the default assessment tree favoured large scale fisheries in developed nations and that smaller fisheries in under-developed countries would be at an economic disadvantage because of a lack of the appropriate information and infrastructure, even though these fisheries might have a track record of being sustainable over a number of years.

This notion of giving a break to under-developed countries seems to have fallen by the way, and RBF is now being applied to fisheries for which there is no excuse for not having a state-of-the-art assessment of the sustainability of a fishery. Case to point – a British Columbia fishery – one of the wealthiest provinces in one of the wealthiest countries with super-abundant resources to collect the information required to determine whether a fishery is sustainable.

RBF methods are much more subjective than the standard approach under the default assessment tree. Methods range in complexity and data requirements from a system based on expert judgment (Scale Intensity Consequence Analysis- SICA), to a semi-quantitative analysis to assess potential risk (Productivity Susceptibility Analysis - PSA). PSA examines attributes of each species that contribute to or reflect its productivity or susceptibility. Pacific Spiny Dogfish has both a very low productivity and a high susceptibility to fishing gear. They are long-lived, only maturing at about 35 years of age. Females typically give birth once every two years and produce around 6 pups after a gestation period of 22-24 months – the longest of any known vertebrate.

There has been a commercial fishery for Spiny Dogfish in Pacific waters since 1870 with landings peaking landing of over 30,000 tons in the 1940s. Landings have been much lower, between 5,000 and 7,000 tons, in the Canadian Pacific fishery in recent years presumably because of lower abundance. The fishery is pursued by both hook-and-line and trawl gear. Although trawl catches have been relatively stable recently, landings and discards in the hook-and-line fleet have been steadily increasing over the last eight years. Catch rate and survey trends are either flat or decreasing. The size of the population relative to virgin levels is not known. The fishery is managed by quota, currently set at about 15,000 tons. It is not clear whether this is an adequate measure to ensure a sustainable population in the long-term or whether a more conservative approach is required.

It will be very interesting to see what comes out of the parallel MSC and COSEWIC processes with regard to sustainability vs. extinction risks. Either way, we need more up-to-date information and a conservation-minded harvesting strategy if the fishery is to be truly sustainably managed such that there is a very low risk of future declines, collapses or even extinction.

Score jiggling under the MSC process to ensure fisheries sustainability certification?

2010-10-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

Do third party MSC accredited Certifying Bodies jiggle scores to ensure a Pass on sustainability when responding to critical public comments, independent reviews and formal objections?

This issue has been raised recently by the Objection to the certification of the Faroese Pelagic Organisation North-East Atlantic Mackerel Fishery by Marine Scotland. Marine

Scotland

is the lead marine management organisation in

Scotland

, bringing together the functions of the Fisheries Research Services (Marine Scotland Science), the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency (Marine Scotland Compliance) and the Scottish Government Marine Directorate.

The Independent Adjudicator appointed by the Marine Stewardship Council to evaluate the objection, Melanie Carter, posted a notice on the MSC website dated 3 September 2010 outlining a query on the revision of the score on one of the fishery Performance Indicators by the Certifying Body Det Norske Veritas.

In responding to the objection by Marine Scotland, Det Norske Veritas had revised down the score for PI 3.1.1 to 65 resulting in the overall score for Principle 3 going down to 79.9. This is a Fail under Principle 3 and therefore a Fail in terms of Sustainability determination under the MSC process.

When Melanie Carter pointed out this blunder to Det Norske Veritas they immediately responded “Our Assessment teams did not intend failing the fishery but we did overlook the effect of the rescoring on the weighting table (the total scores). DNV has been in contact with both experts [on the assessment team] yesterday and today. The assessment team wishes to rescore PI 3.1.1 to 70 giving it a total of 80,5.”

This looks a lot like subjective score jiggling to ensure a Pass.

This brings to mind a previous case of alleged score jiggling under the MSC eco-certification process. The controversial “skin-of-the-teeth” 2006/2007 sustainability assessment of the NZ Hoki fishery by SGS Netherlands resulted in a formal objection by NZ WWF in July 2006. WWF claimed that there was “a procedural failure, because the Final Report does not provide enough evidence to show how the assessment team derived the scores for Performance Indicators that were changed between the Public Comment Draft Report and the Final Report.”

The allegation is that in responding to critical WWF comments on the Public Comment Draft report, SGS revised down some of the scores, but to compensate other PI scores, not subject to criticism by WWF, were revised up to ensure that an overall passing score was retained under each of the 3 Principles.

Recall that no fishery that has gone through the secret MSC pre-assessment process into full assessment has failed to achieve a Pass on Sustainability (except for a UK lobster fishery which fell out of the certification process at some point, possibly lack of funds to pay the CB?). Further recall that no public comment, independent peer review or formal objection has resulted in the overturning of a Certification Body Sustainability Determination.

Seafood stewardship in crisis?

2010-09-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

In an opinion article published in Nature 2 September, Jennifer Jacquet of the UBC Fisheries Centre and colleagues criticise a number of facets of fisheries sustainability certification carried out by the Marine Stewardship Council. They suggest "scores of scientists… and many conservation groups" have protested over various MSC procedures or certifications and that MSC increasingly risks its credibility and the planet risks losing wild capture fisheries and healthy marine ecosystems.

MSC fired back an immediate response arguing that its sustainability standard fully met FAO guidelines and had the support of “over 200 marine biologists, scientists, environmentalists and other stakeholders from around the world.”

To add more numbers to the fray, last year ASOC (Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition) numbering more than 200 non-governmental organizations in fifty countries concerned with the preservation of the Antarctic environment filed a notice of objection with MSC regarding the sustainability determination of Moody Marine with regard to the Aker Biomarine Krill Fishery.

So, lots of people engaged on both sides of the argument it seems. There is little doubt that at least some of MSC’s fisheries sustainability certifications are highly controversial and the MSC Board would do well to consider the reasons with a little dose of humility rather than denial.

There are three areas of potential concern – the MSC standard, its application and governance. The principles and criteria that make up the MSC standard are consistent with most interpretations of what would constitute a sustainable fishery, at least in terms of single species management. At the ecosystem level MSC criteria are more nebulous, but this reflects the general lack of our current understanding about what ecosystem sustainability means and how to achieve it.

The problem seems to lie with what Jacquet et al. call the “loose interpretation of its rules”. As one of MSCs own Independent Adjudicators recently put it, the MSC process “leaves a substantial margin of discretion to the certification body in the way in which it sets scoring guideposts against individual performance indicators”.

MSC independent certifiers are seen by some to be certifying fisheries that are not sustainable as conditionally sustainable in anticipation that they will become fully sustainable in order to retain certification. It is hard to believe many fisheries scientists or others seriously interested in long-term sustainable management of our fisheries think that this is justified. There may be more sympathy if at least one fishery had actually lost certification for not meeting the conditions imposed by MSC, but this has never happened. Jacquet et al. suggest that MSC is in danger of diminishing the value of its brand as leading retailers respond to heightened public concerns by requiring higher standards than those applied by MSC’s independent certifiers such as Moody Marine Ltd. As Jacquet et al. point out there is economic incentive for leniency – “certifiers that leniently interpret existing criteria might expect to receive more work and profit from ongoing annual audits.”

Jacquet and colleagues touch on issues related to the MSC objection procedure. It is this aspect of MSC governance that is perhaps the most troublesome. It is run by lawyers retained on salary by MSC and it is a process to ensure that MSC’s own rules have been followed in reaching a determination, rather than to evaluate whether scientific data related to sustainability are adequate and have been properly interpreted. As such it cannot second-guess the independent certifiers’ assessment of the sustainability of the stock. This leaves little opportunity for a member of the public, or public groups to derail an assessment on technical grounds related to data and interpretation. The proof is in the pudding. No MSC assessment has ever failed to reach a successful sustainability determination and no objection has ever been upheld.

Needless to say the MSC Board rejects the criticisms of Jacquet and colleagues, claiming that its practices and procedures are beyond reproach. When some of the MSC’s founding fatherly advisors and early supporters such as Daniel Pauly and Sidney Holt suggest that there are serious problems, the MSC Board would do well to listen, rather than shoot from the hip.

Seabird feathers fly as MSC and Pew face off over swordfish and tuna

2010-08-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

In an open letter on the MSC website, Jim Humphreys, MSC Fisheries Regional Director for the

Americas

, responds to the Pew Environment Group’s recent campaign to oppose the assessment of the Southeast North Atlantic swordfish, yellowfin and bigeye tuna fisheries based in Florida as sustainable. These fisheries are currently under MSC sustainability assessment by the independent accredited certifier, MRAG Americas.

Humphries argues that previous successful MSC assessments have resulted in significant improvements in some fisheries that have dramatically reduced impacts on other species.

The idea is that MSC certifies fisheries that are not really sustainable, or that have considerable negative impacts on the ecosystem, on condition that they promise to become sustainable and reduce ecosystem impacts over the next 5 years by fixing a bunch of issues. MSC claims that this has led to improved fisheries management.

Humphreys picks a strange example to support his claim – the

South Africa

hake fishery. The offshore hake stock, Merluccius paradoxus, the major component of the fishery, is in a collapsed state but this did not stop MSC from recently recertifying the fishery as sustainable for a second 5 year period, against the protests of one of the independent reviewers who pointed out as much.

But it is not the management of the collapsed hake stock Humphreys is referring to. It is the reduction in seabird mortality caused by collateral damage in the hake trawl fishery through contact with the trawl and trawl warps – supposedly down from 18,000 per year a few years back to 200 per year now as a result of MSC imposed conditions on the fishery..

The 18,000 per year estimate is published in a 2008 paper in Animal Conservation (Interactions between seabirds and deep-water hake trawl gear: an assessment of impacts in South African waters by Watkins, Petersen and Ryan).

The question is, what is the basis for Humphreys’ estimate of current mortality of only 200 per year? The number seems unlikely.

There is another story within this story.

The president of MRAG Americas, a private, for-profit consulting company, is Andy Rosenberg, former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service in the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Rosenberg also happens to be a Pew fellow and, according to the Gloucester Daily Times, appointed last fall by Lubchenco as a White House consultant on ocean policy.

Confusing?

More feathers may fly!

MSC slashes objection fee

2010-08-18T17:51:00.000-07:00

MSC announced August 2 that it is slashing the fee cap on lodging an objection to a fishery sustainability determination from £15,000 to £5,000. This sounds like a lucky break for the public who might want to voice concerns regarding some aspect of the sustainability assessment process carried out under MSC.

That is until you stop to think. A few years ago I paid a fee to my local city council to object to a new property evaluation they carried out on my house. The objection was heard by an independent adjudicator hired by the city and I had a few dollars shaved off my annual property taxes as a result.

Like I own my house, the public owns this property, the fish resource. But, unlike my city council, the MSC has no legal standing. Why should we pay a group that has not legal standing for the right to object to a wrongful finding related to our property that could well impact its future value in terms of long-term public good?

It makes no sense until you realize that the public are not the client of the MSC process - the industry is. An objection delays certification of the fishery as sustainable, increases costs for the independent certifier (e.g. Moody Marine Ltd., a for-profit company accredited under MSC standards) and annoys the client. The fee reduces the number of objections lodged by public organizations and lessons the salary costs of the 4 lawyers hired by MSC as Independent Adjudicators to hear and judge objections.

Perhaps the reduced fee will encourage more public objections to controversial MSC sustainability certifications. But £5,000 is still pretty steep when you consider what you get. No objection to a sustainability determination has been upheld by an MSC Adjudicator thus far.

You got nothing for £15,000 now you will get nothing for £5,000 - not really a bargain.

MSC income, was £8 million in 2008/2009 -about half from charitable grants and half from licensing its blue eco-label to components of the supply chain for products from certified fisheries. The right thing to do would be to eliminate the objection fee altogether. MSC can afford it, although it may mean putting on hold the opening of a new administrative office in some further corner of the World.

Aker Biomarine krill based profits up

2010-08-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

Recently MSC certified as sustainable, the Aker Biomarine profits are up based on products from its krill fishery in the Antarctic according to a report on SeafoodSource.com today

By SeafoodSource staff
06 August, 2010 - Oslo, Norway-based krill harvester and biotechnology group Aker Biomarine posted a quarterly profit for the first time thanks to a strong harvest and strong sales of its omega-3 fatty acid-rich products for human consumption.

What price does one put on preserving the Antarctic foodchain?

Ross sea toothfish objection - a flustered partial response?

2010-08-04T16:21:00.000-07:00

The Marine Stewardship Council Independent Adjudicator (IA) responded in part on 2 August to the latest submissions from Moody Marine Ltd and Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC). The numerous typos are a clue, but there is other evidence that the IA may be becoming flustered. Perhaps he senses that Ross Sea toothfish is a public symbol of ignorance regarding sustainable fisheries and inherent flaws in the MSC approach? As a lawyer he must be aware that precedence is being set with each decision he makes.

Given almost no concessions by Moody to his previous remand, the IA now proceeds, step by step, to further dissect, and in some cases revoke, concerns, especially with regard to Principle 2 (Maintenance of Ecosystem), “that that there was a serious procedural irregularity that made a material difference to the fairness of the assessment”.

In doing so, he laments that MSC Fisheries Certification Methodology “leaves a substantial margin of discretion to the certification body in the way in which it sets scoring guideposts against individual performance indicators. Almost by definition, the circumstances on which an adjudicator could interfere with the exercise of that discretion must be extremely limited.”

This sentiment was echoed recently by another IA on the objection to the controversial Moody Marine Ltd Fraser River sockeye salmon determination when he remarked “Other IA’s, in recent decisions, recognizing the purpose of the OP [Objection Procedure], have described the standard of review available [by the IA to an objection] as being “narrow” and requiring “deference to the determinations of the certification body”.”

In keeping with the narrow scope and need for deference, the IA finds that, although a number of the scores against the Performance Indicator Scoring Guideposts (PISGs) for Ross Sea toothfish appear “generous”, and although Moody has thus far argued against making any revisions based on objections, “I am not persuaded that the certification body made a mistake as to material fact, failed to consider material information or acted arbitrarily or unreasonably in awarding the scores that were given”.

Although the IA again remands several of the Principle 3 (Effective Management System) PSIGs and associated scores for further consideration by Moody, none of these would appear to be “show-stoppers” as far as certification is concerned. Once the IA has Moody’s response in hand with respect to Principle 3, he says he will then consider the responses to his earlier remand against Principle 1 indicators (Sustainability of Exploited Stock). These do contain some real “show-stoppers”, particularly with regard to the very speculative knowledge regarding the life-history of Ross Sea toothfish. Will Moody be let off the hook on these accounts too? Wait and see.

Objection to MSC certification of Ross Sea toothfish to be upheld?

2010-07-26T03:43:00.000-07:00

The certification of the Ross Sea longline fishery for Antarctic toothfish hangs in the balance. Independent Adjudicator Michael Lodge will decide in the next few days whether to uphold the ASOC objection to Moody Marine Ltd’s determination, or issue a further remand to Moody to properly address the issues that have been raised.

So far Moody has refused to blink.

In its 2nd June response to Lodge’s initial remand, Moody fought back admitting no changes to its scoring guideposts or scores – 89% for Sustainability of Exploited Stock, 89% for Maintenance of Ecosystem and 93% for Effective Management System. An A+ for sustainability.

Remember though, this is an “exploratory” fishery on a long-lived, slow-growing, low fecundity top predator in a largely pristine ecosystem. As with most exploratory fisheries, we only have rudimentary knowledge of the biology, life history, stock structure and migration of toothfish in the Ross Sea, and management measures must be considered preliminary at best.

Although the CCAMLR stock assessment is the best available, it admits to considerable uncertainty in many aspects. This was pointed out in a critical review of Moody’s draft report by Dr Michael Pawson, an expert in stock assessment who formerly worked at the famous Lowestoft Fisheries Laboratory, but Moody was characteristically dismissive.

In it’s 21 June comments on Moody’s response ASOC does not hold back: “As explained clearly in his decision, the IA[Independent Adjudicator] has had very serious concerns about the process MML [Moody] undertook with regard to this certification and with the conclusions it reached. Nonetheless, MML’s response is, at very best, superficial. It has largely re-stated its existing rationales and has not provided any new, substantive justification or thinking – let alone changing a single score. The response suggests that MML does not take the adjudication process seriously.”

Will Michael Lodge agree or will he give Moody one more chance?

MSC sockeye salmon certification - who profits?

2010-07-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

The David Suzuki Foundation has just produced a useful backgrounder on the controversial Marine Stewardship Council certification of BC sockeye salmon.

The backgrounder states that The Marine Stewardship Council eco-label allows certified fisheries to brand themselves as a “sustainable” source of seafood. Fisheries voluntarily apply for certification, and they do so by hiring a for-profit company to carry out the assessment.

While I don't profess to understand the whole MSC process, some additional information might be useful for those not familiar with the relationship between MSC as a non-profit organization and the profit-maximising companies that do the actual assessments.

MSC provides a Fishery Standard containing Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fishing as well as a manual of Fisheries Assessment Methodology and Guidance to Certification Bodies Including Default Assessment Tree and Risk-Based Framework. Only companies that are accredited by Accreditation Services International GmbH (ASI) to the MSC accreditation requirements can do fishery sustainability certification assessments under the MSC process. These companies apply the MSC Standard and use the MSC Methods and Guidance manual to do the actual assessments and determine certifiable fisheries.

The MSC website gives the following list of accredited certifiers:

Det Norske Veritas Certification AS
Food Certification International Ltd (FCI)
Global Trust Certifications Ltd (Previously I:FQC Ltd)
MacAlister Elliott & Partners Ltd
Moody Marine Ltd
MRAG Americas
Organización Internacional Agropecuaria (OIA)
Scientific Certification Systems
Tavel Certification Inc.
TQCSI - MSC

This is not completely up-to-date because Moody Marine Ltd (which has carried out a number of MSC assessments) recently acquired one of the competition, Tavel Certification Inc.

What is important here is that the accredited certifiers are all companies seeking to maximise profits through the MSC sustainability and eco-labelling system. To be competitive they can vary the fee they charge fishing enterprises seeking certification and then seek ways to cut the costs of doing the actual certification. One of the costs to the certifier involves hiring outside experts to assist with the assessments because of limited in-house expertise, and to do independent reviews of draft assessments. These experts include government fisheries scientists and academics who may already be involved in advising governments and RFMOs on the sustainable management of various fisheries.

As a non-profit, MSC is funded by donation and by the fee it charges components of the supply chain for displaying its blue eco-label. Note that some enterprises that achieve certification choose not to actually use the MSC eco-label in order to avoid paying the fee. MSC also runs a second process for "Chain of Custody certifications" in which an overlapping list of companies are accredited to certify businesses that meet the MSC Chain of Custody standard for seafood traceability. A further source of income to MSC is the objection process. Bodies filing an objection (usually conservation organizations funded by private donations) are charged a significant fee by MSC which presumably partly offsets the salaries they pay to four lawyers who are retained as "independent adjudicators" to judge the validity of objections.

All objections to Fraser Sockeye Salmon MSC certification dismissed

2010-07-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

In his ruling handed down July 12 2010, Independent Adjudicator Wylie Spicer, Q.C., dismissed all objections to the MSC certification of the Fraser River Sockeye Salmon as sustainable. Certification will now proceed and the BC Salmon Marketing Council can apply the blue MSC sustainability label to all products from the Fraser River sockeye fishery. The objections were filed jointly by the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, David Suzuki Foundation and the Skeena Wild Conservation Trust.

This is Spicer’s first adjudication in his new job on salary to MSC. In his findings, he sets the tone early on by stating that “Other IA’s, in recent decisions, recognizing the purpose of the OP [Objection Procedure], have described the standard of review available as being “narrow” and requiring “deference to the determinations of the certification body” (Ross Sea Antarctic Toothfish Longline Fishery decision at para. 8).”

Further into his report Spicer notes that the Objector’s arguments “are really taking issue with whether the Fraser River Fishery can stand up to scrutiny given the MSC Principles and Criteria.” He notes that “this type of review is not the purpose of the OP. The purpose of the OP is to review the work of the CB [Certification Body] to see whether it made an error that materially affected the outcome of the Determination.”

Within this narrow ambit of the OP, Spicer finds that no such errors were made. Procedures were followed and the scores are justified.

For those of us that value our children’s future more than MSC procedures and the short-term economic benefits accrued by the BC Salmon Marketing Council, there are some major concerns with this certification.

Firstly, the productivity of Fraser River salmon is in free-fall as pointed out by the “Think Tank of Scientists” that met in December 2009 at Simon Fraser University: “The productivity of the Fraser river sockeye salmon, which is the number of adults produced per spawner, has been declining since the mid-1990s to the point where Fraser River sockeye are almost unable to replace themselves.” No matter what scoring guideposts were set up and what scores were allocated by the Moody Marine assessment team, a population that is “almost unable to replace itself” cannot be considered a candidate for a sustainable fishery.

Secondly, two distinct genetic components of Fraser sockeye, those spawning in Cultus Lake and Sakinaw Lake, have been found to be endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. The Canadian government however decided not to list them under the Species at Risk Act, citing socio-economic considerations. Listing would have mandated an explicit rebuilding strategy. The continuing loss of biodiversity should be a major concern for those that care about our planet’s future.

So, MSC adds another controversial certification to their growing list, the perfect record of all objections to any assessment being dismissed is retained, and public confidence in the process, and hence the value of the MSC label, is diminished.

Controversy over MSC krill certification - science flatters fishery?

2010-06-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

A well-researched article on the MSC krill certification by David Jolly published June 23 in The New York Times quotes Sidney Holt as saying the problem with the MSC process was that the outsourcing of fishery assessments to commercial contractors paid by the fisheries created a conflict of interest, because the contractors have an incentive to present the science in a way most flattering to a fishery. “It’s like having the prosecutor in court appoint the judge” he is quoted as saying.

Although long retired and now considered by some to have extreme views on conservation, Sidney Holt, along with fellow British colleague Ray Beverton and Canadian scientist Bill Ricker, laid the foundation for quantitative science for sustainable fisheries management through their research in the 1950s and 1960s.

Holt hits the nail on the head. In fact his prosecutor-judge analogy can be taken one step higher in the chain. MSC appoints and pays the salaries of the lawyers who act as the independent adjudicators of formal objections to its sustainability determinations. No objection has thus far been judged by the independent adjudicators to be of sufficient merit to result in overturning an MSC sustainability determination. Given that pre-assessments are confidential, MSC is batting 1000.

MSC eco-certified fish are not necessarily from sustainable ecosystems

2010-06-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

An interesting posting Fishy branding - the ecosystem behind the label by Sally Campbell on the Community of Arran Seabed Trust looks behind MSC-accreditation and explores some of the emerging problems with our new hunger for ‘sustainable’ labelling.

Campbell writes "It underlines a real concern that many of the MSC eco-certified fish are not necessarily from sustainable ecosystems. Certifiers are accredited by Accreditation Services International GmbH (ASI) to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Accreditation requirements. Companies such as Moody Marine Ltd and MRAG Americas, Inc can certify that fisheries meet the MSC environmental standard for sustainable fishing and these organisations duly undertake a programmed check on those fisheries wishing to have the Blue Label from MSC. It was following such a review by a these external organisations that the Cape Hake was re-certified, and the collapsed state of the fishery was even pointed out by the independent reviewer of the certification."

Canadian bluefin tuna fishery to apply for MSC certification?

2010-06-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

The Canadian fishery for bluefin tuna takes place on the Scotian Shelf, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in the Bay of Fundy, and off Newfoundland during the tuna feeding migration which brings large fish into Canadian waters between July and November.

The directed fishery uses rod-and-reel or tended line with a restriction of a maximum of four lines per vessel and one hook per line. A portion of the Canadian harvest is taken as by-catches in the swordfish longline fishery and other tuna fisheries.

Canada’s 2009 allocation by ICCAT comprised 470 t for the inshore fleets, 67 t for the swordfish longline fleet (as bycatch), 20 t for offshore bycatch in the fishery for other tuna species and 2 t for scientific tagging.

ICCAT assesses the western and eastern stocks of northern bluefin tuna Thunnus thynnus separately although mixing between stocks is known to occur and some proportion of the western stock is caught by the larger and wide-ranging fishery on the eastern stock.

Both the eastern and the western stocks of northern bluefin tuna are severely depleted and being overfished. In the most recent scientific assessment of the western stock by ICCAT (2008) two scenarios regarding recruitment potential were considered. Under low recruitment potential, spawning biomass was estimated at 57% of Bmsy and fishing mortality at 1.27 x Fmsy. Under high recruitment potential, spawning biomass was estimated at 14% of Bmsy and fishing mortality at 2.18 x Fmsy. Both scenarios are considered equally likely by ICCAT.

ICCAT found that under low recruitment potential, a total catch of 2,100 t is predicted to have at least a 50% chance of achieving the Convention objectives of preventing overfishing and rebuilding the stock to MSY levels by 2019, the target rebuilding time. Under high recruitment potential, the rebuilding target is higher and a total catch of less than 1,500 t is predicted to stop overfishing in 2009, but the stock would not be expected to rebuild by 2019 even with no fishing.

The TAC was set at 2,100 t in 2007 and 2008, lowered to 1,900 t in 2009 and 1,800 t in 2010. The TAC is intended to stop overfishing by 2010 and to rebuild the stock to Bmsy by 2019. The ICCAT 20 year rebuilding plan began in 1999 but half way through there has been no rebuilding. Although fishing mortality is estimated to have been decreasing recently, the stock is still being overfished (F>Fmsy). The next ICCAT scientific assessment of the stock is in September 2010.

In a press release Friday (2 June) the Canadian fisheries minister, Gail Shea stated “Our Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery is the best managed fishery of its kind in the world today, and we are starting to see the positive results of those efforts”. This statement was made following an informal meeting in Barcelona with Japan, Korea and other nations that, like Canada, voted against CITES listing of bluefin tuna earlier this year. The Minister’s department website has a link to a video it made called “Canada’s Bluefin Tuna Fishery: A Model for Sustainable Management”.

While maybe not a candidate for MSC certification (yet, as far as we know – remember MSC pre-assessment is secret) it would be interesting to speculate how the Canadian bluefin tuna fishery would score under the MSC three principles. It applies targeted fishing gear with minimal bycatch or damage to the environment, it is well monitored, abides by regulations, and is managed by an RFMO based on peer-reviewed scientific advice under clearly stated management objectives that address sustainability. This suggests that a passing grade would be obtained it went to assessment. After all, it is “A Model for Sustainable Management”!

But the question is: Can a fishery on a stock that is severely depleted and being overfished be considered “sustainable”?

By-the-way, COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada) is currently reviewing western bluefin tuna as a potential candidate for listing as a species at risk of extinction under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) based on a decline in the population of more than 80% from historic levels. Given that the Gulf of Mexico is the spawning area for the entire western bluefin population and given BP’s recent little mishap, COSEWIC’s review may be very timely.

Verdict out - Antarctic krill fishery is sustainable because MSC says so

2010-05-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (25 May 2010) MSC released the legally sounding "Supplemental Decision of the Independent Adjudicator on Remand in the Matter of an Objection to the Final Report and Determination of the Proposed Certification of the Aker Biomarine Antarctic Krill Fishery under the MSC Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fishing".

The "Decision" is by the Independent Adjudicator (on staff to MSC) - lawyer Eldon V.C. Greenberg.

In his 4 page ruling he reaches the conclusion "In sum, after consideration of Moody's Response to Additional Remand, I conclude that the response is "adequate to meet the matters raised in the remand" within the meaning of Section 4.9.4(a) of the Objections Procedure, and I confirm the determination of the certification body with respect to PIs 1.2.2 and 2.5.3. I conclude that Moody has cured the procedural defect identified in my remand of May 5, 2010 and provided a reasonable explanation for its decision not to alter the scoring of the PIs in question in light of Watters 2009."

See post on this blog on May 7 for background

So Moody wins another one and MSC can check an additional sustainable fishery to its growing world-wide list.

But what do conservation bodies think? The influential Pew Environmental Group does not like it one little bit. The Pew Environment Group is the conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a US-based non-governmental organization that applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improving public policy, informing the public and stimulating civic life.

PR Newswire reports that "The Pew Environment Group today criticized the decision by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to certify Antarctic krill. The certification gives the false impression that the entire fishery for Antarctic krill is sustainable when in reality it is not."

Gerald Leape, director of Pew's Antarctic Krill Conservation Project (AKCP) points out the main grounds for objecting to the certification of the Aker krill fishery as sustainable:

MSC's standards allow for the certification of a single operator in a fishery. In general, this runs contrary to its mission of ocean protection. If a few ships are acting responsibly but the vast majority are not, the target population could still be at risk of being overfished.
Climate change impacts to species are not considered by MSC methodology. As krill have been proven to be susceptible to climate change, the impact of warming temperatures on the population must be considered, if fishing is to be sustainable.
Numerous uncertainties are associated with the determinants and drivers of krill population size. Though extensively studied, scientists are still learning what affects krill population size. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to set appropriate catch limits.

PR Newswire reports Leape saying: "Unfortunately, perception is reality...The MSC's label falsely advertises the message that all krill are sustainably caught and that consuming krill-based omega 3 supplements or purchasing farmed salmon raised on krill meal is okay. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Ross Sea Antarctic Toothfish fishery MSC certification in question

2010-05-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

FIS is reporting today that MSC Independent Adjudicator Michael Lodge has questioned the scores Moody Marine has assigned to six performance indicators for the Ross Sea Antactic toothfish fishery following an objection made by the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC). Lodge however dismissed eight of the ASOC objections and also rejected an objection against the definition of the “Unit of Certification”.

See previous blog entry on this fishery: http://fishyfellow.blogspot.com/2010/01/case-6-sw-ross-sea-antarctic-toothfish.html

FIS reports that ASOC is calling Lodge’s remand a “victory for science and the Antarctic marine environment.” The Coalition argued that the dearth of data on the stock and lack of scientific rigour in the assessment did not support certification of the fishery as sustainable. Also supporting the objection were the Centre for Biological Diversity and 39 marine scientists under the collective name of Friends of the Ross Sea Ecosystem (FORSE).

FIS reports ASOC Executive Director James Barnes as stating “This fishery should never have been allowed to undergo full assessment in the first place - there are simply far too many unknowns about this highly vulnerable stock, which is precisely why the fishery is officially classified as 'exploratory' by CCAMLR....The adjudicator has agreed with ASOC that Moody cannot justify its scores for a number of crucial indicators.”

Moody Marine has 10 days to issue a “reasoned response” regarding the remand but can apply to Lodge for an extension. The objections process will be finalised once Lodge considers the response and makes his decision on whether the fishery should be certified or not. No fishery has thus far been denied MSC certification based on an objection.

Link to FIS article http://www.fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?monthyear=&day=11&id=36508&l=e&special=&ndb=1%20target=

Objection to Antarctic Krill fishery certification as sustainble by MSC

2010-05-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

On December 4 2009 the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC, a coalition of over 200 non-governmental organizations in fifty countries concerned with the preservation of the Antarctic environment) filed a notice of objection with MSC regarding the sustainability determination of Moody Marine with regard to the Aker Biomarine Krill Fishery.

The Aker Biomarine pelagic trawl krill fishing fleet is a major participant in the Antarctic krill fishery in Area 48 in the Southern Ocean waters around the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia. ASOC and its partner the Pew Antarctic Krill Conservation Project have been advocating for management reforms in the fishery and have concerns about the Aker Biomarine krill fleet’s role in that fishery.

The MSC report by Moody Marine, together with comments from two independent reviewers and Moody’s responses, were published on their website on 6 August 2009.

One of the reviewers, Stephen Nicol, is an acknowledged world expert on krill in the Antarctic. He made a number of critical comments on the report which Moody Marine mostly dismissed. For example, he stated that “There is little doubt that the data being collected are insufficient to detect impacts of fishing – and there is no mechanism to alter the krill management approach even if impacts were detected.” Moody Marine responded that “The reviewer is correct, but his concerns do not render the harvest strategy ineffective, in our opinion.”

In another instance Nicol comments that he is “unaware of any evidence that exists that the [existing management] strategy is effective other than the absence of an obvious stock collapse. Nicol argues for a lowering of the scores in a number of instances, for example “Because of the lack of a mandatory observer scheme, the shortfalls of the CEMP [CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Program] and the uncertainties over bycatch it is difficult to see how information/monitoring can be considered adequate.” Again, Moody Marine is dismissive.

Nicol concludes that “Overall, the assessment probably falls somewhat short of what I might hope given the MSC principles. There are two reasons for this. Firstly the operator has a very short history in the krill fishery and has not yet had a chance to establish its credentials or to fully examine the impacts of its new technology [mid-water trawl continuous fishing system]. This suggests to me that this proposal is slightly premature. Secondly, the proposal assumes that the procedures implemented by CCAMLR in pursuit of its ecosystem approach to management are sufficiently robust to enable the krill fishery to meet the MSC criteria.” Moody Marine considers that although “The harvest strategy has not been fully tested, … monitoring is in place and evidence exists that it is achieving its objectives.”

The outcome of the review resulted in Moody adjusting its scoring as follows:

1.2.1: Score reduced to 90
1.2.2: No change
2.5.1: Score increased to 100
2.5.2: Score reduced to 75
2.5.3: No change

The change in score for PI 2.5.2 has resulted in a new Condition – Condition 3 at the end of this document.

The basis for a 100% score under 2.5.1 is that “There is evidence that the fishery is highly unlikely to disrupt the key elements underlying ecosystem structure and function to a point where there would be a serious or irreversible harm.” Presumably this increase is necessary to counteract the decrease in the score under 2.5.2.

Overall scores for the fishery are now:
Principle 1: 84
Principle 2: 91
Principle 3: 93

This would therefore maintain the determination that this fishery be certified.

The objection by ASOC noted that the company seeking certification was only one of the operators in fishing krill in the Antarctic and felt that for the MSC label to have any credibility it must reflect the impact of the fishery as a whole.

ASOC also criticized Moody Marine for not paying any attention to a report by Watters et al. (2009) which they suggest demonstrates that “recent risk assessments conducted for the krill fishery clearly show that measures currently in place are not sufficient to prevent irreversible harm to several krill predator populations” [WG-EMM-09/12, George M. Watters, Simeon Hill, Jefferson T. Hinke, and Phil Trathan. The Risks of not Deciding to Allocate the Precautionary Krill Catch Limit among SSMUs and Allowing Uncontrolled Expansion of the Krill Fishery up to the Trigger Level.]

Moody Marine argued that the study conducted by Watters et al. (2009) was produced after their final report was completed, but ASOC claimed that this was incorrect because these findings were highlighted in comments by Antarctic Krill Conservation Project (AKCP) on Moody Marine’s draft report. ASOC claimed that Moody Marine “simply chose not to respond to it, but they had ample opportunity to become familiar with this important document, which is being provided to the Independent Adjudicator and should be a part of the formal record.”

The Independent Adjudicator is lawyer Eldon Greenberg, one of three new lawyers recently appointed under salary to MSC to hear and judge objections. He is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Garvey Schubert Barer. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Mr Greenberg was deputy general counsel of the Agency for International Development and general counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Carter Administration. He specializes in environmental and natural resources issues, including fishery management, marine mammal and endangered species. He also teaches international negotiation as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Under the MSC “Objections Procedure” a remand can only be ordered where the Independent Adjudicator determines that one or more of the following circumstances apply: (a) There was a serious procedural or other irregularity in the fishery assessment process that made a material difference to the fairness of the assessment; or (b) The score given by the certification body in relation to one or more performance indicators cannot be justified, and this was material to the outcome of the determination; or (c) It is necessary to remand the Determination in order to enable the certification body to consider additional information.

Although the “Objection Procedure”sounds very legal and official, it is difficult to see that it has any real legal standing. There is no contract in existence between MSC and the the resource owners, the civil public, to make any of this legal and binding – it is just a bunch of rules much like in a game of Monopoly.

The ASOC objection is based on three claims (i) Moody has misapplied the MSC principles in relation to the “unit of certification”, contending that the unit of certification must be the entire Antarctic krill fishery; (ii) Moody has incorrectly applied the MSCs procedures in reaching its conclusions; and (iii) The scores given by Moody in relation to a number of the Performance Indicators cannot be justified.
Eldon Greenberg found, in his judgment, that “Moody explicitly addressed the comments of both peer reviewers, including the one who was most critical of the analysis [Steve Nicol], and had made a rational judgment call about what changes should be incorporated in its report.” Greenberg concluded that this satisfies MSC requirements.

While dismissing other claims by ASOC, Greenberg did concede that Moody should have considered the Watters 2009 report because it was available “substantially in advance of completion of the certification body’s final report”. He stated that information brought to light in a timely fashion by commentators on a draft report cannot be ignored and to do so would “diminish the utility and value of the public comment process”.
Greenberg cites the precedent of the Pacific Hake Mid-Water Trawl Fishery decision where the Independent Adjudicator considered whether new material that arose after the draft report had been prepared would have made a “material difference to the fairness of the assessment”.

Without calling any expert scientific experts, Greenberg passes judgment on the contents of the Watters 2009 report and finds that the report “did not conclude that the fishery was not managed in a precautionary manner, but rather that the management system was not “as precautionary” as previously posited in the event of an “uncontrolled expansion” of the fishery.”

Greenberg finally decides on a “limited remand to the certification body to consider Watters 2009 in the context of the specific PIs where ASOC asserts that this study supports its objections to Moody’s scoring”.

Greenberg acknowledges that ASOC levels a “series of weighty arguments against a finding of sustainability” by Moody based on the role of krill in the Antarctic Ecosystem, lack of an adequate management strategy and the large amount of uncertainty and gaps in knowledge. He states that “I cannot (and will not) substitute my judgment for that of the certification body as long as its finding and determinations have a rational basis in the record and the rationale stated is consistent with the facts found here”.

After considering each issue raised by ASOC under each of the PIs through reams of text, Greenberg repeatedly finds that “I am not persuaded that Moody made a mistake of material fact, failed to consider material information, or acted arbitrarily or unreasonably in awarding the score” on each PI element contested by ASOC.

Finally Greenberg concludes that “Having considered the written submissions and supporting documentation of the parties, I find that, with one exception, ASOC’s grounds for objection…have not been established under the Objections Procedure. However, he did find “a serious procedural error” with regard to Moody not taking into account the Watters 2009 report in the scoring of a number of criteria under PIs 1 and 2. Moody now has the opportunity to reflect on the judgment and make changes, if any, in a response to Greenberg after which he will decide whether the objection is upheld or dismissed.

Note that there was no oral hearing in this case. Written submissions were instead considered and no scientific experts were called. This may reduce the considerable cost for leveling an objection imposed by MSC, to be borne by ASOC.

MSC assessment of BC sockeye salmon enters the adjudication process

2010-04-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

One of the objections to the MSC assessment of the sustainability of the BC sockeye salmon fishery has been withdrawn but the second has been allowed to proceed to adjudication. This is a process under the control of lawyers hired by MSC, although scientific experts may be called by the adjudicator. See http://fishyfellow.blogspot.com/2010/02/objection-mlord-three-new-lawyers.html for more information.

The letter from the lawyer to the objector, the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, can be read here:
http://www.msc.org/track-a-fishery/in-assessment/pacific/british-columbia-sockeye-salmon/assessment-downloads-1/22.04.2010-bc-sockeye-ia-objection-wwss.pdf

The oral hearing will be sometime in late May or early June but it is unclear whether this is a public hearing or in camera. What is clear is that the lawyer alone decides whether the objection is sustained or dismissed. Note that objections are usually based on scientific aspects of the determination of sustainabililty. No objection has been sustained thus far under the MSC process. Therefore the outcome from this hearing will have wide public interest and should be covered by a simultaneous public webcast, so that we, the resource owners, can see and hear that justice has been done with regard to safeguarding our property.

Eco-certification of BC sockeye fisheries

2010-04-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

British Columbia fisheries conservation organizations oppose Marine Stewardship Council certification of BC sockeye fisheries.

A number of organizations are objecting strongly to the announcement today of eco-certification of BC’s sockeye fisheries.

See list of spokespeople here:
http://www.cjad.com/node/1055032

MSC awards re-certification to South African hake

2010-03-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Despite the strong objections of one of the independent reviewers, MSC has just announced that it has decided to re-certify the South African hake fishery:
http://www.msc.org/newsroom/news/south-african-hake-trawl-achieves-re-certification

The offshore hake species and main contributor to this two-species fishery is in a collapsed state and did not improve during the previous certification period. This was clearly pointed out by the independent reviewer of the assessment but apparently ignored by MSC (see earlier post).

The MSC website quotes a spokesman for the client group: “Initially we sought certification partly to celebrate the steady, painstaking recovery of domestic hake resources and partly because we wished to pursue a high sustainability standard for the fishery. We have seen, in the last five years, that MSC certification has other benefits: there is commercial advantage by way of access to other markets and buyers that place a premium on a certified product. Personally, the most gratifying benefit is the way in which certification motivates participants. Certification raises awareness of all fishing stakeholders about the need to adopt best practices with a view to the long term future of the hake resource.”

Painstaking recovery?
High sustainability standard for the fishery?
Do the economic benefits of certification outweigh the facts in this case?

You decide.

Canadian Atlantic longline swordfish fishery certification and loggerhead turtles

2010-03-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

Eco-certification still being considered even as U.S. proposes to list loggerhead turtles as "endangered"

Link to article on Suzuki Foundation website

MSC extends certification of the South African hake trawl fishery while waiting for delayed reassessment

2010-02-17T05:10:00.000-08:00

MSC reports on its website that there have been “unavoidable delays” in the reassessment of the South African hake trawl fishery by Moody Marine. This fishery was first certified as sustainable by MSC in 2004. http://fishyfellow.blogspot.com/2009/10/case-1-cape-hakes.html
MSC has extended certification to the end of March 2010 to allow the ecolabel to continue to hold while the reassessment is completed.

In the reassessment report on the MSC website Moody Marine gives the fishery high passing scores for all three principles and recommends recertification.

The two independent reviewers contracted by Moody were Jake Rice, who is on salary as a bureaucrat with the Canadian federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans headquarters in Ottawa, and Michael Pawson, a stock assessment scientist who recently retired from the famous Lowestoft Fisheries Laboratory. Rice has had a number of previous MSC-related contracts - he was on the assessment team that led to the controversial certification of South Georgia Patagonian Toothfish fishery and Alaskan Pollock surveillance audits and was part of the MSC Objections Panel for the New Zealand Hoki fishery.

Reviewer A (assumed to be Rice) stated “I find no major points of disagreement with the assessment” while Reviewer B (assumed to be Pawson) found major shortcomings. He states that “I nevertheless consider that some of the marks awarded are too high particularly in relation to the stock status of M. paradoxus (which appears to be in a very depleted state) and the lack of evidence that this has been ameliorated during the certification period …I therefore question the assessment that the overall Performance of the South African Hake Trawl Fishery passes in relation to MSC Principles 1, 2 and 3, and that the fishery be certified according to the Marine Stewardship Council Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fisheries.”

It seems unlikely that Pawson will get another MSC contract!

Pawson’s view that M. paradoxus is in a much depleted state is consistent with the published scientific literature. The fishery comprises two species, an inshore species and an offshore species. The offshore species, M paradoxus is the more important of the two in the trawl fishery. According to a report published in the African Journal of Science in 2008 by Rebecca Rademeyer and coauthors, the offshore hake stock collapsed prior to the last MSC assessment (biomass declined by more than 10% from the unfished state) and has not recovered while being managed by an “Operation Management Procedure” developed by fishery consultants at the University of Cape Town. The MSC report only admits to it being at 15% of the unfished state – nevertheless a severely depleted state. Commonly fishery management plans assume that the biomass at 20% of the unfished state represents a precautionary approach limit reference point below which fishing should cease completely.

The hope is that a new OMP under development by consultants at the University of Cape Town will be more effective than their previous one in rebuilding the stock. Maybe, but is that "hope" enough to certify a trawl fishery on a collapsed stock as “sustainable”?

Below are the baseline spawning biomass trajectories for the South African hake from the 2008 paper by Rademeyer

Marine Stewardship Council Loses Its Luster - Full article published by FIS

2010-02-16T04:26:00.000-08:00

A "People with opinion" article by Barry Estabrook, formerly a contributing editor at Gourmet Magazine, has jsut been published by FIS. The article provides an excellent and rational overview of the controversy that MSC is digging itself into with some of the certiciations and recertifications that it is engaged in.

Read Barry's article here: http://fis.com/fis/people/index.asp?article_id=32&l=e

Coalition of BC conservationists files objection to Sockeye salmon certification by MSC

2010-02-11T04:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a coalition of BC conservationists filed a notice of objection with the MSC's head office in London, focusing on the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery. This fishery recently became the subject of a federal judicial inquiry due to a worsening population collapse and widespread concerns over mismanagement.

Posted on 02/10/10 at 12:22pm by Benzinga Staff
http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/m121497/conservationists-launch-official-objection-to-eco-certification-of-troubled-ca

Objection m'lord! - Three new lawyers appointed by MSC to adjudicate objections to certification

2010-02-10T05:20:00.000-08:00

MSC has just announced the appointment of three new lawyers as "Independent Adjudicators" to deal with the increasing number of objections being received to the eco-certification of controversial fisheries as sustainable. So far NO objection has resulted in an assessment of sustainability under the MSC process being overturned, and a number (most?) have been dismissed out of hand by the adjudicator as having insufficient grounds to proceed further.

The MSC website states that the the Independent Adjudicator will assess the objection to determine whether it has ‘a reasonable prospect of success'. This depends primarily on whether:
a. The objection identifies a serious procedural or other irregularity in the assessment process that made a material difference to the fairness of the assessment;
b. The score given for one or more performance indicators cannot be satisfactorily justified by the certifier due to factual errors, omission of relevant information or arbitrariness;
c. Additional information has been identified that is relevant to the assessment by the date of Determination and was not available or known to the certifier.

Most of the objections relate to shortcomings in the assignment of passing scores under the three MSC principles. These objections tend to be technical in nature related to fish population dynamics, stock assessment and the sustainability of management strategies. It is difficult to see how lawyers with no training in these areas could evaluate whether an objection should proceed.

If the objection is allowed to proceed, the certifier is given the opportunity to address the objection and then the adjudicator consults with the objector, the fishery and the certifier in order to determine whether the certifier has adequately addressed the issues raised in the objection. If no resolution is achieved through consultation, the adjudicator will notify all parties that the matter will proceed to adjudication and convene an oral hearing of the objection.

If the objector(s) decides to proceed to oral hearing, they have to undertake to pay costs currently limited to £15,000. During the oral hearing the objector(s), the certifier and the fishery present their respective cases. The adjudicator may seek external expert advice on technical matters relating to the issues raised in the objection. (Hmmmm.....this part worries me a lot....the adjudicator can pick the technical experts...how would the adjudicator know who to pick and whether the advice was independent, expert and objective?)

Following the hearing, the adjudicator issues a written decision either confirming the original Determination by the certifier or remanding the Determination by the certifier. If the Determination is remanded the certifier must submit a written response to the MSC, the fishery and the objector. The adjudicator then either accepts the response as an adequate resolution of the matters raised in the remand and approves the original (or amended Determination) or upholds the objection. The certifier then amends the Final Report and Determination in the light of the findings and this forms the basis for the Public Certification Report.

Link to news item:
http://www.fishnewseu.com/latest-news/world/2811-marine-stewardship-council-appoints-three-new-independent-adjudicators.html

Marine Stewardship Council Loses Its Luster

2010-02-08T05:15:00.000-08:00

From "politics of the plate" by Barry Estabrook

MSC has begun to lose some of its glitter, in the eyes of many of the scientists and environmentalists meeting in Paris Jan 31-Feb 2 at the Seafood Choice’s Alliance’s annual Seafood Summit
http://ow.ly/13WEQ

MSC Certification of Fraser River Sockeye Fishery - ECOFRAUD?

2010-02-08T04:59:00.000-08:00

Fraser Sockeye - Marine Stewardship Council Defends Certification Process

2010-02-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Kerry Coughlin, MSC regional director for the Americas, defends the MSC certification process currently ongoing for four sockeye salmon fisheries on Canada's Pacific coast in a February 1 article published by "The Tyee" http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/02/01/MSCDefence/

The independent MSC certifier for this fishery, Halifax based TAVEL (recently taken over by Moody International), submitted its final report for four Sockeye fisheries - Fraser, Skeena, Nass and Barkely on January 18 2010. The assessment has been ongoing since 2003. In the final certification report by TAVEL, all four fisheries scored high, between 82 and 97 out of 100 accross the 3 MSC principles.
TAVEL Scoring

The MSC process provides for expert review and public comment on the certifier's report before it is finalized. One would have to dig into the documentation to see how extensive these were and whether or not TAVEL adequately addressed them and revised their report. Despite the high score, a number of conditions were set by TAVEL which need to be addressed by the fishing industry within a specified time period should certification be granted by MSC.

Currently the TAVEL determinations are under a 15 working day period during which a party may lodge a statement of intent to object to the determinations reached. Those lodging an objection that is allowed to proceed have to pony up 15K British Pounds to cover the cost of the process which is overseen by an independent adjudicator on the payroll of MSC.

Clearly this is a controversial assessment. The return in 2009 of 1,370,000 was 13% of the pre-season forecast of 10,488,000 and the lowest in over 50 years. Thus far there is no evidence that this decline was due to overfishing and is more likely related to reduced productivity occurred after the juvenile fish began their migration to the ocean. However, habitat and environmental degredation are serious concerns in this regard, including those related to the mushrooming Norwegian-owned salmon farms throughout the region. Canada has launched a Judicial Inquiry to investigate the cause for the run collapse. Some of the genetic components of these four fisheries have also been red-listed under the IUCN http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/135301/0

In the Tyee interview, Kerry Coughlin would seem to suggest that if commercial fishing is not the cause of the Fraser decline, then the decline is not a reason to disallow certification.

Moody Marine International takes over TAVEL

2010-01-19T05:45:00.000-08:00

Moody Marine now dominates the globe as the main accredited certifier for MSC.

Remember this is a private company whose objective is to maximise the profit it makes out of each and every certification. One strategy to cut costs and maximise profits is to swallow the competition. Moody Marine now dominates the MSC certification market and has much more power to determine the price and quality of the product they sell. Before the choice used to be Moody Marine or Tavel. Now it is Moody Marine or Moody Marine!

From fishnewseu.com

MOODY International has recently announced its acquisition of TAVEL Certification Inc. a Canadian based certification company.

TAVEL based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is accredited by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to conduct Sustainable Fishery Certifications and Chain of Custody Certifications. Moody International’s subsidiary, Moody Marine, is already one of the main MSC certifiers.

Details of the transaction are not being disclosed.

Dr Andy Hough, Managing Director of Moody Marine said: “By acquiring TAVEL, Moody Marine is pleased to expand further its global certification capacity. MSC fishery assessments are a long and complex process, and fishery clients and stakeholders must be assured of the stability of their certification body. By supporting ongoing TAVEL assessments at this time and by securing TAVEL’s resources, Moody Marine can ensure that all existing and future projects are completed efficiently and thoroughly.”

Steve Devitt, President of TAVEL Certification commented: “This sale provides TAVEL with access to additional professional and administrative support. We see this acquisition as a win-win for both TAVEL and Moody Marine, but most importantly for existing clients.”

Steve Devitt will remain in a consultative capacity in the medium term, and all TAVEL staff will continue with the company.

Concerns raised over Marine Stewardship Council’s fish label

2010-01-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

From The Times Online November 9, 2009
Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent

An eco-labelling scheme intended to encourage people to eat fish from sustainable sources is being criticised by conservationists.
The collaboration between the conservation group WWF and Unilever, until recently one of the world’s biggest seafood retailers, now gives its stamp of approval to $1.5 billion (£900 million) of business every year. There is concern, however, that the scheme’s blue label, which is put on packaging, is being awarded to fisheries whose stocks are not properly managed or where the ecosystem is being damaged.

The scheme was established ten years ago by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), based in London. There are 58 certified fisheries, with a further 114 in the process of being assessed. It is intended to benefit fishermen by ensuring long-term sustainability of their livelihood and boosting the price of their catch.

The source of the New Zealand hoki [see Case #2] — a bug-eyed, deep-water fish once used for McDonald’s Filet O’Fish — was one of the first fisheries to be certified in 2001. Stocks promptly crashed and quotas were slashed from 250,000 tonnes to just 90,000 tonnes by 2007. While the hoki industry cites the reduced quotas as a sign of pre-emptive good management, conservationists say that they are a sign of underlying problems with the science of how stocks are judged sustainable.

At the other end of the Pacific, the same argument rages over the pollock used to make many of Britain’s fish fingers. The MSC-certified Alaskan pollock fishery is worth nearly $1 billion a year, but despite being rigorously managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service the stock’s assessments are controversial. Populations appear to have halved since 2004, and last year quotas were cut by nearly 20 per cent. Jeremy Jackson, of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, said: “Economic pressures to keep on fishing at such high levels have overwhelmed common sense.”

The MSC prides itself on its transparency and well-regulated objections process, but there are signs that it is not fulfilling its function. Southeast of the pollock grounds, the Pacific hake fishery [see Case #3] was in the closing stages of certification earlier this year. The Monterey Bay Aquarium and Oceana, a marine conservation group, filed an objection, pointing out that the stock was at the lowest level ever observed, down nearly 90 per cent from the 1980s. The claim was dismissed.

To date, no objections have resulted in a rejected application. Only one fishery — for lobsters, in British waters — has been turned down after an assessment has been paid for The MSC uses independent companies to assess fisheries, which critics say leaves the door open to “special arrangements” between them and the fishing companies which pay to be evaluated. The fees are typically between £9,000 and £72,000.

Moody Marine International does about half of all MSC certifications around the world. Like the other certifiers, Moody will provide fisheries with a pre-assessment to assess their likelihood of being accepted. But as Andrew Hough, one of Moody’s lead assessors, admits, “as the market has increased, far more enquiries we get now lead to pre-assessment, and most of those lead to full certification”.

“I wouldn’t say they’ve all come out smelling of roses ... Each fishery has some area of weakness,” he said.

A report by Consumer Focus, formerly the National Consumer Council, adds to criticism of the scheme today, saying it is not convinced supermarkets give the information shoppers need to decide whether fish are from sustainable stocks.

“In theory certification is a great idea, but this scheme has never fulfilled its potential,” said Barry Weeber, of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. “The bar has always been set far too low.”

Rupert Howes, CEO of the MSC, said: “Fisheries science is an evolving business. At some stage in the future standards will be reviewed. In the interim, don’t let expectations of perfection obscure the significant progress that is being delivered.”

NZ Government wades in on the Ross Sea toothfish ASOC objection

2010-01-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

The NZ Ministry of Fisheries has posted (15 January) a Stakeholder Comment on the MSC website addressing the ASOC objection to Mood Marine's final report and sustainability determination:
http://www.msc.org/track-a-fishery/in-assessment/southern-ocean/ross-sea-toothfish-longline/assessment-downloads

The NZ Ministry cites the SC-CAMLR 2009 report and a number of 2009 SC Working Group reports in support of its claim that the ASOC objections are not consistent with the latest scientific information.

As far as I can tell, these 2009 CAMLR documents are not yet in the public domain, which means it is not possible for members of the public to weigh up the objectivity of the NZ Ministry comments. If these comments are taken into account by the Adjudicator, it means that the debate has essentially moved behind closed doors.

NZ intercepts pirate tooth-fish long-liner “Carmela” in the Ross Sea

2010-01-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

A Togolese-flagged vessel Carmela was apprehended Wednesday catching toothfish in the Ross Sea, an area managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing puts the sustainability of the profitable toothfish fishery in jeopardy.

The fishing vessel Carmela was utilising deep sea gillnets – which are banned in the CCAMLR Convention Area and can have deleterious effects on non-target marine animals and the ecosystem through ghost fishing by lost or discarded nets.

Carmela is believed to be the former Gold Dragon, a vessel included on CCAMLR's IUU vessel blacklist. New Zealand reported the interception to CCAMLR such that other Commission Members do not allow the vessel to use their ports or allow the import of fish caught by the vessel.

http://en.mercopress.com/2009/12/20/nz-intercepts-pirate-tooth-fish-long-liner-carmela-in-the-ross-sea

Case # 6 SW Ross Sea Antarctic toothfish longline fishery

2010-01-07T09:34:00.001-08:00

(CCAMLR Subareas 88.1 and 88.2)

MSC Assessment completed by Moody Marine Ltd in 2009- Currently under Objection Procedure (Jan 2010).

Latest scientific assessment available – CCAMLR 2007 (2009 assessment not yet available on the web?)

This fishery is on the Antarctic toothfish Dissostichus mawsoni, a conspecific of the infamous Patogonian toothfish D. eleginoides which is found further north and commonly marketed as Chilean Sea Bass. This means that supply chains (both legal and under the table) are already well developed for the marketing of D. mawsoni around the world.

The “Unit of Certification” (UoC) comprises vessels belonging to Argos Georgia Ltd UK), Sanford Ltd (NZ) and New Zealand Longline Line Ltd (NZ). This poses a bit of problem right of the bat because there are also Argentine, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, South African, Spanish, and Uruguayan vessels involved in the fishery - 21 vessels in Subarea 88.1 and 15 vessels for Subarea 88.2. Some of these countries have been implicated in the collapse of toothfish populations elsewhere.

Both the fishing effort and the catch have been increasing over the last decade. Currently the catch limit is 3,267t (exceeding scientific advice, see below). All vessels are supposed to carry at least two scientific observers, one of which is appointed “in accordance with the CCAMLR scheme”, so IUU catches are considered to be low.

The Ross Sea toothfish fishery is in what is called an “exploratory phase”, during which information is collected on the biology and productivity of the stock - information that will help in doing an assessment of the sustainable yield for a commercial-scale fishery. Although the catches have been increasing, the current stock assessment is still highly uncertain. The catch-at-age data comprise a relatively short time series, and are not very informative for determining current or initial stock size. The tag– recapture data provide the best information on stock size, but the total number of tagged fish recaptured in the Ross Sea is still relatively small. The population model of stock size and yield is therefore uncertain but should improve as more data are collected.

Scientific advice by CCAMLR is based on projections of the modelled stock under different catch levels. The catch level advised is either the constant catch that results in a 10% probability of the spawning biomass dropping below 20% of its median pre-exploitation level over a 35-year harvesting period, or the catch that results in the median escapement at the end of a 35-year period being 50% of the median pre-exploitation level. Which ever one is lower is selected as the scientific advice.

The projection carried out in the 2007 assessment under a constant catch of 2,700t is shown below. This trajectory would be consistent with a stock being fished down towards the biomass that gives MSY and would not be considered to be overfished. However the confidence intervals are wide and there is also a number of untested assumptions in the model. One of these is that the steepness in the stock-recruit model is 0.75. This implies when the spawning stock is depleted to 20% of the unexploited level, recruitment remains at 75% of the maximum recruitment level. While this is a reasonable assumption for a number of species, it is not clear that it is reasonable for this stock until more data are available. If recruitment declines faster with decreasing stock size than is currently assumed, the stock could become rapidly depleted under the 2,700t catch level. Other important uncertainties in the projection are the age at maturity and the age of recruitment into the fishery (see ASOC objection below). Note also that the current catch limit being implemented (3,267t) exceeds the scientific advice of 2,700t.

The Moody Marine Ltd assessment of the sustainability of the fishery resulted in passing scores on all three MSC Principles: Sustainability of Exploited Stock, Maintenance of Ecosystem, and Effective Management Systems. However, they did attach a number of conditions for ongoing certification. Knowledge on the life history and population characteristics of the target stock must be improved. Stock assessment must be improved through a wider tagging program to reduce uncertainty. The impact of the longline fishery on the benthic habitat must be better understood. There needs to be better information of the trophic effects of the fishery and the impacts of bycatch.

An objection to the Moody Marine report was filed by the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition on 11 December 2009 (although a member, the WWF did not participate in the objection). ASOC represents more than 30 environmental and conservation organizations and is the only NGO allowed by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties and CCAMLR to participate in their respective meetings. In their objection, ASOC expressed grave concerns about the lack of a precautionary approach adopted by Moody Marine and the MSC in their determination that the fishery is sustainable and can therefore be certified and carry the MSC ecolabel.

ASOC claimed that there was an absence of any real understanding of its natural history, the impacts of the fishery on stocks, and in stock size itself. They also claimed that, given the large body of information regarding the negative impacts of significantly reducing the prevalence of top predators in ecosystems elsewhere, it is not precautionary to allow it in the Ross Sea, particularly in the face of recent science indicating the age of sexual maturity is a mean age of 16, far different (almost doubled) from the models on which management of the fishery currently is based. ASOC concludes that fishing now and doing the science later is in not precautionary. They note that at the 2009 CCAMLR Fish Stock Assessment (FSA) meeting, the age of recruitment for Antarctic toothfish was revised upwards from 8–10 years to a mean of 16 years. They consider that this, coupled with “juvenisation” of the population (big, old fish removed) means that upwards of 75% of the fish landed up to this point likely have been pre-breeders. The implications of this have yet to be considered by CCAMLR FSA. They also note that both CCAMLR and the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) have listed the Ross Sea in an agreed list of the first 11 of a representative network of marine reserves spread across the Southern Ocean. ASOC submits that certification of this fishery as “sustainable” by the MSC and its certifying agent is contrary to the “ecosystem as a whole” principle and precautionary approach of CCAMLR, given all of the realities outlined in their appeal. Moreover, ASOC claims that the “conditions” proposed by Moody Marine, however likely or unlikely ever to be realized, would not change the problems with the underlying fundamentals.

The Independent Adjudicator, (appointed and on salary to MSC, and therefore not at arms length?) will now determine if the basis of the objection has standing. If not, the objection will be dismissed. If it has standing, then Moody Marine is required to review the issues identified. After review Moody Marine, in consultation (with whom?), may make changes to the Final Report and Determination. If the issues identified in the objection are still not considered addressed (by whom – the Adjudicator?), a specified adjudication process will begin. That process can take approximately three months. Moody Marine has until 5pm GMT 22nd January 2010 to submit their response.

Only one fishery has ever gone past the pre-assessment phase and not passed assessment according to David Agnew, Chair of Technical Advisory Board of MSC. Nobody seems to know what fishery that was. Will this be the second?

Case # 5 SW Nova Scotia / Bay of Fundy Herring fishery

2009-11-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

MSC Pre-assessment review in 2008/09 – Failed

Latest scientific assessment – DFO Canada 2009

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/CSAS/Csas/Publications/SAR-AS/2009/2009_035_E.pdf

Landings in 2007/08 were 54,560t against a Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 55,000t.

Acoustic biomass estimates decreased and are near the lowest in the time series for each of the major survey areas.

Spawning stock biomass in 2008 was the lowest in the time series.

Scientific advice is for implementation of a harvest strategy that exercises continued caution to facilitate further rebuilding is strongly recommended.

Information of MSC pre-assessment failures are hard to come by.

Surely the public has a right to know about those fisheries that fail MSC pre-assessment?

MSC Looking for a new Independent Adjudicator

2009-10-25T07:42:00.000-07:00

I guess the term for the current MSC Independent Adjudicator, Michael Lodge, is up and the call is out to find a new laywer: http://jobs.thelawyer.com/job/442478/independent-adjudicator

The job add states:
"Core to the voluntary certification process for fisheries is an objections procedure that provides for an orderly, structured process by which specific concerns about certification decisions reached by independent certifiers can be formally lodged, reviewed and resolved, fairly and transparently. Within this procedure, the Independent Adjudicator is responsible for the review of contested certifier decisions that is independent of the certifier, objector and the MSC, to ensure that such decisions on certification meet the MSC standard for sustainable and well-managed fisheries."

There are two "independents" in the above text - the independent certifiers and independent adjudicator.

How independent are the independents in the MSC process?

The first there are the "independent" consulting companies (Moody and Tavel are two) certified by MSC. Their motives are profit. If an industry asks for certification then the consulting company first does a confidential pre-assessment. If the fishery passes the pre-assessment it then goes into full certification. We never hear about any failures at the pre-assessment stage because it is confidential. If the fishery goes into full assessment, while there may be conditions attached, there is never failure to achieve certification (as far as Fishyfellow knows).

If an objection is lodged to the certification, then it is the job of the "Independent" Adjudicator, on salary to MSC, to decide if the objections are valid. Since the objections are likely to be on technical issues related to the interpretation of the available scientific data, it is a tough job for a lawyer. And if he/she is salaried by MSC, how independent can he/she really be?

Since the above views may be ill-informed, it would be good to hear the counter-argument in support of the claim of independence in the MSC certification and objection process.

Feel free to comment.

Case #4 South Georgia Patagonian toothfish longline

2009-10-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

aka Chilean sea bass
Certified as sustainable in March 2004.
Recertified on the 17th September 2009.

Thanks to Claire (Comment, Oct 19, 2009) who suggested we look at this fishery.

The Patagonian toothfish lives in deep waters (from 300 to 3,500 metres) on seamounts and continental shelves and around most sub-Antarctic islands. It is a slow-growing, late maturing species and therefore not reslient to fishing pressure. The Patagonian toothfish fisheries off Argentina and around Prince Edward and Marion Islands (under South African jurisdiction) were fished to commercial extinction over short period of time and illegal fishing around Crozet Islands has also substantially reduced that population.

Obviously there would be concerns about the South Georgia fishery as well. A paper in Russian by Shust and Kozlov in 2006 (Вопросы ихтиологии 46(6):791-298) found a decrease in average size and a high percentage catch of immature fish compensating for a reduction in the fraction of large fish over time in the commercial fishery. These could be interpreted as signs for concern.

However, the stock assessments produced by CCAMLR (an RFMO) and used by the consultants for the MSC certification suggest a stock that is being fished down from high unexploited levels towards Bmsy. While not yet at Bmsy, it is projected to reach that level in about 2040 at the current harvest of about 4kt. The last assessment was in 2007 and there will be a new one this year (2009).

After 1985 the longline fishery moved from summer day-setting to winter night-setting to mitigate seabird bycatch. Navy patrols deter IUU and there is strict catch documentation with 100% observer coverage.

The CCAMLR objective for the stock is to maintain spawning biomass above 50% of unfished levels with probability 0.5 and to ensure probability of spawning biomass being below 20% of unfished levels is never greater than 0.1. These conditions appear to be currently met and should continue to be met if the catch continues at the current level of about 4kt.

So, on the face of it, the MSC certification consistent with a sustainble fishery.
Please comment on errors or ommissions – Fishyfellow is not very familiar with this fishery.

Latest assessment from ppt by R. Hillary, C. Edwards, Division of Biology, Imperial College London

Projection from CAMLR assessment in 2007 (broken lines indicate 80% credible limits)

Case #3 Pacific hake (whiting)

2009-10-18T18:20:00.001-07:00

In the final stages of MSC certification (October 2009)

This stock straddles the territorial waters of Canada and the US. During 11-14 February 2008, a joint Canada-U.S. Pacific Hake / Whiting Stock Assessment Review (STAR) Panel met in Seattle, Washington, to review three stock assessment documents authored by US and Canadian scientists. The revised documents and the STAR Panel review were forwarded to the Pacific Fishery Management Council and its advisory groups, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) managers and the PSARC (DFO Pacific Scientific Advice Review Committee) Groundfish Sub-committee.

For the last number of years, the stock assessments were done using the Stock Synthesis (SS2) assessment model by Helser and colleagues (US fisheries scientists). Two alternative assessment models were also presented to the STAR Panel by Canadian scientists, TINSS (Martell) and ADAPT VPA (Sinclair and Grandin). The ADAPT VPA was deemed unreliable but the TINSS model provides a viable alternative to SS2. The STAR Panel chose to endorse the SS2 model as the basis for providing advice to the mangers even though the TINSS model provided arguably plausible but more pessimistic estimates.

The Canadians filed a minority report, a rare event in stock assessment circles where consensus is the norm. The Canadians claimed that the advice from the SS2 of a large increase in the “allowable biological catch” (ABC), if implemented, had a high risk of causing serious harm to the hake stock. They complained that the TINSS model, which was substantially more pessimistic regarding the status of the stock, was, for all intents and purposes, ignored by the STAR review panel. They suggested that prudent management should reduce the allowable catch, not increase it, given the state of the stock.

Throughout all of this, the third party assessment team put together by TAVEL Certification Inc., a private consulting company, continued its assessment of the Pacific hake fishery relative to the MSC standard and reached the conclusion in May 2009 that the fishery was indeed sustainable. An objection to certification was jointly filed by Oceana and Monterey Bay Aquarium on 10 June 2009, during the formal objections period. The Independent Adjudicator Michael Lodge, a lawyer retained by the MSC, denied the objection in early October stating that "Having heard arguments from all parties, supported by written submissions and supporting documentation, I find that the grounds for objection are not made out and there is no basis to remand the Determination to the certification body for further consideration...I confirm the Final Report and Determination issued by TAVEL Certification Inc. on 19 May 2009."

So there we have it, a fishery on a stock that looks like it is either close to the lowest spawning stock biomass ever recorded, (the more optimistic SS2 model) or at the lowest spawning stock biomass level ever (the TINSS model) is deemed “sustainable” and can carry the MSC logo. What are your views? Was the process fair? Were the objections valid? Did Michael Lodge uphold the interests of the resource owners, the civil public?

SS2 Model estimates

TINSS model estimates

Case #2 NZ Hoki fishery

2009-10-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

Certified as sustainable by Marine Stewardship Council in March 2001 and recertified sustainable in October 2007

Fishing methods for NZ hoki include mid-water trawling and bottom trawling. The fishery is managed as one quota management system (QMS) stock although it comprises two stocks, an eastern stock and a western stock. The quota has decreased regularly over the last 10 years from 250kt to the current level of 90kt as a consequence of decreases in biomass.

The 2009 hoki stock assessment results published by the NZ Ministry of Fisheries show that the eastern stock is in the target zone of 35-50% B0 (B0=unexploited or virgin biomass). The western stock however declined to the overfished or depleted zone of 20%B0 for a number of years in the mid-2000s and has only just reached the bottom of the target zone in the last two years.

Based on this slight recovery a quota increase has been proposed for the next fishery year. The NZ Harvest Strategy Standard requires that the risk of a fishery causing the stock to fall below the “soft limit” (20%B0 for hoki) should be less than or equal to 10%. Given the uncertainties in the assessment this has clearly not been the case in the recent past for the western stock. So technically the western stock was being unsustainably fished for part of the period it has been certified as sustainable by MSC.

Depending on the magnitude of the quota increase it seems possible that the western hoki stock could once again fall below the target zone and be at a risk of >10% of being in the overfished or depleted zone again. Is it premature to consider the NZ hoki fishery “sustainable”? What are your views?

The Growing Influence of Eco-certification

2009-10-07T05:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to an interesting interview of the CEO of MSC, Robert Howes, by Bob Searle of The Bridgespan Group. Although it is more than a year old, it gives a number of insights into the MSC psyche. http://www.bridgespan.org/LearningCenter/ResourceDetail.aspx?id=1002#

One concern may be Howes' view that "From the consumer’s perspective, they don’t need to know this amount of detail [the complexities of the MSC standard and how it is applied to determine whether or not a fishery is sustainable]. They need to see the eco label and know that that fishery has been through an incredibly rigorous, often lengthy certification and assessment process." This sounds a little paternalistic. Don't worry your pretty little heads, just trust us, we have everything under control. Surely it is the right of the public to question and challenge decisions that a third party is making regarding whether or not a fishery accessing a public resource really is sustainable?

Case #1 The Cape hakes

2009-10-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

Certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council in April 2004.

The fishery comprises a shallow water species (Merluccius capensis) and deep water species (Merluccius paradoxus). South African hake is by far the most valuable fish resource in South Africa accounting for significant exports to countries such as Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Australia and the USA.

Certification back in 2004 was based in large part on an assessment in which the South and West coast components of both fisheries were treated separately, but the two species were lumped within each component, mainly because catch-and-effort statistics collected from the fishery are not species-disaggregated.

A new fully species-disaggregated coast-wide baseline assessment of the South African hake resource published in 2008 (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/nisc/ajms/2008/00000030/00000002/art00007) estimates that M. paradoxus is at <10% of its pre-exploitation level (i.e. technically collapsed) whereas M. capensis is estimated to be well above its maximum sustainable yield level.

Should a fishery on a collapsed stock still be listed as a certified sustainable fishery by MSC and allowed to carry an eco-label? Should the listing and eco-label be immediately revoked? Or should the fishery be given the opportunity to get back on track in the face of the new assessment?

Eco-certification of wild capture fisheries - public resource

2009-10-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

Marine fish are considered to be a public resource and generally we would like to see them sustainably managed for long-term public good.

Eco-certification of sustainable fisheries would seem to be one way of achieving this. The idea is that if the public only purchases eco-certified fish products bearing a clear and valid eco-label, then there will be a dissinsentive for the fishing industry to engage in unsustainable fishing practices and for purveyors to deal in unsustainble fish products.

Clearly there are three parties involved in this process - us who want sustainable fisheries (hopefully), the industry that wants to make a profit (of course), and the eco-certifiers who want to make a difference.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss the respective roles of the public, the fishing industry and the eco-certifiers in this process. The most prominent eco-certifier at present is the Marine Stewardship Council: http://www.msc.org/ They have been at it for 10 years and currently have 56 certified fisheries around the globe.

So, how well do we think they are doing? Are all these fisheries really sustainable? How good is the MSC standard? Is certification working? Feel free to contribute your views!