Objections stall MSC certifications of US and Canadian swordfish

Two bids for MSC sustainability certification by pelagic longline fisheries on swordfish have run into objections.  These objections are currently under “adjudication” by an MSC appointed “Independent Adjudicator”.

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

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

Moody was acquired by Intertek for US$730 million in March 2011.  Moody itself swallowed smaller Canadian competitor TAVEL Certification Inc. in December 2009.   

MRAG Americas is sister company to MRAG Ltd. in the UK which is owned by Sir John Beddington, chief scientific advisor to the UK Government.  Sir John is not without controversy.  The president of MRAG Americas is Andrew Rosenberg, a post doctoral assistant to Beddington at Imperial College London in the early 1990s.  Rosenberg went on to become the deputy director of NOAA’s NMFS before leaving to form MRAG Americas.  He is currently also special advisor to Jane Lubchenco, Undersecretary of Commerce and Administrator of NOAA.

The objection to the Canadian longline fishery certification was 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 was filed by the Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) on 27 September 2011 and is supported by Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST), Oceana, Center for Biological Diversity, Ecology Action Centre and the Animal Welfare Institute.

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

More importantly, the objections take task under MSC Principle 2 regarding the impact, and lack of monitoring, of indiscriminate pelagic longline fisheries on bycatch species, particularly those species that fall into 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 Endangerd Wildlife  in Canada considers Shortfin Mako shark to be “Threatened” while Porbeagle shark, Loggerhead and Leatherback turtles are considered “Endangered”.  Under the US Endangered Species Act, Loggerhead turtles are considered “Threatened” and Leatherback turtles “Endangered”. 

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

As MSC appointed and salaried lawyer Wylie Spicer mulls over both objections, as well as stakeholder submissions and the ardent counter-responses of Intertek Moody and MRAG Americas, before coming to his “verdict” as the "independent adjudicator" under the complicated pseudo-legal objection procedure put in place by MSC, remember what is at stake.

Swordfish and bycatch species are public property and should be managed for our long-term public good, and those of our children 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 an alternative to the indiscriminate pelagic linetrawl that you can source.   The North West Atlantic Canada harpoon swordfish fishery was certified sustainable by MSC in June 2010.  It has zero bycatch.

Additional information on the Southeast US swordfish certification objection here 

Should MSC revoke Newfoundland Grand Bank shrimp certification?

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

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

Since 2009 NAFO fisheries managers have set TACs higher 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 action allowed under NAFO rules.

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

This resource peaked in biomass in 2007 and has been in steady decline ever since based on both Canadian and EU survey data.  The decline is expected to continue under  the 2012 TAC set by NAFO.  Is this a sustainably managed fishery?

MSC Surveillance Report - South African Hake Trawl Fishery

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.  

Opting out of MSC mackerel recertification because of cost and threats

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.    

BC Spiny Dogfish – Sustainable Fishery or Species at Risk?

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.  

MSC eco-certified fish are not necessarily from sustainable ecosystems

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."

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

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

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=