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

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.  

Case #2 NZ Hoki fishery

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?