Silly WWF for not knowing that trawling is actually good for the environment!

The World Wildlife Fund has attempted to carve out an ENGO niche for itself that is to the right of most other ENGOs.  It likes to show that it can work as partners with industry, governments, RFMOs (regional fisheries management organizations) like NAFO, and with organizations like the Marine Stewardship Council to achieve sustainable fisheries and less damaging fishing practices.

However the partnership between MSC and the WWF hit a bump last week when MSC demanded that a video supporting MSC but critical of trawling be pulled from public view following outrage from the fishing industry (many MSC certified fisheries are trawler fisheries).  WWF dutifully complied.  See, trawling is actually a good way to catch fish, not bad!  Silly WWF for not knowing this!  If they want to hang with the MSC they better smarten up their act!

WWF states: "While our intention was to support fisheries that have made the commitment to MSC and sustainability, we want to be responsive to our industry partners and their concerns. As such, we have removed the video from public sources."

Thanks to wonders of the internet, the video is still available here for your viewing pleasure:
http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/tv-commercials/wwf-we-dont-farm-like-this-17984155/

Read more here:
http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/marketer-news/wwf-pulls-we-dont-farm-like-this-amid-industry-complaints-89379

MSC upsets fisheries by backing WWF video

The Association of Sustainable Fisheries (ASF) has addressed a letter of protest to MSC chief executive Rupert Howes, over a video portraying commercial fishing practices as damaging to the environment.

This includes practices used by many MSC Certified fisheries!!!

Read more here:

http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2013/09/18/msc-upsets-fisheries-by-backing-wwf-video/#.UjrzA2TF2Ff

US gives the boot to MSC?

Legislation introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska on Sept. 18 would prohibit federal agencies from using certification schemes when considering or labeling any domestic seafood catch as sustainable.

"It is bad federal policy to allow third party certifiers, including foreign non-governmental organizations, to decide what seafood is allowed to be sold in national parks, or procured by federal agencies, Murkowski said.

Not too long ago, wild Alaska salmon served as the flagship species for the London-based Marine Stewardship Council, she said. "Now MSC is disparaging the "sustainability of Alaska salmon. MCS and NGOs like them have political agendas, lack transparency, and use their certification schemes to inappropriately influence federal and state fisheries management."

- See more at: http://www.thecordovatimes.com/article/1338legislation-addresses-seafood-sustainability#sthash.sdNMKVzx.dpuf

Bluewashing and lollipops – MSC sustainable fisheries certification under pressure

There have been two recent provocative contributions to the growing discussion of the Marine Stewardship Council sustainable  fisheries certification scheme.  The first is a well-researched three-part investigation by Daniel Zwerdling and Margot Williams of NPR aired on MorningEdition and All Things Considered in February 2013.

Zwerdling and Williams highlight several shortcomings of MSC sustainability certification, including the conditional certification of fisheries that are not sustainable but which may become sustainable if identified shortcomings are addressed.  MSC considers that conditional certification provides an incentive to improve.  However, as Susanna Fuller, co-director of marine programs at Canada's Ecology Action Centre in Halifax told Zwerdling and Williams, that’s like telling a child, "You've been really bad, but I'll give you a lollipop, and then I want you to show me how much better you can be…It just doesn't work, right? You've already got the lollipop."

Rupert Howes, the MSC's London-based CEO, defends the lollipop approach and says that there is evidence that conditional certification works.  He points out that if MSC were in the business of only giving lollipops to perfectly behaved fisheries they wouldn’t hand out many lollipops!  

Even if Howes is right about the lollipop effect, the “certified sustainable seafood” label is misleading to consumers.  The MSC blue logo does not necessarily mean that a product comes from a sustainable fishery.  Instead it may come from a fishery, such as the Canadian Atlantic long-line Sword fish fishery, which catches two sharks which are discarded, a significant proportion dead, for each swordfish landed.   Or it may come from a depleted stock such as offshore South African Hake which, if recovering at all, has a long way to go before the fishery can be considered sustainable.  Or it may come from the Ross Sea Toothfish fishery, a fish stock about which not enough is even known to determine what a sustainable catch would be.  These fisheries do not meet widely accepted sustainability conditions, but products from these fisheries display the MSC blue “certified sustainable seafood” sealof approval.

The second contribution to MSC shortcomings is a paperpublished in the current edition of the scientific journal BiologicalConservation by Claire Christian of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, and colleagues.  They reviewed the 19 formal objections to MSC certifications made over the last 15 years in the course of certifying more than 170 fisheries.  These objections are costly to file and are subject to a complicated quasi-legal MSC process which has rejected all but one objection. 

Claire Christian and colleagues conclude from their study that the MSC principles for sustainable fishing are too lenient and discretionary, and allow for overly generous interpretation by third party certifiers (private for-profit consulting companies) and MSC hired adjudicators.  Contrary to MSC claims, MSC-certified fisheries are not all sustainable and certified fisheries are not necessarily improving (the hoped-for lollipop effect).  Even further, they note that genetic detection studies show that not all products with the MSC logo actually come from MSC certified fisheries.  

Consequently they conclude that the MSC label may be misleading both consumers and conservation funders.  They consider that if MSC does not overcome these problems their blue certified sustainable seafood logo will be characterized as nothing more than “bluewashing”.

Overfished and overfishing are the new sustainable?

In a multi-authored article (22 authors) published online in the open access journal PLOS in August 2012, the claim is made that fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship council are in better shape than those that are not as well as those that failed the MSC confidential pre-assessment  process. 

Two initial observations: (i) About half of the authors are directly or indirectly associated with MSC.  (ii) Data on those stocks that failed pre-assessment are not available for scrutiny because of a confidentiality agreement.

There are currently 132 MSC certified fisheries, yet the authors of the paper only examine the state of 74 of these (56%).  The required data were not available for the other 58 stocks. This constitutes a potentially biased sample of certified stocks.  It seems likely that those stocks without adequate data could be in worse shape, or at best their status is more uncertain.

      

Of 74 stocks examined only 32 (43%) had a stock assessment adequate for determining whether overfishing was taking place (fishing mortality or exploitation rate higher than that which would result in maximum sustainable yield or MSY) or whether the stock was overfished (below 50% of the biomass that generates MSY).  It is of considerable concern that fisheries are certified as sustainable on stocks for which such basic information regarding sustainability is lacking.

In addition to the 32 stocks, the authors were able to fit a Schaefer surplus production model to the data, or to combine a Schaefer surplus production model with the existing stock assessment model to estimate MSY related information for 13 additional stocks.  The methods used to fit the model have previously been published.   However, for a number of reasons it is unlikely that their approach would garner support through a peer review process on individual stock assessments; otherwise it would surely already be in use in these assessments.

 

Of the 32+13=45 stocks for which overfishing and overfished status could be determined, 8 MSC certified stocks are currently subject to overfishing while 4 certified stocks are overfished.  One could thus conclude that the MSC certification definition of sustainable fisheries  includes overfishing and overfished stocks.
 

Of the 4 overfished MSC certified stocks, only one has had its certification suspended.  The authors point out that the other three are above their respective biomass limit reference point, and therefore above the level where serious and possibly irreversible harm to the stock productivity is considered to occur.  It is arguable whether merely having the stock above the biomass level where serious and potentially irreversible harm occurs is sufficient grounds to consider a fishery sustainable.

Of the MSC certified stocks where overfishing is taking place, 4 are above the biomass that gives MSY which the authors consider to be less of a concern than overfishing on the other 4  certified stocks which have a biomass below the MSY level.   One of these stocks of concern is the South African Deep Water Hake, “poster-child” for a recent MSC-produce dvideo.  North Sea Saithe continues to be certified by MSC even though it is overfished and overfishing is continuing.

Although the authors find that MSC certified fisheries are healthier than those that are not certified or that failed confidential MSC pre-assessment for certification, they also note that this divergence was largely established before MSC certification commenced in 1999.  It is therefore not a consequence of certification.

The main criticism of MSC certification by environmental groups and informed members of the general public is that it sets the sustainability bar too low in some cases.  Stocks on which fisheries are certified as sustainable should be near or above the MSY biomass and should be exploited below the MSY exploitation rate.  They should not include fisheries in which the stock is currently overfished, or where overfishing is taking place, even if it is anticipated that overfishing will cease at some point so that the stock will recover to the MSY level in the future.

Consumer confidence in the MSC brand will be diminished if fisheries are certified in cases where the stock is overfished or overfishing is occurring , or where there are insufficient data to reliably make such a determination.

What is a sustainable fishery?

It seems that nobody has the answer.  At least not an answer that is widely supported by environmentalists, fisheries managers, fisheries scientists, third party certifiers and the fishing industry.

A clear, succinct and widely adopted definition of a sustainable fishery would provide a benchmark against which individual fisheries could be compared.  It would cut down on the wiggle room jargon of “conditionally sustainable”, “on the road to being sustainable” and “more sustainable than it was”.  Simply put, a fishery would be deemed currently either “sustainable” or “not sustainable” based on a few carefully chosen and measurable conditions.

Currently MSC requires 23 criteria to be addressed under three principles in order to determine whether or not a fishery is sustainable.  Each of these criteria has one or more sub-criteria, each with an associated performance indicator that has to be scored and added together to determine a pass or fail.   It is a complex system which allows depleted fisheries, data poor fisheries and fisheries with collateral environmental damage to be certified conditionally sustainable provided a plan is proposed to ameliorate these flaws.  This leaves the public confused and environmental groups shaking their heads.  

Unfortunately scientific experts do not agree on a definition of a sustainable fishery. 

In the “Comments” section of the Washing Post related to the article “Some question whether sustainable seafood delivers on its promise” (by Juliet Eilperin, Published: April 22 2012),  Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington draws the distinction between sustainability as a state of a stock, and sustainability as a process. He believes that “sustainability is clearly the result of a process, stocks can be overfished, by anyone's definition, and still be sustainable if the management system responds to changes in abundance and reduces fishing pressure allowing stocks to rebuild”.

The notion, that a fishery on a stock in a depleted state can be considered “sustainable” provided there is a management process in place to reduce fishing pressure and allow the stock to rebuild in the future, is highly controversial.

In contrast, many would argue that a sustainable fishery is one in which overfishing is not taking place and the stock is not overfished at the present time.  In other words the “process” should have already led to the stock being rebuilt before the fishery on that stock can be termed “sustainable”.

Translated into fisheries science jargon, a sustainable fishery is one in which fishing mortality is on average below Fmsy (no overfishing) and spawning biomass is on average above Bmsy (not overfished) at the present time. 

Here Fmsy is the fishing mortality that gives maximum sustainable yield on average and Bmsy is the average spawning stock biomass that results from fishing at Fmsy.  

Secondary but important considerations include a societally acceptable low level of collateral  damage through ecosystem alteration, bycatch impacts and habitat destruction.  

Is sustainable seafood really sustainable?

A recently published paper in the journal Marine Policy by German scientists Rainer Froese and Alexander Proelss has attracted the attention of the Washington Post and other media. 

The paper takes issue with sustainability certifications of marine fisheries by the Marine Stewardship Council and the Friends of the Sea.

 

They examined the most recent estimates of current biomass, (B) biomass at maximum sustainable yield (Bmsy), current fishing mortality (F) and fishing mortality at MSY (Fmsy) from national or international fisheries bodies and published papers for 71 MSC certified stocks for which they could find such information.

 

For 11% of these stocks the information was insufficient to make a judgement about stock status or exploitation levels.  31% of the stocks with sufficient information were overfished and were currently subject to overfishing.

 

They define “overfished” as those stocks where B is less than Bmsy and "overfishing" as taking place when F exceeds Fmsy.  They allow some latitude in that if the ratio B/Bmsy is  greater than 0.9 or F/Fmsy is less than1.1 it is not included in the percentage total of overfished and overfishing.

National fisheries agencies and international fisheries organizations tend to be somewhat coy regarding their specific definition of sustainability with respect to marine fisheries.
  

The US, under the Magnuson–Stevens Act, is an exception in this regard although the criteria may vary somewhat on a stock by stock basis.  Commonly the US definition of “overfishing” is the same as that adopted by Froese and Proelss (F>Fmsy) but the US tends to be more tolerant with regard to the definition of overfished, commonly requiring the stock to  be above 50% of Bmsy or 50% of maximum spawner potential (spawner per recruit).

Under Principle 1 of their standard, MSC ideally requires that fisheries are managed so that they fluctuate around Bmsy or higher although stocks can still be certified under this criterion if they are above 50%Bmsy.  Of course there are many MSC loopholes around this that allow fisheries to be certified even where there are no reliable estimates of where the stock is relative to these levels.  Fmsy does not factor directly into the MSC certification standard, so that it is feasible that fisheries in which overfishing is taking place, such that the stock will be depleted over time, can still be certified as sustainable.

While Froese and Proelss may raise the bar a little too high, stocks that are consistently below Bmsy or are being fished consistently above Fmsy should not be given sustainable fishery labels.  Also, data poor fisheries cannot be assumed to be sustainably managed based on vague and subjective notions.  The fact that overfished stocks subject to overfishing, as well as data-poor stocks, are being certified as “sustainable” brings into question current standards.

National fishery agencies and international organizations would serve us well by developing clear globally accepted and simply applied standards for what constitutes a sustainable fishery. Fisheries that are shown to meet such standards through scientific peer review of assessment of stock status would not be in need of further sustainability accreditation.