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JOHN SACKTON: WWF Attacks GSSI, Declares FAO Not an Acceptable Guide to Sustainability

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [The Editor’s View] by John Sackton — October 15, 2015 — In a stunning display of arrogance and hubris, WWF which served on the Board of GSSI, (Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative) has come out with guns blazing against the GSSI benchmarking tool. WWF claims that certification schemes that meet the GSSI benchmark ‘do not indicate sustainability certification.’ (link)

This stance of WWF, designed entirely to protect their investment in their own model programs, namely the Marine Stewardship Council and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, spits in the face of the FAO Seafood Sustainability documents, which were recently called the most significant multilateral agreements to advance sustainability undertaken by the entire FAO organization.

The FAO Code of Conduct and Ecolabel Guidelines are best practice documents ratified by more than 170 governments, which constitute a legal basis for these governments to set laws and policy that results in long term fisheries sustainability.

At the recent 20th anniversary celebrations of this achievement in Vigo, Spain, FAO personnel showed how this set of documents and practices has essentially stopped the downward slide of fisheries that reached a crisis point in the 1990’s.

Indeed, when compared to other global problems from deforestation, falling biodiversity and extinction, and global warming, the FAO Responsible Fishing documents stand out as having had a profound impact on national laws and legislation that put science first, end overfishing in some areas, and above all begin to reverse the fisheries crisis that became acute in the 1990’s.

Now the WWF seeks to undermine that progress, by frightening retailers and seeking to perpetuate the global consumer confusion over what constitutes a sustainable fishery.

The WWF says “These ‘essential components’ designated by GSSI, can be used to evaluate whether certification schemes are consistent with the FAO CCRF and Guidelines, but not whether they certify sustainable fisheries or farms .”

Instead, the WWF wants the global retail community to adopt the WWF version of sustainability, which they themselves have said can only apply to the top 20% of a given sector.

The reason is that the WWF is not interested in a measure of sustainability, but rather in instituting a system of continuous improvement where the WWF and its allies determine what improvements are needed.

This is the exact opposite of the continuous improvement process of the Codex Alimentarius (Latin for “Book of Food”), which is the collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety. When people’s lives, health, and economic well being are at stake, continuous improvement is done through a rigorous process of scientific review and consensus adoption.  This is the same process used to improve and extend the FAO code of conduct.  But the WWF rejects this approach and instead claims only the WWF and its allies can design a continuously improving sustainability process.

For example, in their statement today they say “the GSSI essential components are not a sustainability benchmark and, as such, do not reflect best practice.”  Companies wanting to source sustainable seafood will need to consider additional criteria, including but not limited to the GSSI “supplementary” criteria. ”

WWF then goes on to suggest that “The GSSI tool does not consider social issues impacting the sustainability of fishing operations. ”

The reason the GSSI does not reflect social issues is because the tool began with an environmental and marine conservation mandate. The best practices to achieve sustainability under that mandate were negotiated and accepted as a legal document by more than 170 governments.

As social issues have become more prominent in the seafood sector, the agricultural sector, and the migrant labor sector, new norms of responsible social behavior are emerging within many appropriate UN international bodies, including the International Labor Organization. As these practices become codified, it may be possible for even the GSSI to adopt a Social Chapter, but for the WWF to criticize them for not having this is simply to try and undermine their strengths so as to maintain WWF’s position as arbiter of global marine and aquaculture sustainability.

At the heart of the dispute within the GSSI board has been the issue of whether the GSSI benchmark is a “pass/fail” benchmark, that provides a minimum credible standard meeting all the scientific and operational requirements for seafood and aquaculture sustainability, or whether GSSI simply becomes a ranking scheme where some participants, like MSC, are awarded A+, while other participants, like Viet Gap, are awarded a D-.

The NGO’s wanted the ranking scheme because they were unalterably opposed to a fundamental aspect of the FAO Mission: not allowing certification schemes to be used as trade barriers to prevent the international marketing of seafood from less developed countries.

A year ago, FAO informed the GSSI board that such ranking schemes were not compatible with the FAO documents on which seafood certifications were based. They said that if the NGOs on the GSSI Board insisted on such a ranking scheme, FAO would withdraw its support from GSSI.

Since every certification scheme on the planet, including the MSC and the ASC, claim they are founded based on the FAO fishing and ecolabeling principles, such a withdrawal would have exposed the NGO scheme for what it was: a power grab to prevent competition, especially to prevent government sanctioned schemes from becoming acceptable in the marketplace.

The GSSI board sided firmly with the FAO, and agreed that the every certification scheme that met the GSSI essential components would be certified as credibly meeting the FAO guidelines.

They retained the optional elements to allow various schemes to demonstrate particular skills or interests in different areas – but not to claim that only those areas represented the true measure of sustainability.

WWF is a major partner with a number of retailers and foodservice companies who are 100% committed to GSSI. In this case, their partners will have to tell them that the long term project of global seafood sustainability is more important than protecting the WWF’s own certification schemes.

Every major buyer has their own specifications.  In some cases it might be that suppliers adhere to a carbon budget, in others it might be a minimum wage, or contract transparancy.  Not every purchase specification has to be bound into a definition of “sustainability.”  When WWF argues that this is the only option, they are simply trying to assert a monopoly claim that only WWF sanctioned schemes are ‘sustainable.’

“WWF is concerned that the GSSI tool will lead to further confusion in the marketplace and sustainable sourcing claims that aren’t credible, ” said Richard Holland, Director, WWF Market Transformation Initiative. “We hope that GSSI will continue to strive to provide clarity to its supporters by ensuring that claims of meeting GSSI components reflect meeting the CCRF and FAO Guidelines, not certification of sustainable seafood, that the assessment guidance is clear and applied consistently, and that assessments are completed accurately by independent experts. ”

What Holland failed to understand is that the GSSI tool as released is incredibly strict and robust, and that it represents a real accomplishment for a certification scheme to meet its requirements.

But more importantly, WWF and Holland failed to see how valuable the GSSI is as a roadmap.

If a country like Vietnam or Indonesia wants to design laws, practices and enforcement mechanisms that can be certified by a third party as meeting the GSSI criteria, they need a road map. They need to know where to improve, where to put their resources, where to invest.

The WWF wants to overthrow all of that, and replace it with the slogan “Ask the WWF.” This is simply not a valid option for the 170+ countries that have committed to the FAO code.

The fact that WWF would fail to grasp how significant the GSSI is in advancing global seafood sustainability, and would in fact publicly try to undermine it by pissing on it to their retail and foodservice partners, is the ultimate act of selfish corruption.

In this case, WWF is stating its own institutional pride and power is more important than one of the greatest advances in global seafood sustainability in a generation.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

NMFS Moves to Add Marine Mammal Rules Similar to Turtle Excluder Laws; May Ban Some Seafood Imports

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — August 11, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries has published a notice in the Federal Register today about rules for foreign seafood exporters regarding marine mammals.

Although there is a five year window for implementation, the new rules would require certification for any export fishery that interacts with marine mammals. Unless the foreign country had a program certified as effective by NMFS for reducing marine mammal bycatch mortality, exports from that fishery would be prohibited into the US.

The operation of the program appears similar to the Turtle Excluder Laws, which require tropical shrimp producing countries to certify the use of turtle excluders for wild shrimp, if they intend to export such shrimp to the US.

Over the years, exports have been suspended from some countries for failure to comply, with the most recent being Mexico whose wild shrimp exports were suspended for a year.

Fisheries that interact with marine mammals include yellowfin tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, where dolphins are at risk, many longline fisheries that have marine mammal bycatch; large scale driftnet fisheries, and even potentially pot fisheries like lobster.

In the US, lobster gear has been modified to reduce whale interactions, and entanglement is recognized as the leading cause for marine mammal bycatch globally.

In order to export to the US, once the rule is fully in effect, a foreign country would have to meet the following qualifying conditions before a fishery that interacts with marine mammals could export to the US:

1. Marine mammal stock assessments that estimate population abundance for marine mammal stocks in waters under its jurisdiction that are incidentally killed or seriously injured in the export fishery;

2. An export fishery register containing a list of all vessels participating in an export fishery under the jurisdiction of the harvesting nation, including the number of vessels participating, information on gear type, target species, fishing season, and fishing area for each export fishery;

3. Regulatory requirements (e. g., including copies of relevant laws, decrees, and implementing regulations or measures) that include:

(a) A requirement for the owner or operator of vessels participating in the fishery to report all intentional and incidental mortality and injury of marine mammals in the course of commercial fishing operations; and

(b) A requirement to implement measures in export fisheries designed to reduce the total incidental mortality and serious injury of a marine mammal stock below the bycatch limit. Such measures may include: Bycatch reduction devices; incidental mortality and serious injury limits; careful release and safe-handling of marine mammals and gear removal; gear marking; bycatch avoidance gear (e. g., pingers) ; gear modifications or restrictions; or time- area closures.

4. Implementation of monitoring procedures in export fisheries designed to estimate incidental mortality and serious injury of marine mammals in each export fishery under its jurisdiction, as well as estimates of cumulative incidental mortality and serious injury for marine mammal stocks in waters under its jurisdiction that are incidentally killed or seriously injured in the export fishery and other export fisheries with the same marine mammal stock, including an indication of the statistical reliability of those estimates;

5. Calculation of bycatch limits for marine mammal stocks in waters under its jurisdiction that are incidentally killed or seriously injured in an export fishery;

6. Comparison of the incidental mortality and serious injury of each marine mammal stock or stocks that interact with the export fishery in relation to the bycatch limit for each stock; and comparison of the cumulative incidental mortality and serious injury of each marine mammal stock or stocks that interact with the export fishery and any other export fisheries of the harvesting nation showing that these export fisheries: (a) Does not exceed the bycatch limit for that stock or stocks; or

(b) Exceeds the bycatch limit for that stock or stocks, but the portion of incidental marine mammal mortality or serious injury for which the exporting fishery is responsible is at a level that, if the other export fisheries interacting with the same marine mammal stock or stocks were at the same level, would not result in cumulative incidental mortality and serious injury in excess of the bycatch limit for that stock or stocks.

The next step will be a formal comment period, after which NOAA will issue the final rule.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

Gulf of Alaska Groundfish to Reopen After NMFS Allocates 1600 Additional Chinook Salmon as Bycatch

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] — August 10, 2015 — NMFS has given Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawlers in the non-rockfish program Sector an additional 1,600 Chinook salmon to their prohibited species catch (PSC) allowance in an emergency ruling.

The implementation of the emergency decision was done after the North Pacific Management Council (NPFMC) recommended an emergency rule in a 10-1 vote during its June meeting. On May 3, the Gulf of Alaska groundfish sector was forced to close after fishermen unexpectedly reached its annual 2,700 Chinook salmon allowance in the Western and Central Gulf of fishery.

According to NMFS the additional limit of 1,600 Chinook salmon PSC is likely to restore a substantial portion of the forgone groundfish harvest and associated revenue made unavailable by the closure. It will allow the sector to harvest its recent average amount of groundfish for the remainder of 2015, while keeping the total Chinook salmon PSC well below the annual threshold for all Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries.

“NOAA Fisheries has determined that an emergency exists because the early closure of the Non-Rockfish Program CV Sector’s groundfish fisheries is causing significant economic detriment to harvesters, processors and the community of Kodiak,” NMFS said in a press release on Friday.

A previous PSC management action, Amendment 93 to the FM was approved in June 2011 to limit Chinook salmon PSC to 25,000 Chinook salmon in the Western and Central GOA pollock trawl fisheries.

Because the Western and Central GOA non-pollock trawl fisheries were without a Chinook salmon PSC limit prior to 2014, the Council recommended that Chinook salmon PSC limits be extended to these fisheries under Amendment 97 to the FMP.

Amendment 97 to the FMP limits Chinook salmon PSC to a total of 7,500 Chinook salmon for the Western and Central GOA non-pollock trawl fisheries – 2,700 for the Non-Rockfish Program CV Sector, 3,600 for the Catcher/processor Sector, and 1,200 for the Rockfish Program CV Sector.

New data has shown that previous estimates of PSC for this sector were not representative of recent PSC use.

The additional allocation of 1,600 Chinook salmon would be consistent with the overall goals of Chinook salmon PSC management in the GOA trawl fisheries and would not substantially increase Chinook salmon PSC use relative to established limits NMFS said.

Based on current and anticipated incidental catch of Chinook salmon in the GOA trawl fisheries, NMFS anticipates that total Chinook salmon PSC by GOA trawl vessels is unlikely to exceed 32,500 Chinook salmon, well below the annual threshold of 40,000.

This temporary rule will mitigate the costs of the closure to participants in the fishery while the Council develops an FMP amendment to permanently address this situation.

This emergency rule is effective upon publication in the Federal Register today and will last until December 31, 2015, or until the new PSC limit of 1,600 Chinook salmon is reached by the Non-Rockfish Program CV Sector.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

KEN COONS: Research Shows Path to a Sustainable Seafood Industry

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] (Opinion) By Ken Coons — August 6, 2015 — One of the striking things about fishery management here in the Atlantic Region is how often the academics, the regulators, and the fishing and seafood industry talk past each other.

The folks with scientific expertise often speak a language that’s difficult for the layman to understand. Regulators, for their part, are in a defensive crouch distracted by endless litigation and whipsawed by recreational and commercial fishing groups along with their elected state and Congressional representatives and often the media as well. The fishing and seafood industry, for its part, wants cost effective timely research results. Commercial and recreational groups are united in their call for “better science” to address regulatory restrictions.

Too often these three sectors – academics, regulators and the fishing and seafood industry – are classic examples of stovepipes, not collaboration.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, a bold and expanding model of collaboration is happening right now. It is an industry-led collaborative research program that addresses urgent scientific problems. Specifically, the work is focused on reducing the uncertainties in fisheries assessments. The goal is to achieve both sustainable fisheries and a sustainable fishing and seafood industry.

This new program, the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCeMFiS), is one of the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) supported by the prestigious National Science Foundation. These partnerships are specifically designed by the NSF to promote cooperative research between the academic community and industry. (SCeMFiS is the only fisheries-oriented IUCRC.)

In addition to providing an important imprimatur of legitimacy onto the cooperative research work SCeMFiS is doing under an initial five-year program, NSF’s funding largely covers administrative costs so that industry investments in research flow directly through to actual work and results.

Research institutions that participate in SCeMFiS projects are restricted to a 10 percent indirect cost allowance factor which is way below common practice. The result is a very cost-effective research program for industry sponsors.

The industry sponsors provide critical financial support. All decisions about which research projects to pursue are guided by an Industry Advisory Board (IAB) comprised of industry partners with voting rights. The IAB functions like a Board of Directors. Membership is open to any company or group that is interested in improving science for fisheries management.

Full Partners have two votes on the Industry Advisory Board at an annual cost of $50,000; Associate Partners, at $25,000, have one IAB vote.

To date, the full industry partners on the IAB are the NFI Clam Committee along with the NFI Scientific Monitoring Committee and the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Associate Partners are: Atlantic Capes Fisheries, Inc.; Garden State Seafood Association; LaMonica Fine Foods; Lunds Fisheries Inc.; Surfside Seafood Products.

The Advisory Board is fortunate to have the guidance of Russ Brown of the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Science Center in Woods Hole and John Boreman, SSC Chair of the Mid- Atlantic Fishery Management Council, to ensure, insofar as possible, that data developed by a given project will be used in future assessments (otherwise the project does not go forward).

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) and the College of William and Mary Virginia Institute of Maine Science (VIMS) collaborated to form the Science Center with USM as the lead institution.

Eric Powell, PhD, is the Principal Investigator at USM and Roger Mann, PhD, is the Principal Investigator at VIMS. Dr. Powell was previously at
Rutgers and he and Dr. Mann had worked together with the surf clam/ocean quahog industry on urgent issues. It’s not surprising, therefore, that a good deal of the early research work of the Science Center for Marine Fisheries has focused on research important to the continued viability and employment capacity of the surf clam/ocean quahog industry.

For example, federal clam assessment has now moved to an industry vessel rather than a NOAA vessel. The clam dredges in commercial use are designed to allow juvenile clams to escape, so to conduct a proper resource assessment, a research dredge with a liner was developed to capture juvenile clams. A subsequent project developed an innovative research dredge with adjustable bars in order to capture juvenile clams. (The industry paid the $75K required to develop, fabricate and test this research dredge.)

To allow for accurate assessment despite broken shells a related VIMS project determined how the overall dimensions of an intact clam shell could be reliably inferred from a portion of the broken shell – this was possible since most shells break along the same lateral line.

The ocean quahog is believed to be the oldest living animal on earth. The resource is not classified as “overfished,” but an important project is underway to estimate age and frequency of recruitment. This project is also being used as a teaching tool to demonstrate effects of climate change.

Dr.Powell has also established an advisory team for marine mammal assessment which includes the University of Washington and two other
groups. Marine mammal interactions are a serious concern of fishery management in most coastal regions. There are currently uncertainties in marine mammal stock abundance and bycatch estimates that urgently need to be addressed.

The SCeMFiS is also working with a distinguished team of independent scientists who aren’t affiliated with either USM or VIMS to bring their expertise to bear on important assessment issues. They include Steven Cadrin, PhD, a former stock assessment scientist for 20 years with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and currently at SMAST and Jean-Jacques Maguire, with a lifetime career in international fisheries management issues with DFO, ICES, ICCAT, and the SSC of the NEFMC. He is currently a consultant to a wide range of international clients.

At USM, and also part of the team, is Robert Leaf, PhD, with a background in modeling to achieve effective conservation and management of fisheries. His current work is on stock assessment of Gulf menhaden blue crab and Mississippi red drum.

From all of the above it is clear that this is a new day in fisheries management research. The research capabilities of the Science Center are already lined up and demonstrating results. Future work will be set by those who have invested in partnerships with the assurance that only work which is likely to be influential in regulatory decisions will be funded and go forward.

Now is the time for companies, associations and other entities to step up and fill out the industry leadership role.

By collaborating with others, partners gain access to work that would be cost prohibitive on an individual basis. Accurate resource assessments are vital to protecting access to fisheries while promoting sustainability. This cost effective industry-led collaborative research program, endorsed and supported by the National Science Foundation, is a unique opportunity for industry participation.

For more information go to: scemfis.org [2]

To join the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCeMFiS) contact:

Jeff Kaelin, SCeMFiS Chair at jkaelin@lundsfish.com

Guy Simmons, SCeMFiS Vice-Chair at guy@seaclam.com|

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

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