Implementation of Stronger Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Is Top ISSF “Ask” for Sustainable Indian Ocean Tuna Fisheries

May 18, 2017 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:

The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) has released its position statement in advance of the 21^st Session of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, May 22-26.

ISSF’s highest priority item is for IOTC to improve its implementation of monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) tools. This need is particularly key as the Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) continues its work to stem the overfishing of yellowfin tuna occurring in the ocean region.

ISSF urges IOTC to: strengthen the collection and reporting of catch and effort records; adopt the Scientific Committee guidelines for electronic monitoring and a 100% observer coverage requirement for large-scale purse seine vessels; and enforce the minimum 5% observer requirement for longline vessels. ISSF further urges other key steps that address the region’s information gaps, like reforming the transshipment measure to address loopholes and strengthening the IOTC’s compliance assessment process.

“The IOTC showed great leadership last year by adopting harvest control rules for the region’s skipjack tuna stock, and the Commission headed in the right direction by beginning to reduce catches of yellowfin tuna,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson. “But effective enforcement of agreed-upon conservation and management measures must be supported by strong monitoring, control and surveillance systems if the positive impact of such measures on Indian Ocean tuna fisheries is to be fully realized. That’s action we need to see progressed this year.”

Additional asks from ISSF this year include:

Stronger support of data collection, and the full implementation of harvest strategies
FAD management through science-based measures and full implementation of provisions for the use of non-entangling FADs
The adoption of a new level of longline observer coverage that would provide reasonable estimates of total bycatch, such as 20%
Strengthening the IOTC IUU Vessel List, including to clarify listing and delisting procedures, adding common ownership as a listing criterion, and ensuring that flag States cannot veto IUU listing decisions for their vessels
Developing a regional, best-practice satellite-based vessel monitoring system (VMS)
Strengthening the IOTC Resolution on shark finning by requiring that all sharks be landed with fins naturally attached

Read the full position statement.

ISSF’s goal is to improve the sustainability of global tuna stocks by developing and implementing verifiable, science-based practices, commitments and international management measures that result in tuna fisheries meeting the MSC certification standard without conditions. Therefore, ISSF’s appeal to the IOTC and RFMOs in all ocean regions align with performance indicators that comprise the principles of the Marine Stewardship Council certification standard: Principle 1, Sustainable fish stocks; Principle 2, Minimizing environmental impacts; and Principle 3, Effective management.

About the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF)

The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is a global coalition of scientists, the tuna industry and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the world’s leading conservation organization, promoting science-based initiatives for the long-term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks, reducing bycatch and promoting ecosystem health. To learn more, visit their website at iss-foundation.org.

MSC marks 20th anniversary with release of 2020 strategy

April 27, 2017 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

Today, as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) marks 20 years since its creation, the organisation set out its strategy for the years ahead. The plan includes the MSC’s aspiration for a more than a third of global marine catch to be certified or engaged in the MSC program by 2030. The MSC’s ambition is to strengthen engagement and impact in the Global South, Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs), priority markets and species, and with consumers, while continuing to deliver value to MSC certified fisheries.

The release of the MSC’s strategic framework is accompanied by a historical narrative, outlining the organisation’s journey to date. Written by independent journalists from the Press Association, Sustainable seafood: the first 20 years gives a compelling account of the MSC’s origin, challenges and milestones to date.

“20 years ago, the MSC was a bold new idea developed by WWF and Unilever to address the challenge of unsustainable fishing,” says Rupert Howes, MSC’s Chief Executive.“They wanted to create a market based mechanism that would connect seafood producers and consumers through a credible third party certification and labelling program. This program would recognise and reward existing good practice, but critically, incentivise and drive real and lasting change where needed to ensure healthy oceans and seafood supplies for the future. 20 years on this bold innovation has become a proven concept, and a global sustainable seafood movement has emerged to work with all stakeholders to drive this transformation.’’

Read the full release at the Marine Stewardship Council

Leaked WWF report levels harsh criticism of MSC

December 6th, 2016 — A leaked report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) describes “troubling, systemic flaws” within the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification scheme, casting doubt on the integrity of a program trusted by millions of seafood consumers around the world to identify fisheries that are sustainable and well-managed.

The WWF, which helped found MSC 20 years ago, identified a conflict of interest in MSC’s scheme, which charges a licensing fee of 0.5 percent of wholesale value to companies that use its logo to identify their products as originating from an MSC-certified fishery.

“Circumstantial evidence is accumulating that this creates a conflict with MSC’s role as an independent and impartial standard-setting body,” WWF wrote in the report, which was leaked to the Times of London newspaper.

There are now more than 23,000 products with the MSC ecolabel on sale to consumers in nearly 100 countries, according to the MSC. Revenue from licensing fees on those products amounted to GBP 11 million (USD 14 million, EUR 13 million) in revenue in the last fiscal year – approximately 73 percent of the organization’s total income.

MSC has “aggressively pursued global scale growth” and in recent years “has begun to reap very large sums from the fishing industry,” the WWF wrote regarding MSC.

In addition, MSC has used “questionable practices” that have weakened rules meant to prevent overfishing, potentially making it easier for unsustainable fisheries to gain certification, the report noted.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

University of Ottawa catches on to certified sustainable, traceable seafood standards

November 23, 2016 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

OTTAWA – The University of Ottawa is celebrating World Fisheries Day with the achievement of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, solidifying the University’s commitment to sourcing and serving wild seafood that meets the world’s most rigorous standards for sustainable fishing and traceability.

“Aquatic ecosystems around the world are under tremendous pressure from a combination of environmental change, habitat degradation, and over-harvesting. This commitment by the University of Ottawa will make a real difference in encouraging and supporting sustainable seafood harvesting,” says Nathan Young, interim director of the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences.

By choosing seafood with the blue MSC label, uOttawa diners can trust they’re making an ocean-friendly choice that directly rewards fishers, companies and institutions dedicated to preserving healthy oceans and sustainable seafood supplies for generations to come.

“MSC certification is an important marker of ecological sustainability, allowing consumers to know their seafood can be traced to a well-managed, sustainable fishery. This is particularly important given the overall trend of fish stock decline,” says Melissa Marschke, associate professor of international development and global studies.

As an international non-profit organization established to address the problem of overfishing, the MSC runs the world’s most recognized certification program for sustainable seafood. The program recognizes fisheries that manage their fish stocks responsibly and ecologically, and then assures traceability from ocean to plate.

“World Wildlife Fund Canada applauds the University of Ottawa’s decision to address the problem of unsustainable fishing by purchasing Marine Stewardship Council-certified seafood. Overfishing is a serious threat to the health of our oceans, as almost one-third of fish stocks globally are now considered overfished. Choosing MSC means supporting a healthy marine environment by only consuming fish from stocks that are well-managed and sustainably harvested,” says Bettina Saier, vice president of oceans, WWF-Canada.

The University of Ottawa is working towards one-hundred percent MSC-certified wild seafood for its state-of-the-art dining hall, which feeds 7,500 people a day and prepares 20 tonnes of seafood each year. The University ranks as the second most sustainable university in Canada according to the UI Green Metric Ranking.

NEIL ANTHONY SIMS & BRIDGET OWEN: America needs a blue revolution

November 1, 2016 — America needs another revolution. We need a Blue Revolution, to start to grow fish in the open ocean, where they belong. And we should lead the world in this initiative. This is an economic opportunity: we must reverse our $12.9 billion seafood trade deficit. We have the technologies, we have the investment capital, and we need the jobs and the working waterfronts. It is also a moral obligation: over 90% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. America controls the largest ocean expanse of any nation on earth, yet we import more seafood—by dollar value—than any other country. This means that if we quash the development of aquaculture in the U.S., then we are simply exporting the environmental footprint to other countries, where environmental standards may be more lax.

Leading conservation groups such as WWF, Conservation International and Ocean Conservancy now recognize the global imperative for expansion of aquaculture, and are actively working to encourage best practices. Yet Marianne Cufone, of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, (The Hill, October 17, 2016, 01:40 pm) asserts that the “Feds must end push for ocean aquaculture.”

Cufone and her fellow anti-aquaculture activists cling tenaciously to data that is two or three decades old, or cite no data at all, to support their position. This continues the pattern of deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of the impacts of ocean culture on the environment. Growing this industry is vitally important for the health of the planet, for the health of the oceans, and for the health of American consumers. Consider, please:

Planetary health: A 2012 study by Conservation International, titled ‘Blue Frontiers’, conducted a full Life-Cycle Analysis of all water, land and feed resource use, and impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, and concluded that aquaculture was, far and away, the least impactful of all animal protein production systems. We should therefore be growing more seafood to meet the increased demand for proteins. If the 3 billion people that are projected to rise into the middle class by 2050 are eating farmed fish, then the prospects for managing global climate change, and our other ecological challenges, are far brighter.

Read the full opinion piece at The Hill

NGOs applaud new EU measure to combat illegal fishing

January 22, 2016 — Non governmental organizations Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), Oceana and WWF welcome a new European Commission (EC) requirement that all EU fishing vessels, and foreign vessels fishing in EU waters, need to have unique vessel numbers from construction to disposal.

The measure will affect up to 8,205 European vessels.

The decision is a key reform that helps close a decades-old loophole allowing fishing vessels around the world to evade scrutiny, fueling illegal fishing.

EJF’s Executive Director Steve Trent said, “This is a powerful signal by the EU that fisheries must become more transparent. Sometimes the simplest reforms can have profound impacts, and that is the case here.

“It is ridiculous that planes, cars and even European cows have unique numbers to enable lifetime tracking, but fishing vessels haven’t. This has allowed unscrupulous operators to fish illegally in one country and then swiftly change identity and nationality and do the same elsewhere.”

Until recently, a global scheme operated by the International Maritime Organisation(IMO) that assigned unique numbers to vessels for their entire lives specifically excluded fishing vessels.

Read the full story at FIS

WWF and GSSI at Odds over New Sustainability Evaluation Tool

October 28, 2015 — Recently, the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative (GSSI) released its new seafood sustainability benchmarking tool to evaluate fisheries around the world. Working closely with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the GSSI developed the tool to better decipher the multitude of sustainability certification schemes that exist (e.g. MSC, Monterey Bay Seafood Watch). However, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who had been involved in the GSSI development process, withdrew some support when they issued statements last week criticizing the GSSI of not fully examining certification methods and thus not fully evaluating fisheries and aquaculture. WWF also claims GSSI does not consider social issues (e.g. working conditions, slavery) when evaluating a fishery.

Comment by Ray Hilborn, University of Washington (@hilbornr)

Where is the science in seafood sustainability and certification?

It is about money and values – science has been largely lost

Seafood sustainability is again in the news as the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative (GSSI) released its tool for evaluating the sustainability of fisheries. The GSSI tool has drawn immediate criticism from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as they recently published an article titled, “GSSI compliance does not indicate sustainability certification, WWF warns.” This is an interesting development since WWF is on the board of GSSI. GSSI is intended to provide an agreed standard for the wide range of certification and seafood labeling schemes. As their web site says “GSSI is a global platform and partnership of seafood companies, NGOs, experts, governmental and intergovernmental organizations working towards more sustainable seafood for everyone.” So who is right in this case, does the GSSI benchmarking tool tell you if a fishery is sustainable?

At its core, seafood sustainability is about the ability to produce food from the sea in the long term. Put another way, we can ask ‘Are the fishery and its management system operated in such a way that our grandchildren can still enjoy the same production from the fishery (subject to the constraints of external factors such as climate change) as we do today?’

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, whose charge is food security, has been a big supporter of the development of GSSI. For FAO sustainability is about continued food production. During the 1990s when overfishing in developed countries was at its height, many retailers supported seafood certification because they wanted to have products to sell in the future … again a focus on food sustainability. This interest spawned the development of a number of different ecolabels for seafood, of which the Marine Stewardship Council was one of the first. However, the newly emerging seafood ecolabels created their own criteria for the assessment of sustainability without necessarily using accepted standards such as the FAO criteria as a benchmark (although some clearly did anchor themselves to these criteria). While in many other areas of food production there are clearly defined and standards and compliance monitoring bodies, this was lacking for the fledgling seafood ecolabels. This lack of oversight led to the development of the GSSI from a German Government initiative to have clear benchmarking of ecolabel standards.

Read the full story at CFood

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.