Tuna seiners at Pohnpei Harbour. (Photo: Jo Cousins, International Seafood Sustainability Foundation)

ISSF opposes MSC certification of skipjack fishery

UNITED KINGDOM
Wednesday, August 10, 2011, 02:50 (GMT + 9)

The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) want a skipjack tuna unassociated purse seine fishery to gain Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. Independent assessment team Moody Marine has recommended that the fishery be granted certification if certain conditions are met over the next few years.

But a stakeholder in the MSC assessment, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), said it believes this fishery should not be certified as sustainable.

“There are many procedural errors in the assessment, including unsupported facts and unreasonable scoring, which ISSF has detailed extensively in its comments throughout the evaluation process and this week in a notice of objection that was filed with the MSC,” ISSF said in a statement. “The main concern is an overarching flaw with the assessment team’s approach, which failed to take into account the significant shortcomings of the intergovernmental body responsible for managing the entire stock of tuna.”

The first and primary MSC certification principle is that a “fishery [can] only pass if the whole fish stock(s) meet the standard,” but only part of the western and central Pacific skipjack stock is found in PNA waters at any one time, such that a significant majority of the stock exists in waters not controlled by the PNA. ISSF also noted that there is poor monitoring of fisheries that catch skipjack in some regional countries.

The Foundation has also concluded that the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) has been ineffective in implementing management measures. WCPFC has not adopted effective conservation and management measures for overfished stocks such as bigeye tuna.

Even healthy stocks, like skipjack, are not now guaranteed to be managed per MSC standards, ISSF pointed out.

Moreover, the assessment team did not consult all member nations of the WCPFC -- a serious procedural irregularity that hampers the certainty that the certification conditions will be applied.

Among others, another problem is that Moody Marine made incorrect assumptions by stating that 70 per cent of the skipjack stock falls under the management of PNA countries, and believes that the PNA can thus deliver sustainable management of tuna stocks even without action by the WCPFC.

However, a calculation based on the assessment adopted by the WCPFC Scientific Committee suggests that on average, 25 per cent of the stock inhabits PNA waters in any given year, ISSF explained.

By Natalia Real
[email protected]
www.seafood.media

Print