World Tuna Day 2021 is celebrated under the corona epidemic that causes many problems in the fishing industry and in the worldwide sustainable management of tuna stocks. And to make thiongs worse, there is the movie Seaspiracy on Netflix, full of fake news that does not bring the sustianable management of tuna fishery one step closer.
The 5 regional tuna fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) that rule the waves. At least they should. (Source Pew Charitible Trusts)
We just celebrated this year’s annual (e-mail) meeting of the international fisheries management organization for the Atlantic ICCAT and its Indian Ocean sister’s IOTC (online) meeting. The Covid-pandemic heavily limited the agenda of both organizations. Only next year ICCAT will take new management decisions on its Eastern Atlantic bluefin stock. But it is necessary to reflect on the ever-growing importance of the Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) that guard our global tuna stocks. The more so, because what will be decided (or not) in these RFMOs will have far reaching consequences for the sustainability of the tuna stocks and the related certification of such sustainable tuna in the coming years.
Let’s start with bluefin tuna. There was quite a bit of disagreement about the first sustainably certified Atlantic bluefin tuna that is now marketed with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certificate. Two leading NGOs in the field, WWF and the Pew Charitable Trusts, have objected to the MSC certification, the most reliable standard of sustainability certifications. According to both, there were too few scientific guarantees that the current fisheries policy would sustain the species sustainably. There were also concerns about the independence of the application of the MSC standard. WWF and Pew were both unsuccessful in their objection procedures: an independent arbitrator decided to admit the Japanese fisheries for MSC certification.
For several reasons this MSC certification of bluefin has attracted a lot of attention. That our sustainable conscience applies so strongly to tuna, and perhaps to all fish, is mainly due to the massive rescue operation that took place at the end of the previous decade to save the bluefin tuna from destruction that took place at the end of the previous decade. It was a kind of tipping point. After all, it looked like we were catching this endangered and most spectacular member of the tuna family up to the point that the last one living in the oceans would end in top quality sushi and sashimi.
The bluefin tuna drama brought together everything that possibly could go wrong in managing sustainability in tuna fisheries
The bluefin tuna drama brought together everything that possibily could go wrong in a global fishery in terms of managing sustainability. The Japanese sushi industry had invested heavily in fishing techniques and fattening farms in the Mediterranean Sea, without much supervision and management. The bluefin tuna nursery rapidly became the scene of boundless greed and massive fraud by corrupt North African dictators, fraudulent tuna farmers in Malta, black traders in Italy, Spain and Croatia and an industrial fishing fleet that did their utmost to sabotage international fisheries policy. ICCAT, where fishing nations and coastal states were supposed to come together to manage Atlantic tuna stocks, was widely regarded as a powerless entity which let things run completely out of hand. It is not without reason that it was nicknamed 'International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna'.
Fortunately, the massive campaigns to save bluefin tuna worked as a turning point. In unprecedented unity, the pillage of the bluefin has been denounced by nearly all marine environmental organizations involved, sustainable fishermen, scientists, and concerned consumers alike. It was one of the most successful campaigns to save a fish from destruction, bringing together radical liberation actions of illegally caught tuna from the nets by Sea Shepherd, the campaigns of organisations like Greenpeace, WWF and Pew, and a ban in the posh Monaco restaurants by Prince Albert.
It worked. Contrary to the gloomy forecast that the Atlantic bluefin tuna would have disappeared by 2010, the population turned out to recover again. ICCAT policy contributed to this on a number of essential points, such as a ban on fishing for young, not yet mature tuna.
Gradually bluefin tuna disappeared from the campaigns. But what remained was the realization that a sustainable choice of fish and good management can make a real difference.
And now there was this disagreement about the first sustainably certified Atlantic bluefin tuna that came available on the Japanese market. Family-owned Usufuku Honten fisheries has a single longline vessel. With a catch of around 55 tons of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the North Atlantic, it is a small-scale fishery that does not carry much weight. But the MSC certification sets a precedent. Other, bigger bluefin fisheries might become certified too. Just at the end of October SATHOAN, a small-scale artisanal fishery based in the South of France, successfully passed the MSC assessment for sustainable fisheries of Eastern Atlantic bluefin in the Mediterranean. It catches 200 to 300 ton a year for local consumption. This time, the independent assessor included contributions from WWF and Pew Charitable Trusts in its recommendations to improve the bluefin fishery. One can see it as a first step to create a common front to fight a problem that will be key in sustainable tuna fisheries in the coming years.
Whether tuna can keep its sustainability certificate all has to do with the RFMOs
Whether tuna can keep up its sustainability and the related certificate all has to do with the way rhe RFMOs manage our tuna stocks. In the case of the bluefin the uncertainties of ICCAT's scientific forecasts and the fishing quota based on them are being questioned, let alone that any Harvest Control Rules are in place. Current catch policy might cause the population to plummet again in the long run. The persistent fraud with bluefin tuna and the lack of enforcement of the rules is not very sustainable either. In a Europol investigation called 'Operation Tarantelo', millions of euros worth of illegal tuna were seized two years ago and 79 suspects were arrested in Spain, Italy and Malta. An estimated one-fifth of the official catch quotas still disappeared into the black circuit, and so far, very little has been done to prosecute the usual suspects.
MSC argued that certification is the logical consequence of the improvements in fish management that the organization strives for. Where fisheries help to improve the management significantly, there should be a reward. That is right. A fishery that meets sustainable standards must get access to the sustainability certification. There is certainly space for improvement for ICCAT management on bluefin tuna, MSC acknowledges. The certification is therefore conditional: until 2025 there is time to improve the approach. ‘It requires the fishery to work with ICCAT, its member states and other fishing organizations - with support of the Fisheries Agency of Japan - to allow this bluefin tuna stock to recover further’, according to the MSC press release. The success of sustainability depends, once again, on the ability of the ICCAT to improve itself.
The bluefin case shows us the way through the complex maze of international sustainable fisheries governance. But at the end of the line, it is more than ever important for international fishery management organizations such as ICCAT to guarantee the sustainability of the stock in the longer term. If not, you can forget sustainable stocks and the corresponding certification.
And that is the point to make: we all know that potentially devastating situations are lurking in the near future concerning the management rules of many other important tuna resources and the way they are managed in the Indian Ocean, the Western and Central Pacific, the Eastern Pacific and the Atlantic. Many of those tuna fisheries which got the MSC-certificate over the past decade will be at risk losing them due to the lack of effective management policies of the RFMOs.
The situation in the RFMOs puts sustainable tuna fisheries in a pressure cooker
This puts sustainable tuna fisheries and the MSC certification in a pressure cooker. In the case of the yellowfin in the Indian Ocean we are in the middle of a growing boycott by European retailers to avoid sourcing their tuna from the Indian Ocean, because of the failing management of the stocks by the IOTC. Consumers want more sustainable seafood, NGOs defend these interests, retailers and traders want to deliver sustainable sourced products to satisfy the increasing market demand and coastal states with a vested interest in sustainable stocks will deliver sustainable tuna.
It is how the theory of Change should work. The weak point in the chain increasingly seems to be found in the RFMOs. Instead of providing international platforms that defend the sustainability interests of fish-eating, fish-trading and fish-owning nations, RFMOs are instead acting as undecided, consensus-oriented organizations where the supply-driven interests of the major fishery fleets and their powerful lobbies usually prevail.
That may have had its own internal logic when the RFMOs were created under the umbrella of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the second half of the last century. But the conceptual thinking about whose common interests of sustainability are at stake when it comes to tuna, moved on to ideas that involve a much broader group of stakeholders. And these demand-driven interests are usually at collision course with the supply driven interests of fisheries when it comes to sustainability.
The case of bluefin tuna shows how an organization like MSC and NGOs like Pew and WWF, who all strongly agree on designing robust harvest strategies that will ensure sustainable and efficient management of the fisheries for the future, might even end up in a confrontation, just because of the failing management structure of the RFMO involved. While their joint interest is to enforce the demand driven interests for managing sustainability on a RFMO level.
The table shows the revised deadlines for each ocean and RFMO based on the MSC March derogation. (Source Atuna.com)
Therefore, the challenge is to make RFMOs work. This is not some abstract future objective. Right at this moment there is a list of agreed deadlines for the Harvest Control Rules to be in place in order to maintain the certifications of MSC-approved fisheries and to apply it in the assessments for those fisheries that want to obtain such certification. (See table above) They relate to skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye and albacore tuna in all big RFMOs. Completion dates are in 2021, some in 2023 and 2024. Practically all the important MSC certifications of skipjack and yellowfin, including the PNA in the Western and Central Pacific and the Maldives pole and line, are at risk losing their certificates. Deadlines are extended due to the delay caused by the corona-virus, but that gives only a short respite.
We need to make sustainability work at the RFMO-level. Time is running out.
“Why we should keep in mind the warnings of a Spanish monk to be on guard for the big fisheries industry and their claims for sustainability.”
Since 2017, after a vote of the General Assembly of the United Nations, we officially celebrate the 2nd of May as World Tuna Day. World Tuna Day is an initiative that was first started in 2011 by the PNA (Parties to the Nauru Agreement), 8 small Island states in the Western and Central Pacific, that stock in their waters approximately 50 per cent of the global skipjack of our big world-wide tuna stockpile for the canning industry.
This makes World Tuna Day strongly related to sustainable tuna fisheries. The PNA countries are frontrunners in sustainability. Their Vessel Day Scheme is an innovative way to manage their skipjack stocks. And with the marketing of Pacifical they were the first to successfully introduce an industrial scale tuna fishery under the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label.
So, World Tuna Day is a great yearly occasion to ask the question: what is the state of governance on sustainable tuna fisheries?
Don’t jump out of the window when you read this: I will try to give a simple and very partial answer to this difficult question. Just some points I would like to make. Of course, the answer to the question what is a sustainable tuna fishery, is only getting more complicated with the years. Sustainability has many faces, and to makes things worse, these faces are changing constantly. It can be hell for those who sincerely think that we should work for a sustainable future, and a blessing for those who are more interested in putting up a sustainable charade.
As you can read in my book, sustainability all started with an eighteenth-century Spanish monk called Martín Sarmiento in a Madrid monastery. Sarmiento, the David Attenborough of his time, was asked by the leading Spanish blue fin tuna monopoly of the house of Medina Sidonia, to thoroughly research into the question why their bluefin catches at the south coast of Spain were dwindling. The monk published his study in 1757. Though his advice was not very conclusive (he was convinced that tuna were fond of acorns, so oaks should be planted next to the shores to supply more food) he was the first to define the need for governance and management of the stocks. Only this would guarantee a sustainable future for the fish and fisheries, according to Sarmiento.
Fool’s gold which raised their own income in the short term, while destroying the source
Governance had to solve the tension that had always existed between fisheries industry and sustainability, the monk wrote. ‘…Fishermen are not remotely interested in the fact that tuna fishing was declining due to their actions, as long as they were able to reap large short-term profits…’ In the end this would also destroy business itself, ‘…with fool’s gold which raised their own income in the short term, while destroying the source.’ A simple but effective observation, and well considered a miracle for its time. A miracle for which Sarmiento deserves a sainthood, if you ask me.
So, is Martín Sarmiento a happy saint when from his heavenly cloud he surveys todays panorama of sustainability governance on tuna? On first sight one would think he should be, because even big tuna business itself is taking all kind of sustainability initiatives. Take the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), a powerful club that has been active since 2009 that represents 75% of the global canning industry. The ISSF research has been thorough and very useful. But when it comes to effectively practice sustainability policies, things tend to become blurry. Last month (April, 16) the ISSF published two ‘comprehensive reports’ for its members and others that might be interested: recommendations for both purse seine and longline fisheries pursuing Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. At first sight a helping hand of the big industry for those who would like to become certified by MSC, at this moment still the only certification standard that we can take seriously when it comes to sustainability in tuna fisheries.
But close reading reveals something quite different. ISSF advises on the MSC standards not to be used to enter an assessment for MSC certification but ‘intended to be used as a practical resource for purse-seine and longline fisheries in Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs)’. Quoting Monty Python: ‘And now for something completely different’…
For those who do not know what FIPs are: these are projects that are increasingly popular to be applied in fisheries that want to improve their sustainability and getting access to markets, but have problems to reach the MSC standards. It is applied in small scale fisheries, as a sympathetic way to reach out and start a process that would end up with an application for MSC. But then the big industry conveniently captured the concept. They handle their FIPs as an alternative for going straightforward into MSC certification assessment. A FIP is far less costly and lacks an independent auditor that keeps track and trace of the improvements. Meanwhile, a FIP gives the industry a green face. Many traders and retailers take it for granted that a FIP is a kind of sustainability guarantee, just like the membership of ISSF itself.
Well, it definitely is not. At best it is no more than a road towards sustainability. And many times, less, because you always hear when a FIP is started, but seldom when it ends in an assessment for MSC certification. FIPs have a natural tendency to evaporate in the tropical sun. Shortly before ISSF came with their recommendations, an investigation on FIPs was published by CEA consulting (2020 Global Landscape Review of Fishery Improvement Projects), an excellent research that I recommend to everybody interested in FIPs. The study shows that of the 250 FIPs until now 92% never ended up in an assessment for MSC certification. Excluding the WWF projects in Indonesia, only two of them where tuna FIPs. After the first two years of their existence, most FIPs usually disappear from the radar. Verifying that products are sourced from FIPs is exceedingly difficult and rarely required. Greenwashing was a likely consequence, just as creating non-tariff trade barriers.
A FIP can work as a MSC-light, adding to a race to the bottom of sustainability claims
The fact of the matter is that until today many big companies instead of creating more sustainability of fisheries under MSC certification, effectively use FIPs as an alternative sustainability claim that avoids MSC certification. A MSC-light, if you like. Not at all a thing that is very supportive for the label one would say, let alone for those companies who took the trouble to apply for the costly MSC-certification. It only ads to a race to the bottom of sustainability claims.
Unfortunately enough, this kind of abuse by big companies is not an exception. One other example is the Spanish Organization of Associated Producers of Large Tuna Freezers (OPAGAC). It is no exaggeration to state that OPAGAC, with its excellent lobby apparatus, is an industrial powerhouse that for a large part effectively decides the external tuna policies of the European Commission and management organisations like ICCAT. Not surprisingly OPAGAC and ISSF work closely together. OPAGAC introduced its own FIP. But it even went one step further: it created its own label, Atún de Pesca Responsable (APR).
So, what exactly is ‘responsibly’ fished tuna, you might wonder. That is tuna fished with boats where a standard is complied for labor and social rights for the crew members, checked by an independent Spanish auditor. OPAGAC is very proud of its APR, and with reason. Not only was it a hurdle that did not take much effort, since the working conditions on the Spanish boats already were excellent. But the APR is a great selling point for their clients, who mistake this social responsibility issue for an ecological sustainability standard. A clever kind of mixed up sustainability claim, much cheaper than MSC and maybe even cheaper than a FIP.
There is more. OPAGAC itself is very honest about it on its website: ‘The APR is intended to form the base for the development of a CEN (European Standardisation Committee) standard, which OPAGAC expects to become a reference so that the European market can demand these requirements for tuna imports.’
Riding the waves of indignation about slavery and deplorable working conditions in Asia, OPAGAC is setting up a non-tariff trade barrier
Cleverly riding the waves of indignation about slavery and deplorable working conditions in Asia, OPAGAC is setting up not less than a non-tariff trade barrier. Already for years OPAGAC has been trying to block their European home market for the import of tuna loins from their Asian competitors. This has led to (almost literally) fights with the Spanish canners, who like to buy more and cheaper loins as raw material. If APR is accepted as a CEN standard, OPAGAC has effectively blocked their home-market for these imports. And since the officials and politicians on EU level can hardly distinguish the APR from a real sustainability certification, they might well succeed.
A race to the bottom of sustainability claims: creating your own simulated sustainability label that narrows the standard definition to social conditions you were applying anyway, avoiding the need for MSC certification to put up your green face, undermining your competition that did a costly assessment to apply for MSC, give your buyers an argument to feel sustainable when buying your stuff and meanwhile creating a non-tariff barrier you were longing for.
Fortunately, not everything is dark and cynical when it comes to the sustainable governance of our global tuna stocks. We managed to save our Atlantic bluefin from extinction. There are a lot of efforts to make the work in the tuna management organisations or RFMOs more effective, though there still is a long road to go. The notion for the need of sustainable tuna resources is getting more and more common in the chain of stakeholders, like processors, trade, retailers and finally consumers. MSC is still expanding in the tuna fisheries, and increasingly aware of the room for improvement in their certification schemes. We might hope for a trend that the retail-sector is getting more involved in the scheme and in defending their sustainable interests in the RFMOs.
Happy World Tuna Day. But always keep Martín Sarmiento’s wise words in the back of your mind.
With everybody focusing on corona troubles one could easily forget the battle that is taking place right now around the MSC certification of the mother of all tunas, the East-Atlantic bluefin tuna. A decade ago, on the boarder of collapse, bluefin became the icon of the fight for sustainable fisheries. Many will remember the panda-masked bluefin tuna asking if people would care more if he was a panda.
The good news ten years later: people actually did care more for bluefin tuna. Instead of being eradicated, the Eastern Atlantic stock has risen like a phoenix from its ashes. Paradoxically this raises now a far more complicated question: can you certify bluefin tuna as sustainable under the MSC standards?
As I noted in my last blog, corona is putting tuna to the test on several fronts. In the Pacific, our global stockroom for tuna, the WCPFC has decided to temporarily suspend the obligation of independent observers’ presence at transshipments at sea, while the obligation for purse seiners to transshipment in port states is also on hold. Notably it was China that had asked for lifting of the control measures, because of the corona problems. This might well be just the first step in a big Tuna War that might become as global as the corona pandemic.
Bluefin tuna is the flagship of tuna sustainability. The fight to save this iconic fish was epic
The more reason to have a closer look at the mechanisms that should guarantee the sustainable future of our tuna. So, take the bluefin tuna. Not just another tuna, but the flagship of tuna when it comes to sustainability. Just a little reminder: a decade ago, bluefin tuna was central in campaigns of all the big NGOs to save the Eastern Atlantic stock of what was then thought to be total extinction.
The fight was epic: an iconic fish like this giant tuna was being eradicated by the big Japanese fisheries and trade companies that were looking desperately for remaining stocks to source their sushi industry. The reason that many consumers up to date have a nagging conscience when buying tuna (‘Wasn’t there something wrong about tuna?’) can be undoubtedly traced back to these bluefin tuna campaigns.
The future of east-Atlantic bluefin looked pretty bleak: 2012 was set as ground zero of the species. But the giant tuna made an unexpectedly strong come back. In the past ten years we have seen big schools of bluefin entering the Strait of Gibraltar once more in spring on their way to their spawning grounds in the Mediterranean Sea. The abundancy was such that orcas came back to hunt their favorite dish like they used to do decades ago.
Tuna Wars
The story of the fall and rise of the bluefin is an important narrative in my book Tuna Wars. It is a story of fights and power struggles around this fish and its millennia old fisheries on an industrial scale. More recently, with its population in the Eastern Atlantic recovering, it represents a glitter of hope in the world of sustainable management of our tuna stocks.
The comeback of bluefin was probably the result of a combination of factors, including a stronger than expected resistance of the species that kicked in after the ICCAT, the management organization in the Atlantic, decided to put quota on the catch and requirements to protect the juvenile bluefin.
It can also be seen as a triumph of the massive pressure of the NGOs to save the bluefin that made the management organization act. ICCAT was formerly known as an ‘international disgrace’ and its acronym as the ‘International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna’. Its rambling governance performance was basically caused by the overwhelming and conflictive influence of the big industrial fisheries interests. There was no doubt who reigned in ICCAT and neither was there much doubt about their lack of political willingness to agree on an effective management policy on the stocks.
Controversy
So with the bluefin tuna stocks bouncing back, ICCAT decided three years ago to relax its quota and allow catches to more than triple up to 36.000 ton for this year. Based on the assessments of its scientific committee, the stocks where no longer in danger, it decided. This being the case, the decision was not without controversy. Well-informed NGOs like PEW and WWF thought the situation did not allow such increase of captures. The scientific assessment and recommendations were muddy and biased by different interests.
To make things worse, the management of the stocks was still not so strong after all, in particularly when it came to enforce the regulations in the fight of the widespread fraud and illegal fisheries that had become a shameless characteristic of the bluefin fisheries and trade in the Mediterranean during the last decades. This was painfully illustrated by the ‘Operation Tarantello’ in 2018, when Interpol captured 80 ton of illegal bluefin tuna, falsified catch documents and a ton load of cash. The usual suspects in Spain, Italy and Malta are part of the criminal investigation since: mafia-like business as usual, as if nothing has changed in the last 10 years. Read this article on the excellent investigative report researcher Gilles Hosch wrote on it. Needless to say that ICCAT never responded on the results and recommendation of the report.
Another, more technical issue is that we are still waiting for ICCAT to see robust harvest strategies and control rules put in place for bluefin tuna. Instead of years of meetings and discussion dragging on, these mechanisms serve as a practical and efficient tool for the next showdown in bluefin tuna stocks might it come.
The MSC certification of Usufuku Honten is a test balloon for the certification of other bigger bluefin fisheries
So, under these circumstances the Japanese Usufuku Honten fishery company, that fishes bluefin tuna with just one longline boat in the North Eastern Pacific, has asked to be certified as a sustainable fishery under the MSC certification. The catch of Usufuku Honten is hardly of any relevance, but the certification can be seen as a test balloon for other, bigger bluefin fisheries. A French company is next in line for assessment under the MSC certification. No doubt others will follow. The Usufuku Honten assessment will set the precedent of rules that have to be applied to all future MSC certified bluefin tuna. So, this is a important moment in the history of sustainable bluefin tuna, at least as far as MSC certification is concerned.
Trap or Turn
Are we watching a confirmation of sustainable management practice, or does this assessment illustrate the weakness of a certification scheme? Is it a turn, or is it a trap, that is the question.
Since we are out of the zone of a total collapse of the stock, there is room for interpretation. PEW and WWF clearly consider it uncomfortable that Usufuku Honten is part of the MSC assessment procedure, that is carried out by an independent assessor called Control Union Pesca. Both PEW and WWF have made formal objections in the procedure. The NGOs do not think bluefin tuna is ready to be MSC certified. When the fishery entered the certification process in 2018, Grantly Galland, PEWs officer on global tuna conservation, said to SeafoodSource: “There are too many concerns about the health of the population, the effectiveness of the current catch limits, and the prevalence of illegal fishing. These issues must be addressed before any decision is made to put a stamp of approval on these fisheries.” Giuseppe Di Carlo, Director of WWF Mediterranean Marine Initiative: “If a bluefin tuna fishery is certified by MSC then we have a dangerous incentive to the market and we risk compromising the long-term recovery of the stock.’’ Read also this blog.
At the other side we see Rohan Currey, Chief Science and Standards Officer at the MSC: “Scientific evidence on bluefin recovery in the Eastern Atlantic is encouraging. The historic overexploitation of bluefin globally shows why it is so important to understand and incentivize the sustainable management of bluefin fisheries.’’ Just to get it clear: MSC is formally not part of the assessment, since that is carried out by the independent assessor. But it sets the standards on the core principals of sustainable stocks, environmental impact and effective fisheries management.
This is assessment of the sustainable state of bluefin tuna, but also of the quality of its management organization, ICCAT
So this is where we are. Everybody understands the importance of an incentive for management bodies like ICCAT to improve their sustainable policies. But what if everybody can see that there is still a lot of room for improvement in ICCAT, not to speak of the other management organizations. This makes the certification procedure not only an assessment of the actual state of sustainability of tuna, but also the quality of the governance of its management organizations, in this case the ICCAT. It is ICCAT that sets the quota, should develop management and control rules and monitor the fight against illegal fisheries.
Fingers crossed
Soon we will know the outcome of the objection procedure. The involved parties _ the NGOs, the assessment body and the fisheries _ have until halfway this week to see if they can reach an agreement. So: fingers crossed that they can agree to some kind of conditional settlements of the main issues to be addressed in the objections. Something like: improvement on fighting IUU and imposing effective harvest strategies before a certain limit date.
Without this, all will suffer reputation damage: MSC for having a controversial fishery certified under its label, PEW/WWF for not being able to enforce a pragmatic precedent for sustainable bluefin certification and ICCAT for being ICCAT as it is.
While the NGOs have their uncomfortable battle, the party that most probably will win is the fisheries industry.
If you take one step back and look at the situation you will notice that while the NGOs and MSC are risking to loose something in this uncomfortable battle, there is one party that most probably will win: Usufuku Honten. And with them, the fisheries industry that soon might like to unroll all its MSC-certified bluefin tuna basically on their terms.
The outcome of the objection process not only concerns the future of bluefin tuna. It is also a strong reminder of the importance of good governance in the RFMOs. All tuna MSC certification is locked in on standards related with the quality of management and science of these regional management bodies. So, much depends on the well-established big fisheries interests that usually pull the strings on sustainability in these RFMOs. The other stakeholders involved in the management of sustainability should have that very well in mind, when they prepare for all the tuna wars on sustainability to come.
‘No one is above the law’, the prosecutor argued. So just last week the jury of the US Court for the Northern District of California found the former CEO of Bumble Bee, Mr. Chris Lischewski, guilty on the felony charge of price-fixing. Next April the judge might sentence Mr. Lischewski to a penalty up to 10 years prison and a fine of 10 million dollars.
The case shocked the tuna industry. Bumble Bee is one of the lead firms in the tuna world. For years Mr. Lischewski reigned as a tsar in the global tuna community. His fingerprints are all over the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), the industry lobby club on sustainability he helped to found.
It is not just a weird coincidence that Tuna Wars s is published, while the case on price-conspiracy against the three iconic tuna canning brands _ Bumble Bee, Starkist and Chicken of the Sea _ is in court. The Big Three, as they are known, have been involved in several Tuna Wars in the past decades. They like to work together. Read the book. They used to join in allied forces if it was convenient to confront their common commercial enemies. Their strategies were controversial from the start. In the end, is was just a matter of time that together they stood trial.
This court case on price-conspiracy is, if anything, a big Tuna War.
This court case on price-conspiracy is. if anything, a big Tuna War
What is it about? The three big US brands have been fixing the price of canned tuna from 2010 until end of 2013. Price-fixing is prohibited and considered a criminal offence in the US. Several retailers filed complaints after they got the impression they were being cheated on the price of tuna. The case hit the tuna-world as an earthquake. Multi-million dollar claims of retailers can shipwreck the companies. Bumble Bee is actually practically bankrupt and for sale. Those responsible for the price-fixing can be convicted to substantial jailtime.
As said, the conspiracy in this trial is about the price, but it has a strong link with sustainability. The Big Three used to meet each other a lot. For instance, in regular meetings of the ISSF, the organization the three of them jointly founded. Mr. Chris Lischewski was for years the chair of ISSF. Last year, ISSF issued a ‘conservation measure’ (2.4), which states that its members (according to the ISSF 75 % of the global market of canned tuna) should purchase tuna primarily from other traders and processors that are ISSF participating companies. Everybody knew Chris Lischewski, a colorful character with his long platinum blond waving hair and rather strong presence. And Chris knew everybody. The witness list of the trial reads like an invitation to a Bangkok tuna gala for the international tuna jet set.
But in fact, it is an invitation to a battlefield.
The Witness list of the trial reads like the invitation to a Bangkok tuna gala
The tuna war moved in court, including evidence that showed war-like language in the e-mail traffic between Mr. Lischewski and two of his subordinates at Bumble Bee _ who, by the way, pleaded guilty. Aggressive price cuts were described as ‘attacks’, according to a reporter of the online magazine Undercurrent News. The executives on other moments ‘would wave the white flag’ and agree to a ‘truce’ or a ‘peace’.
Prosecutor Leslie Wulff showed no surprise that Mr. Lischewski was using the war idiom, she told the jury. As a part-owner of Bumble Bee, he could have received a ‘big payout’ (that is: tens of millions of dollars) if Bumble Bees ambitious earning targets were met. These ‘payouts’ are the way the British private equity fund Lion Capital, owner of Bumble Bee since 2010, reward their executives. It is part of the standard practice of these investment companies: buying a company, doing some magical clean up stuff (usually: squeezing the costs out of it so the figures in the books look nice), selling it and cashing in the profit. Not seldom, this is an incentive for questionable practices.
Squeezing the costs proved not to be an easy job in a tuna market where the price of raw material and wholesale was bringing the margins further down, and the competition between the canners fierce. ‘So, the defendant took matters into his own hands. He ended the price war and entered a truce with his competitors’, Mrs. Wulff was quoted in Undercurrent News. Now the consumers payed the price.
Mr. Lischewski lawyer took an opposite view: the war language just showed an aggressive competition. War. Enemies. On the other hand, Mr. Lischewski just refrained from aggressively lowering Bumble Bees prices against Starkist, according to the defense. ‘These people in this industry use the language of war’, the lawyer is quoted in Undercurrent. Indeed, they did.
Maybe using the war language is just a bad habit. The fact of the matter is that tuna war alliances have a long history with the Big Three tuna canners that dominate the American market. Just take the three ‘Flipper Wars’ that figure in the book Tuna Wars. In these wars it was all about working together against common enemies. Together the three canners used (and helped to create) the Dolphin Safe certificate as a way of lifting a sustainable façade for their tuna fishery practices. Then they used the very same label to close their US market for the Mexican competitors. And finally, the Dolphin Safe label worked out fine to keep other, more reliable certified tuna like the MSC certified PNA free school skipjack, at a comfortable distance. Here too, the consumer payed the price, this time by buying tuna that in many cases is much less sustainable than it appeared to be.
The price-fixing case is just one of the battles in the tuna wars where the Big Three coalition was involved
So, the price-fixing case is just one of the battles in a range of tuna wars since the nineties where the Big Three coalition was involved. It confronts us with some dilemmas on our path to the supply of more sustainable tuna. Market-driven environmental governance is impossible without cooperation with or partnerships within the private sector.
But in a market where relatively few companies are dominating the scene, and in particular where price-fighting and small margins are key characteristics, lead firms will be tempted to conspire against the public in order to safeguard their market-shares and profits. And sustainability claims might convert into just another marketing tool to reach for these goals. In the end, both the consumer and the tuna will pay the price for it.
That has to be prevented. In the case of price-fixing the American laws are pretty tough. Angry consumers now started a parallel case against the Big Three for misguiding their buyers with the ‘Dolphin Safe’ label. Together with the price-fixing case, this case might be a good starting point for setting a standard against ‘sustainability-fixing’: conspiring in abusing sustainability claims against consumer and environmental interests in order to safeguard market-shares and profits.
It might prevent many future Tuna Wars.
TUNA WARS, the book of everything you wanted to know about Tuna, is now available…. As e-book and in hardcover. You can buy Tuna Wars using this link.
Tuna Wars is published amidst eye-catching developments in some of the ongoing epic tuna wars that figure in the book. The Dolphin Safe certification as well as the presumed price fixing conspiracy are the central issues to be judged in the current US court in cases against the Big Three American tuna canners, Bumble Bee, Starkist and Chicken of the Sea.
These wars will shake up the Tuna World. The federal judge ordered Starkist to pay a criminal fine of $100 million. More civil claims will add to the burden. ‘Charlie the Tuna’ Bumble Bee, the brand that has supplied tuna for generations of Americans, is about to collapse under the weight of the depending massive claims of retailers. Sorry Charlie!
The Big Three are also being sued by consumers alleging that the Dolphin Safe label, probably the most widely used sustainability label on canned tuna worldwide, has been used in a way that very much resembles consumer fraud. Tuna Wars readers will come to understand the background of these battles and the impact and role that sustainability claims have in the wicked world of tuna.
Meanwhile in Madrid, the Climate top is heading for a bumpy road towards goals that seem difficult to be accomplished. This poses new challenges for managing our global fish stocks, not in the least the tuna populations. Tuna Wars will provide the reader with updates on how we try govern our global stocks. Sometimes with remarkable success like in the case of bluefin tuna. But with policies and instruments that still need a lot of care and future development to become effective.
Wherever tuna is hauled ashore, the sound of battles is never far away. Read more in Tuna Wars.
Tuna Wars: published by Springer editorial.
“Mad dogs and Englishmen" is the title of a famous song by Noel Coward, satirising the unwillingness of English people to adopt the custom of taking a siesta during the heat of the day in tropical climates. Climate change may give this expression an updated significance. But also the Madness of Brexit does: who does not adopt will end up as a mad dog. And as we will see, in the end this madness will reflect too on the sustainability policies for the oceans, the fisheries and tuna.
The ruling of the British Supreme Court this week to declare ‘null and of no effect’ the prorogation of the British parliament is broadly seen as a victory of democracy and the rule of law. No government is allowed to send parliament away and kill its sovereignty. The rule of law: it was quiet a relief for all British and Europeans who want to fight populism, that this autocratic behavior of the British Prime Minister was effectively denominated as illegal.
But everyone realized that it is much too early to uncork the champagne. Brexit is still there looming in the dark. And fishery policies might be exemplary for the hell that is still for us to come. In particular with a No Deal-Brexit.
In a strong Op-ed in the Dutch business daily Het Financieele Dagblad, Pim Visser of the Dutch fishery organization VisNed painted a dark future. In the case of a No Deal we can expect instantly chaos in the Northern-Western waters of the European continent. EU fishermen are not allowed to fish anymore in British waters. Fights on the water will probably start as a result. The effects for the British fisheries are devastating: 75 % of the British catch is exported, and 80 % of that goes to the EU. The British will not be able to transport their fresh products to the mainland. Stock will pile up, freezing capacity is limited. And even if transport is restored after some months of chaos on the boarders, high import taxation for being outside the EU will make their products not competitive on the European market.
And then there are the sustainable fisheries. After decades of laborious negotiations, the EU managed to create a complex and delicate system of common fishery policies that might be considered as one of the most underestimated successes of European cooperation. Not only the rights and quota to fish in each other’s territories were successfully balanced, also a sustainable fishery policy started to bear its fruits. Many stocks that were depleted or overfished recovered in the last five years due to the common governance in a sustainable way. This all will go down the drain if there is No Deal.
It is exemplary for the total madness of Brexit and a vivid proof of what is called the tragedy of the commons. Basically, this means that splitting up partnerships like the EU is not zero-sum game: everybody will lose. Sustainable fisheries will be impossible to implement. Stocks will again diminish. The only way to avoid that, is actually the status quo we have on common fishery policies right now.
More madness is still to come: many, in particular the Brexiteers, seem to forget that Brexit is not the end, but only the beginning of negotiations on the future relationship between Great Britain (or what is left of it) and the EU. In the complex matter of fisheries this might take a decade. Or more. And it is almost inevitable that the best outcome of these negotiations is a deal like the current situation we have under EU-rule.
So, what about tuna? First there is a substantial risk that the strong come-back of bluefin tuna in the Northern Atlantic, North Sea and even the Gulf of Biscay will immediately go into reverse. The dwindling populations like herring will drastically diminish the prey fish available for tuna and other big predators. The remarkable recovery of the Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna, the tiger of our European waters, might haul in another downfall.
As it comes to the tuna markets and trade, Britain will have to deal with the EU market access requirements for seafood. EU Fishery Market researcher Francisco Blaha, an independent advisor on sustainable fisheries (and a very appreciated colleague tuna-lover) wrote a manual on it. Great stuff to download, but only recommended for people with a strong stomach. In a tweet this week Blaha wrote: ‘EU Market Access Requirements Specialist is actually a VERY complicated job, you need to understand fisheries, seafood safety, customs and EU bureaucratic processes. The manual I wrote about it is my most downloaded publication. Why would a country go voluntarily into that?’
Indeed why? Maybe only a nation of Mad dogs and Englishmen is able to do it. The Brexit Madness will damage oceans, sustainable fisheries and, last but not least, tuna.
