We saved the king of tuna, but is the fishery sustainable?
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.