Time is running out for making RFMOs work for sustainable tuna

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.

No one is above the Law: Tuna Wars, Tuna Truce and ‘sustainability-fixing’

‘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.

Tuna war alliances have a long history with the Big Three.

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, Book now released

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.

The end of Dolphin Safe in Tuna Wars?

It may have taken several decades, but we now might be looking at the beginning of the wreckage of the Dolphin Safe label. This week American consumers started a class-action lawsuit for fraud and racketeering against the Big Three US tuna brands, Bumble Bee, Starkist and Chicken of the Sea. (http://disq.us/t/3epuvpx) The consumers feel deceived, we read in the complaint.  ‘The “Dolphin-Safe” label signifies that no dolphins were killed or seriously injured as a result of the catching of the tuna contained in their products. But the suppliers’ tuna fishing practices “kill or harm substantial numbers of dolphins each year.”  

Many in the tuna industry and the sustainable seafood movement with some knowledge about sustainable fisheries have been waiting for this moment. The Dolphin Safe label is already for years the elephant in the room of sustainable fisheries that most people prefer to deny. From a well-respected, successful certification in the nineties, that helped to eradicate the massive Dolphin slaughter in the Yellowfin tuna fisheries in the Eastern Pacific, the Dolphin Safe label evolved into a practically useless tool in making look all tuna fisheries more sustainable. It even is far from robust enough to guarantee its own claims for a totally dolphin harmless tuna fisheries.

This is serious business. The Dolphin Safe label can be found on tuna cans all over the world. It is probably the most widespread label, used by all the big tuna industry that is united in the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF). If a court decides that Dolphin Safe proves to be a kind of compulsory greenwashing scheme, a tool mainly supporting market interests, this would have devastating effects on the credibility of sustainability certification in general. Why, the public will rightly ask, was this label allowed for such a long time on so many cans? How can we trust that other certifications are any better?

The success for using ‘Dolphin Safe’ comes to no surprise: it hardly cost any effort for the big brands, fisheries and traders in terms of measures to make their tuna business look more sustainable. The history of Dolphin Safe has its murky sides too: who did not want to ‘collaborate’ with the label and its organisation (Earth Island Institute) could face problems in the tuna business. So, it was better to let yourself squeezed into the scheme instead of making life difficult. Meanwhile the strong ‘Flipper’ related Dolphin Safe image managed to survive with fluffy journalism that supported its noble cause but was not able to unravel the powerplay behind the screens. Notable exceptions, like the 2015 K. William Watson article in Forbes (‘Dolphin Safe’ labels on Canned Tuna are a Fraud’) never got the attention they deserved.

In my book ‘Tuna Wars’, that will be published soon by Springer Nature, I write about the three ‘Flipper Wars’ that have raged in the tuna world. The Dolphin Safe label was an effective weapon for the tuna industry in these wars. The Big Three effectively used the label as a barrier for competitive Mexican imports entering their home market. Meanwhile, Dolphin Safe expanded from its origins in the Eastern Pacific to the Western and Central Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, where the setting of nets on Dolphins never was an issue as such and the claims of the scheme (not one single dolphin killed or harmed!) where practically impossible and unmonitored. Meanwhile the big players used Dolphin Safe to hinder the entrance in the tuna fisheries of the much more robust certification of the MSC.  

Fraud and racketeering have still to be proved in court for sure. The case is messy. The consumer plaintiffs are very much underlining the objective of no harm to any dolphins whatever as the highest standard for sustainable tuna fisheries. They are right that the Big Three created a false representation of such a full proof dolphin safe fishery with the Dolphin Safe label. But they are wrong in suggesting that the MSC certification is also making a false statement when it comes to dolphins that are caught in tuna fisheries. This is missing the point: MSC is about sustainable tuna fisheries, not sustainable dolphin fisheries. It works with multiple standards that go far beyond the single issue of dolphin safety. From this point of view, also the idea that pole and line and handline are the only sustainable gears (as the plaintiffs argue) is far away from reality and practically useless.

It is now for the court to decide. Let us hope that at least its verdict facilitates a start to mop up the mess, and open ways for further development of credible sustainable tuna certification.