Marine Stewardship Council "needs major reform"
By Lewis Smith
September 02 2010 Lewis Smith
Questions raised about MSC labelling of fish such as pollock
Fish marked with an MSC label are the guarantee to the public that the fish they are buying and eating are from sustainable stocks. Or at least they are supposed to be.
Some of the world’s top marine scientists have now expressed doubts that MSC- Marine Stewardship Council - fish are as sustainable as they are supposed to be.
They are so worried that the MSC label may now be misleading the public when they peruse the supermarket fish counters that they have called for major reform of the way fisheries are awarded the label.
MSC certification was developed to let the public know the fish they were eating and buying had been caught sustainably but a group of six top marine scientists have accused it of being too lax.
They demanded the certification procedures be tightened up and suggested that scientific evidence is being ignored in the rush to get fisheries MSC-approved.
Other measures called for in the interests of protecting the marine environment included banning MSC certification in fisheries where bottom trawling takes place.
The MSC, which has an £8million ($13m) budget, is “rapidly failing on its promise” to promote the best environmental choice in seafood, they said.
They concluded: “The MSC can still fulfil its promise to represent, as it claims, ‘the best environmental choice’ – if it undergoes major reform. If it does not change, there are better, more effective ways to spend £8 million.”
Professor Daniel Pauly and Dr Jennifer Jacquet, of the Sea Around Us Project at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre, Vancouver in Canada, were among the scientists to express their doubts about the MSC in an opinion piece in the journal Nature.
The others were Professor Paul Dayton and Professor Jeremy Jackson, of the Scripps retired but described as the father of marine protected areas, and Dr David Ainley, a marine ecologist at HT Harvey & Associates.
They agreed the MSC is the best known organisation certifying fisheries as sustainable and is the one given most credence by scientists.
But they were concerned at a “loose interpretation” of its rules in some of its accreditations, especially for the bigger fisheries, which they believe makes it too easy to get certified.
“Objections to MSC certifications are growing. Scores of scientists (including ourselves) and many conservation groups, including Greenpeace, the Pew Environment Group and some national branches of the WWF, have protested over various MSC procedures or certifications,” they wrote.
“We believe that, as the MSC increasingly risks its credibility, the planet risks losing more wild fish and healthy marine ecosystems. This can be turned around only if the MSC creates more stringent standards, cracks down on arguably loose interpretation of its rules, and alters its process to avoid a potential financial incentive to certify large fisheries.”
Since being established in 1999 the MSC has granted 94 fisheries accreditation as being sustainable, accounting for about seven per cent of world catches, with another 118 being assessed.
Some of these, the scientists argued, cannot justifiably be regarded as sustainable fisheries and they cited the US trawl fishery for Pollock, which lands 1 million tonnes a year, as an example. Its spawning biomass slumped by 64 per cent from 2004-09. “Similar declines in biomass can be found in other MSC fisheries, including the Pacific hake,” they said.
The researchers argued that the system of accreditation raises the possibility that consultancies which carry out assessments of a fishery’s sustainability could be less hard on the applicants than they should because they want to be hired again for future projects.
Bottom trawling should be a reason for automatically precluding a fishery from being accredited, they argued. The MSC, just as it already bans the use of dynamite and poison to catch fish, should ban "those types of bottom trawling that have a high impacty on habitat and on fish other than the target species."
In the article, entitled “Seafood stewardship in crisis”, the scientists were critical of the MSC certification for krill, which was granted after an assessment by Moody Marine.
The researchers felt data showing a longterm decline in the krill population had been overlooked. Moreover, they believe that much of the krill caught is likely to be used in fishmeal, a use they believe should be viewed as incompatable with “responsible or sustainable” fisheries.
They were equally worried by the proposed accreditation of Antarctic toothfish, after an assessment by Moody Marine. “Almost nothing is known about this fish,” the scientists wrote.
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