Author——————————-
Dr. Tom Pickerell
Executive Director
Global Tuna Alliance
✉️
Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) meet every year to make management decisions for some of the world’s most commercially important fisheries. Species such as skipjack, yellowfin and albacore tuna make up staple products on shelves in markets across the globe. Protecting these stocks and ensuring a stability and predictability of supply is not only good for the planet but also the bottom line. The most effective way to ensure fishery health and stability is to push for the adoption of harvest strategies, also known as management procedures. Harvest strategies is a fisheries management tool that takes a proactive approach to implementing long-term fishery objectives, allowing fishers to maximize their yield without risking the future health of the stock. In comparison to traditional fisheries management schemes, harvest strategies provide an agile, efficient way to set fishing opportunities. With pre-agreed objectives and rules, managers can respond quickly to changing stock conditions, resulting in long-term fishery health and profitability.
When it comes to protecting ecosystem health, fish stocks, and surety of supply, there is no time to waste. As a major stakeholder in the global tuna supply chain, the marketplace can make their voices heard by calling on RFMOs and delegations to adopt and implement harvest strategies without delay. Later this month, the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) will be discussing the adoption and implementation for skipjack tuna, one of the largest fisheries in the world. Without a robust and precautionary harvest strategy, the long-term health of the fishery and the supply of this sustainable, healthy food source could be at risk.
To protect your supply of sustainable tuna, make sure your suppliers and the WCPFC know the importance of implementing a harvest strategy for skipjack this November. Click here to download a template letter to send to delegates that represent countries in your supply chain. Click here to find the name and email of those country’s delegates. These decisions influence your business. So, it is your business to influence these decisions.
2 November 2022, Washington/Rome – The Ocean Foundation (TOF) and UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have launched a new website in support of sustainable fisheries management around the world. HarvestStrategies.org provides a clearinghouse of the latest information on the development and implementation of harvest strategies, also known as management procedures.
The question of how many fish should be taken in a fishery has been challenging scientists, decision-makers and stakeholders for decades. Harvest strategies, where management measures, such as catch limits, are based on real time environmental and human-impact indicators, can answer this important question.
These strategies have been implemented in some of the most important fisheries in the world. Yet, as a scientifically rigorous process, developing harvest strategies requires knowledge in theory, tools, and resources that can be challenging for even experts to digest.
This is where HarvestStrategies.org comes in. Developed jointly by TOF’s International Fisheries Conservation project and FAO’s Common Oceans Tuna Project, it is a groundbreaking knowledge hub that can help scientists, fisheries managers and other stakeholders make sense of this essential and quickly emerging topic for sustainable fisheries.
The website is part of a suite of communications products to be undertaken under a new five-year partnership as part the Common Oceans Tuna project. This collaboration will include the participation of the five regional fishery management organizations for tuna (tRFMOs), as well as the industry-affiliated International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), to leverage this valuable new resource for developing, advocating for, and implementing harvest strategies for fisheries around the world.
”HarvestStrategies.org is the culmination of years of collaboration among governments, fishers, scientists and civil society to demystify the inner workings of this innovative and effective approach to ensuring a prolific future for tuna and other valuable fisheries,” said Shana Miller, the director of TOF’s International Fisheries Conservation Project. “This site will be a go-to resource for fisheries participants and professionals of all backgrounds and expertise.”
“There has been much progress in recent years towards implementing harvest strategies for stocks in the tRFMOs and we expect that this transformational process will lead to more robust management of tuna by taking into account uncertainties and varying environmental conditions,” said Kim Stobberup, Manager of the Common Oceans Tuna project. “However, further efforts are needed in building capacity for implementing harvest strategies, including at the manager and decision-making level. We are very supportive of this initiative led by The Ocean Foundation in collaboration with FAO, and all the participating tuna regional bodies.
“Harvest strategies have been an integral component of our rebuilding plan for the Southern bluefin tuna stock and have provided a vital link between scientists and decision-makers,” said Dominic Vallieres, Executive Secretary of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT). “To be truly successful, harvest strategies must be based on a shared understanding amongst those with an interest in the management of the fishery. This is a challenge that CCSBT continues to face as our own use of harvest strategies in this fishery evolves. We welcome this website and hope that it will provide the transparency and capacity building required to support greater use and understanding of harvest strategies.”
The platform has a library of overviews and topical introductions to understand what harvest strategies are and why they are important. These include a new animation on harvest strategies for Southern bluefin tuna, joining existing animations on the harvest strategy approach and the management strategy evaluation (MSE) simulation tool used to develop them.
There is also an interactive page to learn about the harvest strategies in place, or in development around the world. For a deeper dive into the science behind harvest strategies and their performance, a repository of influential literature is available. Stay up to date on current issues via news articles and an exclusive blog featuring project partners and guest authors. For the technically savvy, the website hosts an application for visualizing MSE results to facilitate choice of the best performing harvest strategy.
Background
HarvestStrategies.org is a valuable asset to fisheries everywhere. It is available in English, French, and Spanish, with some resources available in ten additional languages. Be sure to take a look and also follow along on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Based in Washington, D.C., The Ocean Foundation (TOF) is the only community foundation for the ocean. TOF’s International Fisheries Conservation project seeks to catalyze the development and adoption of harvest strategies and other innovative tools for the long-term sustainable management of a diverse array of international fisheries, from giant tunas to the forage fish upon which they depend.
The Common Oceans Tuna project aims to ensure that tunas are fished more sustainably by mobilizing a global partnership in support of responsible tuna fisheries management and the conservation of biodiversity in the ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and led by FAO, it brings together the five regional fisheries management organizations, national agencies and intergovernmental organizations and initiatives, the private sector, civil society and academia.
Author——————————-
Rafik Zarrad
Chercheur en Ressources Halieutiques
Institut National des Sciences et Technologies de la Mer (INSTM)-Tunisie
✉️
La gestion traditionnelle des ressources halieutiques est un processus en deux étapes : i) les scientifiques évaluent les stocks par différents modèles numériques, ii) puis les gestionnaires de la pêche gèrent les pêcheries par des quotas ou des fermetures spatio-temporelles. Mais, les évaluations des stocks, sont souvent accompagnées d’incertitudes en raison des données incomplètes sur l’éco- biologie et la dynamique de l’espèce, sur la pêcherie et sur les variabilités océanographiques et climatiques. Par conséquent, les recommandations des scientifiques peuvent être non précises (intervalles de valeurs et de probabilités) ou comporter de nombreuses options de gestion.
Une approche différente appelée «stratégies de pêche» (anglais : Harvest Strategy) ou «procédures de gestion» est la dernière innovation en matière de gestion de la pêche. Les stratégies de pêche sont des cadres prédéfinis de prise de décisions en matière de gestion de la pêche, comme la définition de quotas. Elles visent à s’entendre sur les règles avant les prises des décisions avec une vision à plus long terme. Le processus appelé « évaluation des stratégies de gestion » permet de tester les stratégies de pêche les plus solides à travers la modélisation » avant de les déployer. Cette approche permet de garantir l’efficacité des stratégies de pêche est la rétroaction.
La stratégie de pêche adoptée a des objectifs de gestion; un programme de surveillance; des indicateurs de l’état de santé de la population de poissons avec des points de référence associés; une méthode pour évaluer ces indicateurs ; ainsi que des règles d’exploitation (HCR: Harvest Control Rules) qui définissent les possibilités de pêche, notamment des limites de capture et de tailles, selon la valeur des indicateurs clés par rapport aux points de référence.
Des données spécifiques sont recueillies pour évaluer l’état de la pêcherie et ses performances par rapport aux points de référence et objectifs de gestion établis. Les résultats sont intégrés aux règles d’exploitation, qui établissent les modifications qui doivent être apportées aux mesures de gestion pour atteindre les objectifs de gestion de la stratégie de pêche.
Ce processus permet aux scientifiques et aux gestionnaires d’agir ensemble et d’avance pour une gestion solide et préventive bénéficient à la fois aux poissons et aux pêcheurs. Ce processus contribue à la reconstitution des stocks surexploités ou maintient les populations et la pêche à leur niveau cible. Les stratégies de pêche saines augmentent la transparence et la prédictibilité de la gestion de la pêche, ce qui favorise la stabilité de l’industrie. Elles améliorent également l’accès au marché en tant que produits de la pêche durables.
Donc vu ces avantages, je qualifie la stratégie de pêche comme outil innovant pour une gestion durable des ressources halieutiques, surtout pour les stocks partagés et les stocks surexploités. Actuellement, et en tant que scientifique avec l’équipe du SCRS-CICTA, nous somme à la fin d’un processus de stratégie de gestion du thon rouge de l’Atlantique Est et de la Méditerranée.
Dr. Rafik Zarrad est chercheur tunisien en gestion des ressources halieutiques. Il a travaillé sur les ressources demersales, petits pélagiques et actuellement les grands pélagiques (Thon rouge et Espadon) au niveau national et régional (FAO ; CICTA). Mon expérience de plus que 24 ans à donc porter sur les ressources de la Mer Méditerranée et celle de l’Atlantique.
Author——————————-
John Bohorquez, Ph.D.
Senior Program Associate, International Fisheries
✉️
A new animation was just released about one of the bright spots in marine conservation, and part of the blueprint for a sustainable future.
In 2011, an international team of fisheries scientists published the first standardized, global assessment of tunas and billfishes, revealing the worrisome futures these animals faced from fishing around the world. Leading the trend, of the 61 species they analyzed, the Southern bluefin tuna was singled out as the most endangered: “Already essentially crashed”…and “so reduced that the most expeditious way to rebuild abundances and avoid collapse with great certainty is to shut down the fishery.” These are not words one would associate with a fish that, a decade later, would become a standard bearer for sustainable large-scale fishing and inspire transformation of fisheries management in every ocean on the planet.
That’s because, in the very same year, with many advocates calling to end fishing entirely, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) awakened to the fact that traditional fisheries management was not working and decided to try something new. Instead of tediously renegotiating how many fish could be caught every year, they decided to take a long-term perspective where quotas were pre-agreed based on reference points of the fish population, fishing impacts, and other natural factors, all using the best available science. This moment was the birth of harvest strategies and management procedures (MP) for international fisheries as we know them today.
The Bali Procedure of 2011 – as the landmark MP agreement was known – intended to quadruple the abundance of Southern bluefin tuna, which at the time was only 5% of “unfished biomass,” or the abundance before commercial fishing began. The CCSBT had 25 years to achieve the goal.
Thanks to the MP, they needed less than 10.
By 2020, the stock of Southern bluefin tuna had increased from 5% to 20% of unfished biomass, achieving the first target. The fishing industry was able to benefit in real time, with quotas nearly doubling over the same period. The balance between conservation and sustainable fishing was struck as the Bali Procedure had intended and the population was able to rebound even faster than predicted. In fact, the Southern bluefin tuna management procedure was so successful that the CCSBT increased the target to 30% of unfished biomass when they had to revise the MP in 2019.
This is an incredible story not only because of where Southern bluefin tuna stood 10 years ago as one of the most imperiled fisheries in the world, but also because of the unique challenges surrounding the fishery. For perspective, the bluefin tunas, as the largest and most valuable tunas, and among the most economically and culturally significant forms of life in the ocean, have historically been one of the most politically contentious. Yet government, industry, and science were able to come together and pioneer a new management approach with great success. In a rare example of true Ocean Optimism, if progress can be achieved here, certainly it can be followed elsewhere. And that is exactly what is happening in dozens of other fisheries around the world that are looking to emulate the success of the Southern bluefin tuna through harvest strategies and management procedures.
Produced by The Ocean Foundation, with funding from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), this new animation tells the remarkable story of the Southern Bluefin Tuna.
Author——————————-
Katie Schleit
Senior Fisheries Advisor, Oceans North
✉️
Atlantic herring are important to the ocean ecosystem and economy on Canada’s East Coast. However, the largest stock in the area, officially known as the 4VWX Southwest Nova Scotia/Bay of Fundy Spawning component, has shown worrying declines for many years. Historic landings decreased from 500,000 tonnes in 1968 to 226,000 tonnes in 1973, and then fell even further from an average of 96,000 tonnes in the 1990s to a low of 33,000 tonnes in 2021. Stock status estimates from an acoustic survey have indicated the need for rebuilding since at least 2001, and herring have been critically depleted since 2017. The 2022 scientific information indicates that the stock is now even further below the limit reference point (LRP), a low abundance level at which serious harm is occurring to the stock.
Despite being one of the largest fisheries in Canada and a critically depleted stock, basic scientific information is lacking. This includes data such as an index of abundance, recruitment estimates, an analytical assessment model, a fishing mortality estimate, and a target or upper stock reference point. For years, total allowable catch (TAC) decisions had been made without this information and without projections to analyze the impact of various catch levels on herring biomass. In early 2019, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the herring industry, environmental NGOs and Indigenous groups embarked on the Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) as an approach to work around these shortcomings.
This iterative, multi-stakeholder-and-rightsholder process was scientifically peer reviewed at various stages throughout the process. The resulting Harvest Control Rules (HCRs) demonstrated that TAC decisions which followed the HCR would be robust to varying scenarios, including natural mortality, future growth, recruitment and fleet composition. All of these potential scenarios were developed by the MSE working group with industry at the lead. These HCRs represent an immense improvement over the previous process, which was not able to assess or predict the impact of its TAC decisions. In recent years, those decisions have kept the stock below the LRP, the area DFO defines as the critical zone.
In order for the MSE to be in line with Canadian law and policy around depleted stocks, a conservation objective was also developed. This was set as a performance threshold to maintain the stock above the LRP with at least 75 percent probability after 10 years. While there was an objective to maintain the spawning stock biomass above a target biomass in the long-term, this was not used as a performance threshold. Other stakeholder objectives include maximizing yield, minimizing variability of catch, and limiting the removal of small fish. The resulting HCRs all required substantial quota reductions, in large part to meet the conservation objective. The TAC options ranged from zero to approximately 14,000 tonnes, down from the 2021 quota of 35,000 tonnes.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada Joyce Murray was presented with these HCRs on which to set the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2022 and subsequent years. However, she failed to select any of the HCRs that resulted from the four-year multi-stakeholder process. Instead, she chose a quota reduction of 33 percent for one year. The Minister’s decision has left many stakeholders perplexed and frustrated.
Rebuilding critically depleted stocks is a big challenge for industries, for communities that rely on the fishery, and ultimately for political decision makers. MSEs allow us to judge the impact that future decisions will have on the health of the stock and how to balance different priorities, even when little trade-off exists with a depleted stock. In the case of SWNS/BOF herring, the MSE showed that rebuilding out of the critical zone was possible within 10 years, and that this could happen in the face of varying uncertainties. The Minister needs to re-visit the MSE in 2023 and choose an HCR that can ensure the future of all who benefit from this stock.
Katie Schleit is a Senior Fisheries Advisor for Oceans North, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work focuses on rebuilding fish populations while considering the needs of people and the ecosystem. Katie has worked in the NGO and public sector for over a decade collaborating with government, fishermen, scientists and the public on ocean conservation and sustainable management. Before joining Oceans North, she previously worked on fisheries and marine conservation at the Ecology Action Centre, the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C., and served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. She holds a master’s degree in marine affairs from the University of Washington.
Author——————————-
David Gershman
Officer, International Fisheries
✉️
Feeding the world’s growing population will require fisheries management to become more effective. Fortunately, we know how to do that. And putting in place harvest control rules in tuna fisheries is an important step to ensuring their long-term productivity for the people whose jobs and food security rely on them.
That’s one recommendation from the recently released report on world fisheries by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Published every two years, this leading report, “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture,” more commonly known by its acronym, SOFIA, paints a sobering but hopeful view of world fisheries.
“Effective management, including better reporting and access to data and the implementation of harvest control rules across all tuna stocks, is needed to maintain stocks at a sustainable level and in particular rebuild overexploited stocks,” the report urges.
Harvest control rules, or HCRs for short, and a monitoring strategy that informs scientists’ understanding about stock status should be parts of a fully specified harvest strategy. HCRs are the operational component of a harvest strategy. They are essentially pre-agreed guidelines that determine how much fishing can take place, based on indicators of the targeted stock’s status.
Tunas are critical to global food production. According to the SOFIA report, skipjack tuna was the third most caught wild fish in 2020, maintaining that rank for the 11th consecutive year. Fishing vessels hauled in more than 2.8 million metric tons of skipjack in 2020, more than all other wild-caught fish species except for anchovy and Alaska pollock.
Of the stocks of the seven main species of commercially caught tunas, about 67% were being fished within biologically sustainable levels, which reflects little progress compared to the last SOFIA report two years ago. Upping the pressure on getting management right, the report warns that climate change looms as a significant stressor to marine ecosystems. That should be a call to action for management to be improved. At the same time that the impacts of climate change could really come into play, demand for these fish stocks could intensify, given that global consumption of seafood is growing faster than even the increase in the world’s population.
To feed the world, the SOFIA report says rebuilding overfished fish stocks could increase fisheries production by about 17 million metric tons, recovering $32 billion in foregone annual revenue, with benefits for the food security, nutrition, economic growth and well-being of coastal communities. To cope with climate change, the report says management needs to become more adaptive and inclusive.
The regional fisheries management organizations that regulate these stocks should take heed of the conclusions in the SOFIA report. HCRs urgently need to be in place for these valuable tuna fisheries as part of fully specified harvest strategies.
Harvest strategies are the pathway to transitioning to science-based and precautionary frameworks that consider future impacts to the stocks and create pre-agreed rules to adjust fishing based on changes in the environment. Harvest strategies will improve transparency, inclusivity, stability, and sustainability in the management of these ecologically and commercially valuable tuna species.
Author——————————-
David Gershman
Officer, International Fisheries
✉️
Ensuring the world’s largest tuna fishery remains sustainable for the long term should be a top priority among the many different member nations of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). Despite that, the road to developing a management procedure for skipjack tuna has been a long one. A hopeful step, however, was taken recently when members of the WCPFC made significant progress in outlining their preferences for key management procedure elements. At the same time, some members said they want to delay its implementation by six years – a risky move for the fishery that would effectively shelve years of hard work.
Skipjack tuna is the third-most caught fish in the world, and the majority are taken in the western and central Pacific. More than 1.7 million metric tons of skipjack were caught in the region in 2020, worth $2.54 billion at the dock. For now, despite increasing fishing pressure in recent years, the skipjack stock remains healthy, unlike other species, such as Pacific bluefin tuna and striped marlin, that are overfished.
The WCPFC’s first Science Management Dialogue – held August 19 and 22 – saw members engaging constructively to narrow the number of harvest control rules being considered for skipjack. Harvest control rules are the operational part of the management procedure or harvest strategy. They are pre-agreed and determine when changes in fishing limits are triggered based on status relative to a set of benchmarks for the stock. Also at the meeting, members identified several areas of further scientific analysis. Nobody disagreed that the goal should be to adopt a management procedure, as scheduled, when the Commission holds its annual meeting, starting November 27.
But the proposal by some members to adopt, and then delay the actual implementation by not being bound to the management procedure advice for six years, would provide less certainty in the management of this critical fishery. The members are proposing a trial whereby the outcomes of the management procedure would be considered as a data point, an option to consider, in the old way of doing business. The Commission would continue to periodically review the latest stock assessment and then negotiate any changes to fishing limits for skipjack in its conservation and management measure on tropical tunas. If the trial goes well, those members say, perhaps the management procedure could be implemented sooner.
The danger in this approach is that changes are inevitable, given the substantial challenges facing this region’s largest fishery. Climate change, shifts in stock distribution, uncertain economic viability, increased competition, and drivers of overfishing will impact this fishery in the long term. Meeting those challenges demands a more modern approach. Quite a bit could change in a six-year span. But the dealmaking of the old way of doing business can’t react fast enough to heed the scientific advice amidst political pressures and favors that takes place in the negotiating sessions. And despite its healthy status today the skipjack stock is becoming more depleted over time.
A management procedure puts managers in the driver’s seat to proactively steer the fishery to a sustainable future. It gives managers more control, not less, because it lets managers choose a harvest control rule that has been tested via simulation to be the most robust to change – both to changes that have occurred in the fishery and could happen again, and to new changes that could occur in the future.
WCPFC has come a long way since 2014 when it agreed to develop management procedures for its key tuna stocks or fisheries. The rigorous analysis of the harvest control rules put forward to date shows there are options that would perform well, maintaining stability and catch rates in the skipjack fishery while accounting for various uncertainties in the biology of the stock and fishery. This is the year to finally adopt a skipjack management procedure and implement it as soon as possible to ensure the long-term profitability and sustainability of the fishery.
Author——————————-
Bubba Cook
WCPO Tuna Programme Manager
WWF – New Zealand
✉️
With terms like target and trigger, one may be forgiven if they mistook a conversation about harvest strategies for one about shooting sports. Nonetheless, it’s an appropriate metaphor for international fisheries management, which has come under fire to improve its performance. Until the mid-20th century, fisheries were largely unregulated with very few controls beyond the inherent limits on investment, the ability to catch fish, and the biological capacity of the resource. That changed with the growing recognition of the tragedy of the commons combined with several high-profile fishery collapses. Most stakeholders viewed these collapses as a failure of collective governance under a scattershot management approach, which led to the development of international agreements and standards that, in turn, led to the establishment of Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) charged with managing their respective fisheries.
Unfortunately, the establishment of RFMOs and deployment of traditional fisheries management tools failed to offer a silver bullet as evidenced by mixed results across each RFMO. A weakness of RFMOs is that they rely on an annual decision-making process where members often support policies that sustain their short-term, individual economic or political self-interests that tend to override long-term, science and evidence-based collective interests in sustainability. This weakness is exacerbated by a preference for consensus, which leads to the “tyranny of the minority,” where a single member can effectively veto a proposal supported by science and the majority. Combined with yearly protracted horse trading used to delay or water down decisions and a tendency toward exploitative risk rather than precaution, status quo management seems to ratchet fisheries steadily toward crisis.
Nevertheless, as Dr. Ray Hilborn, a pre-eminent fisheries management expert, observed, “The decline of many [fisheries] is not a failure of fisheries management, it is a failure to implement fisheries management techniques that we know can work well.” A technique we know works well is the use of the harvest strategy approach, which, through extensive stakeholder engagement and scientific analysis, offers pre-agreed decision points and actions, such as catch and effort limits, built on a robust foundation of science and evidence. A high calibre harvest strategy mitigates the weaknesses of the current process, such as the prolonged annual negotiations that frequently hold decisions hostage, by “automating” the decision-making process based on discrete criteria targeted at meeting clear objectives.
The upcoming Science-Management Dialogue(SMD) at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), scheduled for 19-22 August 2022, represents an important opportunity to build capacity and understanding of how and why the harvest strategy approach better regulates and stabilises fisheries management in favour of evidence-based sustainability and productivity. Additionally, managers and scientists will have the chance to progress stock-specific harvest strategies under development at WCPFC, notably skipjack, which is on track for adoption this year. Thus, the WCPFC should establish the SMD as a recurring working group to support meeting the harvest strategy workplan and timelines. If we stick to our guns on the status quo RFMO management, we’ll only be shooting ourselves in the foot in the long run. So, instead of engaging the annual circular horse-trading that the RFMO process has become, it’s time for the WCPFC and other RFMOs around the world to aim high, bite the bullet, and pull the trigger on harvest strategies.
Bubba Cook has spent a lifetime on the ocean, 19 years working in fisheries conservation and management, and currently serves as the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Programme Manager for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Wellington, New Zealand, where he focuses on improving tuna fisheries management at a national and regional level in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean through policy improvements, market tools, and technological innovation.
Author——————————-
Steven Adolf
Western and Central Pacific Tuna Programme Manager
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – New Zealand
✉️
A bad dream for sustainable seafood: consumers who search in vain for certified sustainable tuna on the shelves of their supermarkets, the tuna-trade and Pacific Island nations without a compass for their currently healthy-stocks of tuna and the building of sustainable fisheries management policies in the tuna fishery collapsing. Only a bad dream for the oceans and the markets? It could be just around the corner if regional fisheries management organizations like the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), fail to get their harvest strategy policy in order in time. The first ocean to pick up this challenge is the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, with half the world’s tuna catch – notably the largest global tuna sourcing area. From next year on, harvest strategies have to be in place to manage the tuna populations in a sustainable way. This is no longer some theoretical playground of management policies. The Marine Stewardship (MSC) recently rang the alarm-bell, warning that the Western and Central Pacific is facing a suspension risk for its certified tuna fisheries.
We still can act in time to avoid this doomsday scenario, but the clock is ticking. The upcoming meeting of WCPFC which starts December 1st, should take the first steps to ensure robust advances in the management measures of the region’s tuna fisheries so harvest strategies can be adopted next year. These measures will ensure that tuna stocks remain at a sustainable level so that future generations can continue to benefit from the fisheries. This applies first and foremost to the smaller Pacific Island Countries, which depend for a significant part of their income on tuna fishery licenses. But also, to consumers in the European and American market who depend for a large part on the sourcing on sustainably caught tuna from the area.
Reminder: by 2022, the WCPFC must adopt harvest strategies for skipjack, the tuna found in most of our cans, bigeye tuna and yellowfin tuna. If the WCPFC does not succeed in this, the sustainability criteria of the MSC are no longer met. The tuna will lose its sustainability certificate, the well-known blue label with the fish. This could mark the end of more than a decade of MSC’s sustainable certification in the Western and Central Pacific, one of the certificate’s fastest-growing areas. What started in 2011 with the certification of the skipjack-fisheries of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) represents now globally 73 % of the MSC certified tuna supply.
The consequences would be serious. Enough to just look at the situation in the North East Atlantic, where mackerel, Atlanto-Scandian herring and blue whiting lost their MSC certification because harvest strategies were not adopted in time by the management organization involved. Many years of work on sustainable fisheries policy could be wiped out in one fell swoop: the sustainability strategy of the market and the retailers, in which a lot of time, money and effort has been invested, might collapse. The consumer loses orientation towards a sustainable product. It will take years to regain confidence in a sustainably certified tuna, if it can be regained altogether.
In order for tuna to not get to that point, it is essential to have the harvest strategies established in the WCPFC next year. The groundwork for this must be laid in the next meeting at the beginning of December. It can safely be called a test case for one of the largest world fisheries in terms of volume and value. Harvest strategies are critical to modern fisheries management. Years of laboriously developed sustainability policy in the world’s region with the largest tuna resource depends on it. Too big a fishery for sustainable management to fail? Definitely not. But we simply cannot afford to let this fail. There is no time to lose.
The outcomes of the WCPFC meeting will be discussed with market and retail stakeholders in the tuna sector next month in a webinar hosted by the Global Tuna Alliance, among others. It will also discuss how the sustainability interests of the market sector are best served with regard to the timely implementation of harvest strategies in the Western and Central Pacific and what needs to be done to ensure adoption in December 2022.
–
Steven Adolf is a researcher and consultant regarding sustainable fisheries, and author of ‘Tuna Wars’, www.tunawars.net.
Author——————————-
Dr. Tom Pickerell
Executive Director
Global Tuna Alliance
✉️
There are 27 Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified tuna fisheries in the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO), as well as an additional 5 fisheries currently seeking MSC certification, representing over two million tonnes of certified and potentially certified tuna within the supply chain each year; or 73% of the global production of MSC-certified tuna. These certifications are at high risk of suspension from the MSC program: a situation clearly illustrated in a recent factsheet published by the MSC.
As you can imagine, these fisheries are of significant importance to companies who have made sustainable seafood commitments. The Global Tuna Alliance (GTA), a precompetitive collaboration of retailers, suppliers, wholesalers and brands with a major interest in improving the sustainability of the tuna sector, alone bought 1.27m tonnes of tuna, worth over USD $1.3bn, in 2020.
To stay certified, these fisheries must have robust harvest strategies and harvest control rules as part of their management system. The tuna fisheries in the WCPO are managed by a regional fishery management organisation, or RFMO, called the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). Currently the WCPFC does not have these measures in place.
However, the WCPFC committed to developing harvest strategies for key stocks or fisheries in 2014, but seven years later, has yet to deliver.
To accelerate progress, a forum is needed for communication and exchange among scientists, managers, and stakeholders to move toward harvest strategy adoption. This type of dialogue group is critical to success of the harvest strategy approach and other tunas RFMOs have already formed similar working groups to advance their harvest strategies development process.
For four years in a row, the WCPFC’s Scientific Committee has recommended creating the scientist-manager dialogue working group. In 2018, the Commission even developed Terms of Reference for the group (See Attachment 2) but could not agree on when to hold the meeting.
The WCPFC has come very close to establishing a so-called science-management dialogue (SMD) at its annual meeting. However, there has been a disagreement on when the group would meet. Most parties want it to be held adjacent to the annual Scientific Committee meeting in August, whereas the European Union, United States and Taiwan had requested that it be held adjacent to the annual meeting in December, if a physical meeting is held.
An August meeting would provide time for all delegations to digest any recommendations to the annual meeting in December. If the meeting were to be held adjacent the annual meeting, managers’ attention may be diverted by the pending negotiations and many delegations come to the annual meeting with fixed national positions.
It is extremely frustrating that this group is not being held due to a disagreement on dates. At the upcoming WCPFC meeting we hope we can see common sense prevail with all delegates championing the formation of the SMD group and agreeing to convening it in August, adjacent to the Scientific Committee meeting, at least for a trial basis in 2022.
.
Dr. Tom Pickerell is a marine biologist with nearly 20 years’ experience in seafood sustainability. Before he founded Tomolamola Consulting Ltd. and became the Executive Director of the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) and Project Lead of the North Atlantic Pelagic Advocacy Group (NAPA), he was the Global Tuna Director for the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and led SFP’s fresh & frozen and canned tuna programs. Previous to that he was the Technical Director at the UK Seafood Industry Authority (Seafish) and Senior Science Manager for the Seafood Watch program at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. He also worked for WWF and the UK government, where he held a variety of different policy and strategy roles in fisheries and aquaculture.