My views on Ecolabels are quite open and I’ve written in extent about it… many issues… yet the main one is that they push the myth that a fishery is sustainable because it has certification when in reality is the opposite… it is sustainable because the action of concerned governments and RFMOs and therefore it can get an ecolabel (as long as they industry pay, of course)
he is the one that defines legality of catch….he does not work for a ecolabel, nor he gets any benefits from it
Let me use 2 examples of fisheries I know well
Hoki in NZ. Was one of the first certified fisheries in the world, is the most analysed fishery in NZ, it has almost yearly stock assessments, etc… is not sustainable because of the ecolabel… The idea that a certified product may get a price premium is not a golden rule; furthermore, the logic of that assumption is flawed. In New Zealand, we have argued that the industry should not even expect a price premium for certification noting that: “No plausible case can be made for a premium for ‘sustainable seafood’. If anything, a well-managed fishery should also be a cheaper fishery to harvest as the fish should be more abundant and easier to catch!”
The other example is Tuna in the pacific… For example, I work a lot in the transshipment hub of Majuro, and I have been many times in situations where I see very similar purse seiners transhipping to the same carrier - both fishing vessels catch the same tuna species, using the same methods, under the same management system, from stocks evaluated by the same institutions, with the same regional controls over the activities, we apply the same port State Measures regime to both… yet fish from vessel ‘A’ that does not pay for the ecolabel process, therefore as the narrative goes, is not sustainable? While fish from vessel ‘B’ that pays, is?
I wanted to understand well the system, so I went through the process to become an evaluator against the MSC standard and I did a pre-assessment for principle 3 (the regulatory principle)… I work on a pre-assessment of a huge tuna operator and walked away as it was fleet with various flags, I insisted that the assessments were to be based on individual flag state performance… yet even so there were vessels with the worst compliance index possible in the unit of certification (which I knew from my work with regional organizations)… but I could not use it because it wasn't offered to me by the client and I had no contact with the flag state… so I did not play that game.
Even if the origin of ecolabels is based on the assumption that fisheries administrators in particular those from developing countries) are not doing a good enough job… during my work with many fisheries administrations in the Pacific I have spent 2-3 days responding to the questions of the consultants that have come to ‘assess’ the fishery for certification… so in effect, they come for data to the people and institutions that the ‘consumer’ does not trust! That irony for me is mind-blowing. If you really want to help, why not just support the official institutions in the countries whose job and whole existence is to manage fisheries in a sustainable way?.
I have lived with the hypocrisy of that narrative for a while… but a paper that I just read takes it much further by suggesting that the certification has a role in ELIMINATING IUU fishing… and I don't buy that
I don’t get pay to criticise papers so I not gonna spend to much time on it (unless someone here wants to pay me for a detailed analysis)
Firstly I start with the fact that 8 of the 11 authors work for the ecolabel they are promoting and one of the reviewers was the boss of that ecolabel, they do declare that conflict of interest, which is great… but what does this mean on the value of unbiased information? Personally, I think the views presented by the authors of that work could be perhaps more a promotional article for the ecolabel, then a science paper.
Now I want to be very clear here… I not questioning the capacity and professionalism of any of the authors and reviewers, they are all way more qualified than me by far… I’m just a self employed dyslexic ex fisherman with a couple of degrees from unknown universities that works in the MCS realm, I’m writing this as the total nobody I am and my opinions are personal, they don't represent at all the ones of any my contractors.
You can go over the paper if you like, from the operational point of view there are three components to the IUU concept. They are not mutually exclusive, but also can occur independently. A simplified “definition” of each of the concepts follows.
Illegal fishing is conducted by vessels that fail to comply with the licensing conditions put upon their operations, types of gears, access restrictions and so on, by their own legislation, the legislation of the coastal states whose waters they fish in, and/or are parties to a regional fisheries management organisation (RFMO) but operate in violation of its rules, or operate in a country’s waters without permission.”
Unreported fishing is catch that is either not reported or is misreported to relevant national authorities or the RFMO. (As reporting accurately is a licensing condition, to a certain extent unreported fishing is also illegal fishing.)
Unregulated fishing is conducted in areas or for fish stocks where there are no applicable conservation or management measures and where such fishing activities are conducted in a manner inconsistent with state responsibilities for the conservation of living marine resources under international law. (Conservation and management measures are rules set by an RFMO that govern fishing in its jurisdiction.) This term also covers vessels without nationality or flying the flag of states that are not parties of relevant fisheries organisations, and which therefore consider themselves not bound by their rules.
So, the first two are related to each other, and unregulated fishing is much rarer these days. There are only a few areas of the world that are not under the management of an RFMO, one of them being the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina beyond the country’s exclusive economic zone.
So if the fishery is unregulated or performed by vessels without nationality, then chances are that the P1 and P2 would of the MSC would not have data to start… furthermore the operators in those fisheries would not even thinking to pay for a certification… so to suggest that the ecolabel has a role there is rather flimsy.
In terms of Illegal and unreported, the key issue here is that they happen during the fishing event, they happen at sea every time the vessel operates… how does a certification that is reviewed every 3 years or more can check every fishing event. Let me use the Pacific tuna case, where different state actors are involved. Some responses rely on the national legal frameworks, which may need improvement, while others rely on regional organisations such as FFA, and international frameworks, as is the case of RFMOs.
For us in the WCPO, we have robust systems based on the unique coastal-state cooperation (via the Forum Fisheries Agency and the Pacific Community) that marks our region. We use common tools, like the shared registers; the vessel monitoring system; shared surveillance operations with the support of the USA, France, Australia, and New Zealand defense assets; and so on.
These tools have been in use in our region for a couple of decades now. Therefore, we have achieved a solid level of control over the common understanding of what illegal fishing is, and, as said, unregulated fishing has not been a problem in the region for many years.
The FFA 2016 IUU fishing quantification study (currently being updated by way of IUU mitigation progress report) showed that the key area of problems for us is unreported fishing. This can happen in different individual or combined ways, including non-reporting, misreporting (saying you caught A, when in reality you caught B) and under-reporting (declaring you got 50 when in reality you caught 70).
So, this is the area we are focusing on in the WCPO, through a series of initiatives and innovations such as strengthening our port state measures, monitoring transhipments with remotely read electronic hook scales, catch documentation schemes, and electronic reporting and monitoring, just to name a few. All of this is under the jurisdiction of the national agencies (those that by principle consumers don’t trust)
In the region, the legality of the catches is verified by the PSM systems prior authorising unloading (we check identity, licensing and maneuvering) and is the same for vessels that pay for the certification or don’t. No one from the ecolabels has any role in this… if the officers fail the fish goes straight to the consumer
As per unreported… we have monitors that crosscheck the volumes with scales against the logsheets and then as part of the catch certification process… and again is the same for vessels that pay for the certification or don’t. No one from the ecolabels has any role in this… if the officers fail the fish goes straight to the consumer
The one I give them is that they have a “chain of custody” (CoC) which could stop the laundering of fish (mixing reported fish with unreported fish) in the factories. CoC is required to maintain certification in regard to the integrity of the product bearing the logo of the ecolabel, particularly in the case of purse-seine caught tuna certification, as vessels fish in the same trip both certifiable products (FAD-free) and noncertifiable products (FAD-associated).
The issue here is that the CoC only applies to products in the wells that have fish caught without FADs in vessels that are part of the unit of certification (i.e. have paid for the certification). Is not designed to assure “non IUU fish” but to make sure the fish does not mix with fish from FAD wells or the fish from other vessels fishing the same stocks, with the same fishing gear, during the same seasons are not clients of the ecolabel.
Anyway… my main point is that the fight against IUU happens at sea and in port, normally by people who do not get ANY benefit from ecolabeled fish…
Let me use a parable to explain: in most countries of the world, to drive a car, you need to go through the process of getting a driver’s license run by an official institution in that country. Once you have that license, you can legally get on the road and drive a car. How good that system depends on a varied number of reasons such as human resources, cultural values, the rule of law, transparency, etc. Obviously, there would be countries that are better than others at this. So let’s say that a country has a bad rate of accidents by licensed drivers, in comparison with other countries. So what you do?
For me, the most logical, democratic and cost-effective solution is to set up a programme to strengthen the institution that is legally authorised to do that job in the country, standardise the licensing systems, exams and controls under auditable standards and reward conformance in some way.
What I would not do is to create a private parallel system on top of the already existing national system. Hence I, as a driver need to get through the hurdles of the official systems, and then contract a foreign private assessor and go over a whole set of new exams and tests (at my cost) to prove to people in rich countries that I know how to drive in a way they consider ‘safe’. And that is what in my opinion private certifications do: they create a parallel system instead of supporting the organisations that are supposed to do the job.
In my opinion, one of the biggest hurdles that we face in legality and sustainability is that while we want it, we allow the underfunding of official institutions and pay fisheries officers and fishers salaries that are way below mediocrity, but we expect excellence from all of them. They are the ones that have a role in IUU fishing.
FAO tell us that over 70% of the seafood consumed in developed countries comes from developing countries. Partly this is because the fisheries in developed countries have either collapsed or can’t keep up with local demand. Yet all of the ecolabels, private certifications, retailers, and most of the consumers that allegedly require them are based in developed countries. This has led me to say that I see the whole private certification scene as hypocrisy in the best-case scenario, or neo-colonialism in the worst-case scenario.