Would you like endangered sea turtle with that?

The MSC label will now be applied to swordfish from a longline fishery that catches endangered sea turtles in Florida.  How's that sustainable, you say?  Well, children, you can catch endangered species (at least 147 loggerhead and leatherback turtles from 2005 - 2009) and still be called sustainable as long as you are reasonably certain that that level of catch won't contribute to irreversible harm to the population.  What a high standard!  To be pretty sure that you're not contributing to further downfall!

Here's a little quote from the MSC fisheries assessment methodology, which tells third-party certifiers how to score fisheries: "There should be no more than a 30% probability that the true status of the Component is within the range where there is risk of serious or irreversible harm."

Let me provide a little more context.  The quote above is for Principle 2 performance indicators, i.e. how the fishery is performing with respect to impacts on habitat and other species.  So when a fishery is being assessed to see if it should receive MSC certification, and it catches endangered species, the third-party certifier that assesses the fishery against MSC's standards will try to determine the level of impact on that species.  If a fishery is determined to meet the standard quoted above, it will pass without conditions.  If there's a 40% probability, it can still pass but with conditions.

I am generally a math and science kind of person, but when you start calling yourself "sustainable" as MSC does you can't fall back on dry assessments of probability and risk.  Sustainability, at least in the way it is used in popular discourse, implies a lot of things, and when consumers are looking for the superior environmental choice they're probably not thinking about what level of dead endangered turtles is okay.  They're probably thinking that they don't want to be indirectly responsible for the deaths of any endangered species - at least on a regular basis.  Unfortunately swordfish longline fisheries catch a lot of bycatch, including turtles.  You can marshal all the statistics you want to prove that these catches from one segment of the fishing industry aren't by themselves responsible for continued population declines, but that's really beside the point.

Consumers seeking out sustainable seafood are looking for superior performance.  You may say that the swordfish fishery has improved with respect to turtles, that as a condition of MSC certification the fishery's agreed to do all sorts of things it should already be doing like increasing observer coverage, blah blah, blah.  None of this changes the fact that consumers are being duped into thinking they're supporting the good guys, when really the superior environmental choice is harpoon-caught swordfish, or another species entirely.

When certification of this fishery was proposed, the Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) objected, but their objection was not accepted by the Independent Adjudicator/lawyer appointed by MSC to weigh the various arguments.  This adjudicator, by the way stated "The CB [the third-party certifier performing the analysis of the fishery]  has made the point that although there were a number of significant stakeholders involved in the assessment process including PEW and Oceana, the only remaining Objector is TIRN.  This reflects well on the MSC process and the positive contributions of Dayboat in its interactions with the NGOs."  Except it doesn't at all, since Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, the Ecology Action Centre, and the Animal Welfare Institute submitted letters in support of TIRN's objection.

I'm beginning to think no one involved with MSC has good reading comprehension skills.  They call themselves the "best environmental choice."  Apparently the "best" means up to a 30% chance that you're causing irreversible harm to an endangered species, and means you're not concerned with regular hookings and killings of struggling endangered species.  And supporting an objection means you don't support it at all.

MSC's at it again!

Recently ASOC got some bad news - the Independent Adjudicator overseeing our objections to the Marine Stewardship Council's proposed certification of the Ross Sea toothfish fishery gave the company that assessed the fishery (Moody Marine) and recommended certification another chance to explain themselves. Even worse, although he had previously asked Moody to provide some detailed explanations behind some of their scoring guideposts - which he felt had vague language - and they provided only a dismissive, inadequate response, he accepted their argument. He also seemingly accepted the clear disdain for the process and the authority of the Independent Adjudicator that oozed from Moody's condescending reply. There is no final decision, which means the IA might still find that Moody erred in claiming that there was plenty of information about toothfish reproductive habits. Sample information that everyone admits is still unknown about toothfish: frequency of spawning, location of spawning, location of larvae after hatching. Can you really manage a fish population sustainably if you don't know all that much about their reproduction?

Closer to home, another third-party certifier for MSC is also making questionable decisions. Although the longline bigeye, yellowfin, and swordfish fisheries in the Southeast US catch significant amounts of bycatch, MRAG has agreed to assess the fishery for certification, which means that the fishery has been secretly pre-assessed and determined to be a viable candidate. It's difficult to see how this fishery can meet MSC's requirement that "[f]ishing operations should be managed to maintain the structure, productivity, function and diversity of the ecosystem on which the fishery depends." Let's look at some statistics. From 2001-2008, the Florida East Coast (FEC) part of the fishery harmed or killed 632 leatherback turtles and 506 loggerheads. Both are endangered. And that's just the Florida part. The U.S. government considers the fishery a Category 1 fishery that poses a significant threat to marine mammal populations. Oh, and the fishery takes sharks and a bunch of endangered bluefin tuna, three quarters of which is just thrown out. Check out the Sea Turtle Restoration Project's list of the staggering bycatch impact of these fisheries. 50% of the fisheries' catch is bycatch.

This is a new low for MSC. With the fishery assessments ASOC was involved in, there was a lot of uncertainty about the potential effects of the fisheries. Uncertainty is a solid reason to deny certification since MSC purports to want fisheries that are sustainable indefinitely. If you don't have good information, theoretically you can't make that claim (but plenty of fisheries do). However, in this case there is no uncertainty, just a lot of at-risk species dead for no good reason. What more would the fishery have to do to get rejected by the certifier? Use baby pandas as bait and hooks made from the bones of puppies and kittens? Although I suppose since there are plenty of puppies and kittens around that would be considered a sustainable practice until there's proof that the fish-hook making industry is detrimental to cat and dog populations.

The fishery clients for these fisheries may be able to argue that their bycatch is only a small part of the problem, that they're working on it, etc. This points to the overall problem with MSC's standards - if you can make a not-entirely-crazy argument, you're golden. There's no room for common sense, such as not certifying species like toothfish because it's well-known that they're vulnerable to overfishing, or not certifying fisheries that waste half of their catch and regularly kill endangered species.

Meanwhile, I'll be waiting for the announcement that the baby-panda-bait fishery for bluefin tuna is undergoing assessment for MSC certification.