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.

Another certification standard for fish?

It seems the state of California is considering developing its own eco-labelling standards for seafood. Unfortunately, the standards will rely heavily on those of the Marine Stewardship Council. But on the bright side, MSC's standards, while flawed, aren't always as big of a problem as the third-party certifiers who examine whether fisheries meet them. Not to mention the fact that a fishery can flunk a few standards with scores of 60 but still pass with conditions. Under the California standards, fisheries must score 80 on certain elements of the standards concerning stock status and bycatch. This is a definite step up from MSC standards, and one that raises the bar for potential applicants. Now they'll have to get their ducks in a row before they get the coveted label.

In any case, it's good to see that people are recognizing that MSC can be improved. I'm sure Californians will appreciate the opportunity to know a little bit more about the fish on their plates.

What seafood can I eat?

As someone who works at an ocean conservation-related organization, I am always wondering what seafood can I eat? I read a recent blog post related to this problem with interest. The author of the post was bothered that seafood experts don't want to eat seafood. I can understand his point. Bison populations in the United States are growing mostly because people want to eat them again. And it's true that it's probably an easier task to tell people which seafood to eat than to tell them not to eat any. However, I can sympathize with the people happy not to see fish on the menu. I still recall attending a reception a couple of years ago, with an empty stomach, only to find that they were serving mostly seafood that, as a conservationist, I didn't feel right about eating. I would have been happier had there been no fish. Of course, meat and dairy have their own problems, but there are fewer variables - for example, a fish population could be currently healthy, but fished in a destructive way. At least I know the basics of farming and what it's doing to the environment - it's more difficult to learn that for seafood. The debate over the right approach, whether the environmental movement creates too much guilt, is one I can't resolve. But a couple of recent stories bring home just how complicated it is for even the highly motivated to figure out which fish they should seek out.

First up is Food and Water Watch's report on seafood eco-labels. As the report points out, the desire to raise awareness and promote sustainable seafood is admirable, but the proof is in the pudding, and eco-labels have plenty of room for improvement. MSC comes under reasonable criticism. The best advice is still to check out Blue Ocean Institute and the Monterey Bay Aquarium - they can give you the best information, and by text to help you figure out those tough restaurant/grocery store decisions. Eco-labels may look authoritative, and certainly are accurate some of the time, but seafood sustainability is hotly contested enough that you'll probably never be able to turn off your critical thinking skills when examining various claims.

Next is this great story about one retailer's quest to continually improve its sustainability. Wegmans is a pretty famous grocery store, with many dedicated fans - and it also has a forward-thinking seafood management team. Wegmans has made some tough decisions over the years, and their commitment to sustainability is admirable. In particular, their decision not to sell any fish from the pristine Ross Sea demonstrates that they are concerned about the overall health of the ocean, not just about the long-term viability of their seafood department.

For my part, I try to learn as much as I can, and make as many smart seafood and food decisions as I can. One decision everyone can make is to support companies that, like Wegmans, have a thoughtful approach to seafood. If you find a restaurant or store that has a good overall philosophy, you might be able to save yourself some research. A great example is the San Francisco sushi restaurant Tataki. The menu was created with the help of Greenpeace campaigner Casson Trenor. The seafood's fantastic, and you can rest assured that everything on the menu is a good choice. Let's face it, the average person will never be able to keep up with all the information needed to select environmentally friendly seafood, but if we support the businesses that put the effort into doing the work for us, we can help make sustainability automatic.

MSC's string of bad days continues

Life must be rough over at the headquarters of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) these days. First the ruckus over Fraser River Sockeye, then ASOC's two objections, then a write-in campaign over the shameful decision to assess wasteful tuna and swordfish fisheries off the coast of Florida, and now two articles in this week's Nature. The articles are pretty significant. One is an opinion piece with six high-profile scientist authors, including ASOC's colleagues Sidney Holt and David Ainley, that blasts the MSC's failings, including my personal favorite, its certification of bottom trawl fisheries. In case you were wondering, bottom trawling is the equivalent of clearcutting the ocean floor, if clearcutting forests also involved plowing up the ground and killing all the animals surrounding the trees.

Yet MSC still wants us to believe that "fisheries are not, as the authors assert, certified before they can demonstrate their sustainability." So what DO you call it when MSC brags that its conditions for a fishery it certified brought high bycatch down? Doesn't that mean that they certified a fishery with high bycatch, something patently unsustainable? It seems the crux of their argument is that "we have standards for sustainability, therefore any fishery that meets them is sustainable." Nope. The piece is saying that your very standards are no good. There's another article about the certification of krill that criticizes the certification of the Antarctic krill harvest. MSC doesn't really provide any new counterarguments to that one either, just reiterating that it doesn't want to discriminate against fish meal producers.

Keep it up, MSC - the more you fail to really engage on these serious issues, the more people are going to make your life miserable. The environmental community would just LOVE it if there were a well-funded organization with rigorous standards that could promote best practices in fisheries. But MSC only qualifies under the well-funded part. It's good that the scientific community is being made aware of its shortcomings.

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.

A Linkage between Right Whale and Krill Declines...

As many are aware, right whales got their name because when whaling was more prevalent they were considered the ‘right’ whales to hunt. Today they encounter a new threat.

The good news: in the southern hemisphere, at least, right whales have shown a serious rebound with population figures as of 1997 estimating as many as 10,000 of these whales.

The bad news: where in 2003 we were only finding a few whales that would mysteriously die, in more recent years we’ve seen figures up in the eighties and nineties, with the majority of these casualties being calves, which may be dying from malnutrition as their blubber was alarmingly thin.

As southern right whales feed in Antarctica the greatest portion of their diet comes from krill. Here it points out that as krill may grow scarcer with global warming so to may southern right whales.

With this in mind we cannot help but revisit the certification of Antarctic krill as a sustainable fishery. The growing number of whale deaths is only one example of the far-reaching effects of a decline in Antarctic krill that would surely dramatically exacerbate with an opening of the fishery.

As we mentioned in prior posts there were blatant holes in the methodology in MSC certification that make their claims questionable – most notably their decision not to classify bottom trawling as a destructive fishing practice. With such an example of obvious turning of blind eye and what is an at best inexact science surrounding the process of determining safe levels of krill to extract, certification for the krill fishery in the Southern Ocean is dangerous.

Right whales are only one example of the spreading effects of krill declines from climate change and human extraction. It will be interesting to see if there are similar trends among the penguin populations and other animals that rely on this base of the Antarctic food chain.

Editorial laments MSC Certifications

An editorial by the vice-chair of a Scottish environmental non-profit laments the increasing number of fisheries that are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) despite concerns about their sustainability. In particular, the bizarre insistence of the MSC that bottom trawling is not a destructive fishing practice is criticized:

The issue is of burning relevance to our local waters. In Scotland there has long been concern over bottom trawling for prawns - it decimates the bottom living ecosystem, destroying the early food of white fish, and rare sea pens and even endangered firework anemones. Research in the Clyde estuary in a 10 month period in 2007 also showed that the bycatch in turn is extremely destructive of juvenile fish. In total over 31 million dead juvenile fish were found in the bycatch with an average weight of 63 grams. Yet prawn trawling in NW Scotland has received MSC certification and the Clyde Fishermen’s Association is pressing for the MSC Blue Label for their mobile prawn trawlers. This is madness when the damage done by the trawling methods is well-documented. One of the reasons the Clyde is so depleted of white fish, and known as the Newfoundland of Scotland, is the destructive mobile trawling methods.

The author also makes the excellent point that certification is increasingly driven by profit. Certifiers are eager to get more business. Supermarkets want to sell certified seafood. But if MSC is about protecting seafood and not applying a thin veneer of sustainability to fisheries that can make a case that they aren't actively destroying the species they target, then it's time MSC took notice of these kinds of criticisms and addressed them substantively - a defensive press release is not a substantive response, by the way.

MSC says Antarctic krill is sustainable

This week, ASOC learned that our objection to the Marine Stewardship Council's certification of Antarctic krill was not upheld by the independent adjudicator. In a blog post on the decision, Casson Trenor points out the inadequacies of the certification process. MSC's guidelines don't consider the ethics or morality of a fishery. For krill, the benefit to society is small. Krill may be used to feed farmed fish, or turned into expensive nutritional supplements. Neither of these is necessarily a good use of resources. By narrowly focusing on fisheries while ignoring their broader context, MSC loses a lot of credibility. Moreover, there really isn't a lot of information that suggests that increased krill harvesting won't harm local populations of predators. When fishers target the very bottom of the food chain, where krill is, they're taking a huge gamble. If their predictions about acceptable catch levels are wrong, the entire ecosystem could be devastated. Is this really what consumers think of when they think of "sustainable"? It's time for MSC to re-evaluate its standards.

Bluewashing and ecofraud

A blog post over at New Scientist last week highlighted the confusing, possibly inaccurate advice consumers are receiving on "sustainable" seafood, urging conscientous seafood buyers to beware of "bluewashing." Bluewashing is the equivalent of greenwashing, wherein companies or labelling programs aim to convince consumers that they are buying an environmentally friendly product, even when they're not. Say there's package of single-use cleaning cloths made with a small portion of recycled materials. Is that really environmentally friendly? Single-use items pretty much violate the whole spirit of sustainability. Remember, it's reuse, reduce, THEN recycle. But at the same time, it's unreasonable to expect consumers to be able to research on their own every facet of an item's manufacture. That's why labelling must be accurate and based on high standards.

Bluewashing similarly takes advantage of the complexity of fisheries science and management to confuse consumers - perhaps a fishing operator is abiding by quotas set by a governmental ministry, which has decreed those limits sustainable, but the stock has shrunk below levels predicted by models. Is that fishery really being sustainably managed? That's exactly what some conservationists are asking about the MSC certification of the British Columbia sockeye salmon fishery. The fishery had to be closed last year when only one million fish returned to the river instead of the expected 10 million. MSC counters that the closure of the fishery indicates that it is being appropriately managed, and that new information on the stock will be considered (MSC fisheries are periodically re-evaluated). Again, does that really represent adherence to the precautionary principle MSC professes to use? If not, MSC certification is then mostly helping certain portions of the fishing industry provide the appearance of good environmental stewardship and charge higher prices.

I find this attitude troubling. If the main goal is, as MSC says, "fish for today, fish for tomorrow," why does it seem that the process seems to be primarily concerned with making sure that fishing operators who can prove they're doing a few things right get to make more money? Consider the proposed certification of a portion of the krill fishery in the Southern Ocean. Most krill is not used for human consumption, but for feeding farmed fish or processing into nutritional supplements. Even if the harvesting of krill is sustainable (and that's highly debatable), these uses don't exactly conform with sustainability principles. Salmon aquaculture needs several pounds of feed to produce a single pound of salmon (which often retails for around $8 - $10 per pound), and produces pollution. Krill oil capsules may offer protection against heart disease. Antarctic krill capsules are $20 for 30 at one online retailer. So we're not feeding the poor here. MSC's standards should reflect a much broader view of sustainability than their current certifications suggest, both because it's the right thing to do for the world's fish stocks and because it's unfair to consumers who believe they are paying for adherence to strict sustainability standards.

More Trouble for MSC

Just last week, the NY Times reported on the controversy over the Marine Stewardship Council's certification of New Zealand hoki fisheries. Now the MSC's in trouble again, this time with fisheries scientists Daniel Pauly and Jennifer Jacquet (whose Guilty Planet blog is linked from this one) because of its decision to consider certifying the Peruvian anchovy fishery. If you think that "consider" doesn't sound so terrible, think again. By the time a fishery enters the public certification process, it's already consulted with an independent certifier to figure out if it's likely to get approved. The assessment process is expensive, so it seems as though once a fishery is in the public assessment phase, it's getting confirmed. As ASOC staffers have been reading official analyses done by MSC certifiers on other fisheries, it seems that the certifier often finds ways to give fisheries passing scores, no matter what anyone (including the experienced scientists who review their reports) has to say.

Pauly and Jacquet object to the proposed certification of the fishery because much of the catch goes to feed farmed fish and land livestock - a process which is usually seen as fairly wasteful given that several pounds of fish are needed for each pound of livestock or farmed fish produced. And it's not as if anchovies are inedible otherwise. The domestication of ruminants was extremely useful for early agricultural humans - regardless of the pounds in-pounds out comparisons - because humans just can't digest pounds and pounds of grass, and ruminants can. So they convert, in a sense, inedible things into usable protein. Anchovies, on the other hand, are quite edible, and full of protein. As the authors point out, Peru has a serious problem with child malnutrition and it makes little sense to export a source of good protein when people are starving. Protein isn't just for building nice biceps, since protein-deficient children usually end up with low IQs in addition to physical ailments.

The problem with MSC, the authors point out, is perhaps not that anchovies are overfished (it appears that they aren't) or that fishing methods are harming the environment, but that the wasteful practice of feeding farmed fish (or livestock) with fishmeal is not taken into account. This is yet another problem with the MSC standards. It increasingly appears that these standards simply aren't tough enough to ensure that certified fisheries are held to the highest standards. It seems to me that any fishery that can make a somewhat plausible argument that it meets the standards gets to use the label. The certifiers are working on behalf of the fishers - not the ocean. Since MSC is supposedly about protecting marine species first and foremost, why does it seem that MSC ignores so many of these kind of issues? MSC certification cannot be considered credible if it is so easily obtained, with no thought given to the broader impacts of certification. More here.

New Zealand hoki and the MSC

The New York Times has a great story out today describing the fight over the management of New Zealand's hoki stocks. The New Zealand government has been cutting the allowable catch of hoki by substantial amounts, which indicates that overfishing has harmed the stock, but hasn't formally admitted that there are problems. Complicating the issue is the Marine Stewardship Council's stamp of approval on New Zealand hoki, a fishery which uses bottom trawling, which makes it more popular with buyers. In a subtle way, the MSC label also makes it more difficult for environmentalists to raise objections, as its presence makes it seem as if those protesting are being too picky or hyperbolic. But there's nothing hyperbolic about opposing bottom trawling, a practice on which the UN considered imposing a worldwide moratorium. The moratorium failed because of political pressure - over a thousand scientists have signed a petition opposing bottom trawling as a fishing practice - not because there is any real debate over whether bottom trawling is ok for the environment. Imagine if logging were conducted by uprooting trees with a bulldozer while shooting all the local wildlife, churning up all the surrounding soil and destroying all other vegetation in the process. Would anyone tolerate that? Because that's what bottom trawling essentially does. It dredges up all the life on the ocean floor - sponges, corals, etc. - while catching huge numbers of fish, both the target species and non-target species. Most of the (dead) bycatch is discarded. The sediments stirred up by the nets dragged along the ocean floor can generate algal blooms. Some of the sediments contain pollutants which are then reintroduced into the water column. The hoki fishery kills seabirds and seals as well. Add to all this the fact that the high catch limits set by the New Zealand government seem to have caused drastic population declines and it's difficult to see what's sustainable about hoki.

ASOC is interested in the hoki fishery because of our concerns over Southern Ocean fisheries for krill and toothfish that the MSC is assessing for certification. The MSC standards, which allow clearly problematic fisheries to receive their blue seal of approval, are inadequate and should be revised to ensure that only truly sustainable, well-managed fisheries receive certification. Instead of looking for the blue MSC label, check out seafood guides from groups such as the Blue Ocean Institute, Food and Water Watch, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Some of these groups note MSC certifications, but in general they evaluate fisheries on other criteria as well, so their recommendations carry more weight. Some MSC-certified fisheries are well-managed, but their seal alone is not sufficient.

Fur Seals and Krill

Fur seals travel a really long way for food, researchers have found. Pregnant fur seals were found to travel 1300 kilometers from the Southern Indian Ocean to the Southern Ocean, even during the Antarctic winter. Researchers suggest that the seals make the journey because they cannot tolerate the cold temperatures in the Southern Ocean for long periods of, but the abundance of krill makes the journey worthwhile.

The article notes that the research indicated that fur seals were highly dependent on krill, since they undertake such arduous journeys just to reach krill swarms. What could that mean for the fur seals who live near the Aker Biomarine krill fishery in the South Atlantic? The Marine Stewardship Council is preparing to certify this fishery as sustainable, but their public report indicates that fur seals can easily switch to other prey when krill aren't available. Do they know for sure? If researchers are just realizing that some fur seals will travel a long way for krill, can we really say that we understand the extent of seal dependence on krill?