ATuna, August 9 2022.
The MSC is slated to change the requirements around ghost gear, specifically addressing lost FADs and sonar buoys in the revisions set to be released in October. The development of guidelines for best practices around gear loss by the likes of the Ghost Gear Initiative and ISSF, along with comments from many stakeholders on their previous requirements prompted these changes. There changes will fall under both Principle 1 and 2 with a focus on improving the guidance to reduce CAB interpretation and on minimising impact on ETP species through mitigating gear loss. There are many certified tuna FAD fisheries that will be given a generous timeframe to reach compliance with the new Standard.
Our thoughts: This article suggests that the new Standard will raise the bar with regard to unobserved mortality and ghost fishing impacts due to lost fishing gear and practices that use drifting FADs. We appreciate the MSC’s intent to minimise ghost gear impacts and mortality; CABs will now have to evaluate a UoA’s management strategy to minimise the impact on the target stock, ETP species and habitats.
However, the impacts from ghost gear are required to be scored only ‘if necessary’ and “demonstrably absent or negligible”, thereby allowing CABs to avoid scoring this scoring indicator. These concerns apply to both observed and unobserved mortality. For target species under P1 alternative measures will only be evaluated if the impact from ghost fishing exceeds 10%. Further, the requirement to score ghost fishing impact on the target species or ETP species but not on both will result in ETP species being neglected. For dFADs specifically, the MSC fails to require the implementation of a management strategy although there is a global understanding that such a comprehensive management should be required.
