Seafood Source July 28, 2021 (more coverage of the story can be found at the end)
In July 2021, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) announced that 22 certified tuna fisheries and 5 fisheries being assessed in the Western Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) face having their certifications suspended if the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) does not agree to and implement appropriate harvest strategies and harvest control rules at their upcoming annual meeting, beginning on November 29, 2021. If there is no agreement at this meeting, these fisheries will risk suspension in June 2023, as the conditions to their certifications will not be met. This would impact fisheries for skipjack, albacore, yellowfin and bigeye, representing more than two million tonnes of tuna supply per year, accounting for up half of the global tuna catch and 73% of MSC certified tuna.
Our thoughts: We are pleased to see that the MSC is finally threatening a suspension of certification for these fisheries, and calling on WCPFC to come to an agreement to implement long-overdue harvest strategies at its upcoming meeting. However, this response from MSC has taken far too long, and the CABs involved in the assessment process should have required this to be done prior to certification or recertification of fisheries. Driving change and improvement is best done at the time of initial certification or recertification, rather than placing conditions that then drag on unfulfilled for many years – as has been the case with these WCPFC tuna fisheries. We hope that MSC will hold firm on the need for fisheries to meet all conditions of their certification and hope to see such consistent position also with respect to other fisheries and other requirements of their Standard.
It’s important that the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA), with all its retailers and supply chain partners, are also urging delegations at the WCPFC to adopt appropriate harvest strategies to avoid tuna fisheries in the region losing their MSC certifications.
- MSC warns that tuna fisheries in the WCPO will lose certification if the development of harvest strategies continues to stall. harveststrategies.org October 12, 2021
- MSC fact sheet
GTA Partners support the MSC in calling for improved harvest strategies across tuna stocks in the Western & Central Pacific Ocean, GTA 27 Jul 2021
