Tuna Fishing Industry Frustrating Supply Of MSC Tunaff

Current High Profits Mentioned as Possible Motive 
 
Source: The Marshall Islands Journal, Written by Giff Johnson

PNA’s free school skipjack  purse seine fishery has already been certified to meet the international reputable MSC sustainability standard but PNA officials said this week that every attempt so far this year to actually deliver certified skipjack – which brings a higher price – has been frustrated by the tuna fishing industry.

“Maybe they are making too much money to care about certification,” said Parties to the Nauru Agreement Commercial Manager Maurice Brownjohn.

He pointed out that the price of skipjack on the world market has jumped from $1,000 a ton in 2009 to $2,400 this year.

Revenue coming to PNA countries, of which RMI is one, has doubled. Meanwhile, said Brownjohn, the profit for the industry has skyrocketed “seven to ten times” since 2009.

The PNA certification of skipjack by the globally-recognized Marine Stewardship Council can add an additional 20 percent profit margin. “Maybe skipjack is too profitable for industry to care (about certification,” Brownjohn said of the fact that not a single trial for delivering certified fish has been successful this year.

Certification requires what is known as a “chain of custody” from catch to processing factory.

This chain of custody is necessary to confirm that the skipjack is caught sustainably without the use of fish aggregation devices (FADs) and does not get mixed in with skipjack on the same vessel that was caught with FADs.

Brownjohn said PNA onboard observers on every purse seiner fishing in PNA water are doing their part to monitor the chain of custody.

“We’ve gotten certified fish within sight of the factory processing cold storage area,” he said. “But somehow it gets ‘accidentally’ mixed with non-certified fish.”

There is “huge demand” in Europe and elsewhere for PNA’s “Pacifical” brand of certified tuna, Brownjohn said.

But until industry play ball with the certification process, PNA is unable to begin delivering on the global demand for a supply of sustainably caught skipjack.

Despite difficulties in initial attempts to complete chain of custody delivery of fish, Brownjohn said PNA is not giving up on a product that will generate increased revenue for the region while helping to sustain the resource.

“The leaders wanted a sustainable, certified product and a brand,” he said. “We’ve done it and gotten commitments (to buy) from the markets at the retail end.”

Now, he said, it is up to industry to play its part to support the plan.