Huge Interests At Stake With MSC Skipjack Tuna For PNAff

By Atuna

If things go as planned, the eight Pacific countries that form the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) can expect completion of the MSC certification assessment process of their free school skipjack fisheries this autumn. If all the criteria are met, eventually as much as 10% of the raw material supply to the global canning industry, could potentially be certified as being sustainable fished according to the norms of the Marine Stewardship Council.

The tuna industry will look with great interest to an assessment process that is now expected to become a highly complex and a political issue because of the important economical and environmental interests at stake.

The public comment draft report on Western and Central Pacific skipjack tuna from the PNA countries is since last Tuesday officially available for comment, and is a first step of an ambitious project to get a significant part the world’s most important skipjack fisheries certified as being sustainably fished.

The certification process is solely focussed on the FAD free skipjack fisheries within PNA waters, by which only tuna that has been caught by setting nets on free swimming schools of mature skipjack can meet the standard. This method generates minimum by-catch on juvenile tunas and other non-targeted species like sharks, turtles, mantas.

Any stakeholder who wishes to comment on the published assessment report has to do so with the London based certification body Moody Marine no later than 5pm GMT 2^nd July 2011. According to the assessment timeline that is published in the report, the expected date of completion will be 22^nd July. The proposed target eligibility date, the date that the MSC logo should be awarded to the fisheries, is 28^th October 2011.

The tonnage of free school skipjack involved was 442.000 in 2008, and with destiny for the main canned tuna markets in Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea. A quantity which, as raw material, today has a market value of about USD 750 million.

At this moment 26 stakeholders are involved, under which the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) and the PNA. They have to comment on highly technical and administrative issues which are mentioned in the 420 page Assessment Report of Moody Marine.

One of the hot issues in the assessment process will be the fact that the PNA wants to have its purse seine fleet fishing on free school skipjack as well as fish aggregating devices (FAD’s) at the same time. The fish will be separated on the vessels, to avoid the problem of certification, since MSC does not allow FAD fished tuna to be certified as being sustainable. Observers on board should guarantee this system. Other issues refer to the organisation of the PNA countries and their position within the WCPFC as the international regulatory body in the region. So far, the PNA countries have decided to activate their own, more stringent stock conservation rules, due to the indecisiveness of the RFMO.

Behind the technical application of rules that should lead to sustainable fisheries, the certification will also lead to an economical and financial showdown between part of the tuna industry and the group of relatively small Pacific states that form the PNA. The ISSF, a powerful organisation of international tuna industry players supported by WWF, already declared that they are against the certification of the PNA skipjack. In a open letter, ISSF president Susan Jackson wrote that ‘The world will have to wait’ on the MSC certification of the PNA tuna. In her blog, she questions the MSC certification as a way to make fisheries more sustainable.