What a strange year for Oregon’s Dungeness crab (Cancer magister) season, which closed late last week. It will likely go on record as a down year, at least in terms of volume, but the economic value of the catch was at an all-time high, partly due to increased interest from overseas buyers.
Since 1990, Oregon’s annual Dungeness haul has seesawed between 10 and 30 million pounds each year, averaging about 14 million pounds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service. This season the final tally is expected to come in at the average. However, according to Hugh Link, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission (ODCC), the value for this year’s harvest is nearly USD 50 million (EUR 37.4 million), the highest on record.
Off the water it’s even stranger. In July the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s influential Seafood Watch program downgraded all U.S. and Canada fisheries from best choice (green) to good alternative (yellow). In Oregon, which boasts the world’s only Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified Dungeness fishery, the change sounded some alarms. When contacted after the news broke, Link said that Oregon Dungeness is the “poster child for sustainable fisheries.”
So why the demotion? Sam Wilding, senior review analyst at Seafood Watch, said recently that the rating change was based on rare gear interactions with endangered humpback whales and a lack of data regarding stock abundance and mortality, up and down the West Coast. “The fishery is not performing any worse than it was,” he said. “In 2012 we started using an updated version of [assessment] criteria and one of the things that came up was how we deal with uncertainty. We take a cautionary approach, and slightly more so now.”
A dearth of data has dogged Oregon’s storied fishery for years: It earned its coveted MSC certification in December 2010, but only after an assessment process that took seven years to complete. As former ODCC Executive Director Nick Furman said at the time, the fishery had not merited much attention from fishery management, and therefore lacked data, because it “simply hadn’t warranted it. In the days of limited funding in the fishery-management arena, a fishery that is working doesn’t get a lot of attention.”
A longstanding 3-S harvest-restriction scheme (size, sex, season) for fishermen worked for generations, but without reams of scientific surveys, such top-level evaluations can run aground. Oregon’s system is remarkably similar to the Maine lobster industry’s, which has also sustained itself for generations with simple management techniques (such as returning egg-bearing females to the water with a v-notch in the tails). The Maine lobster fishery has more in common with Oregon Dungeness: both are MSC-certified, yet both have a yellow rating.
In an ideal world, an MSC-certified fishery — seemingly the highest honors possible — would merit a green rating from Seafood Watch. But because these fisheries are managed state by state and each is part of a larger biomass that stretches across national borders, they are each somewhat dependent on each other’s performances to maintain a high sustainability score. Not only that, but the two assessors rely on different criteria, which doesn’t help matters.
“The seafood sustainability labeling market has become very competitive and this is another example of the criteria changing and the difference between different certifiers,” said Link. “Ultimately, we hope that the consumer isn’t confused by the changes.”
The best part of the story? In its latest Dungeness crab assessment that led to this rating change, Seafood Watch said the Oregon fishery was not evaluated because it is MSC-certified. So, about that confusion thing …
In sum, what every fishery seeking certification and a favorable sustainability rating needs is more information, and that means more resources from the managing bodies — in this instance, the states. Without such data, assessment bodies like MSC and Seafood Watch will err on the side of caution, as they likely should. As cash-strapped governments struggle to balance their budgets, increased spending on fish and shellfish surveys is likely not in the cards.
