The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), a New Zealand-based coalition of 115 conservation-focused NGOs, is asking the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to suspend its certification of the country’s orange roughy fishery after the New Zealand government published new scientific evidence of spawning habitat loss related to damage from bottom trawling.
According to DSCC, a recent stock assessment raised concerns about the orange roughy population in the Tasman Sea west of New Zealand.
Considered a “straddling stock” because it roams partly in New Zealand waters and partly in the high seas, the area in which the assessment took place accounts for nearly 25 percent of the New Zealand orange roughy fishery under MSC certification. The high seas part of the stock comes under the jurisdiction of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO).
“Following evidence of another orange roughy stock in decline, disappearance of spawning aggregations, disturbance to spawning habitats such as seamounts, and ongoing damage to deep sea life from bottom trawling, the DSCC is strongly and urgently recommending that the MSC suspend the remainder of the New Zealand orange roughy certification,” the DSCC said in a letter sent to Matt Watson, who is MSC’s Asia Pacific senior fisheries program manager.
The issues raised by DSCC concern both orange roughy and its habitat.
The letter calls for a 50 percent reduction in catch limits in the fishery and emphasized fishing operations’ impact on coral habitats, claiming trawling in the orange roughy fishery accounts for half of coral bycatch in New Zealand.
Along with the challenges specifically facing the certification of orange roughy in New Zealand, the DSCC also referenced global concerns regarding MSC sustainability claims.
“A raft of lawsuits in the U.S. seeks to call the seafood industry to account for misleading claims about the sustainability of the fish they sell,” the DSCC said. “New Zealand is now the only country still bottom trawling seamounts in the South Pacific, and the fishery is a part of that shameful legacy. While the MSC continues to award its blue tick of so-called sustainability to one of the most destructive fisheries in the South Pacific, it condones ongoing environmental destruction, rewards inadequate fishery management and undermines its own credibility.”
Renewed calls for suspension come after industry representative group Seafood New Zealand “self-suspended” the certification for 70 percent of New Zealand roughy stock in late 2023, mainly citing scientific evidence that the spawning age for the species was actually much older than the age considered acceptable for fishers to catch.
Due to the late spawning age of the species, DSCC said though a reduction in catch limits would be a start it still would result in no discernable recovery of stocks within five years.
