While certification is only one tool in moving global tuna fisheries to sustainability, the leading environmental standard — the Marine Stewardship Council — has broad support from the NGO community.
That was the clear message in the conference session titled, “Moving Towards Alignment: Tuna Sustainability,” held on Sunday at Seafood Expo North America in Boston.
“No human institution is perfect. The MSC is not perfect,” said Dr. Bill Fox, VP-fisheries conservation at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) US. Yet getting tuna products to bear the MSC ecolabel is the WWF’s No. 1 point on its global tuna sourcing strategy, which he talked about during the panel discussion.
Most key points brought up by the panelists — Fox; moderator Susan Jackson, president of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF); Meghan Jeans, director of conservation at the New England Aquarium; and Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program — were areas the NGO community has found common ground. That includes moving tuna fisheries involved in fishery improvement projects, or FIPs, to the end goal of MSC certification.
Fox added that MSC is the highest sustainability bar available for a public certification scheme and that it’s market penetration has grown from 0.5 percent of global tuna production in 2008 to roughly 12 percent today.
“We won’t assess a fishery already [MSC] certified. It’s a yellow [or “good alternative”] in even a worst-case scenario,” said Dianto-Kemmerly. “The Conservation Alliance, many of those organizations also support the MSC. No organization is perfect but it has broad support from NGO community.”
The global tuna industry is also turning to ISSF for guidance. Fox reported that there are now 25 ISSF-participating companies, up from just eight in 2008. Its new Buyer Engagement Strategy Team (BEST) is working to establish common ground for buyer engagement in support of tuna sustainability improvement.
