Sustainable fisheries depend on a very simple concept: set harvest control rules (HCRs) and then enforce them.
The International Sustainable Seafood Foundation (ISSF) was founded five years ago on the idea that major global tuna companies could no longer afford to allow political and governmental gridlock prevent modern tuna fishery management practices.
Key to this was the fact that first, major retail buyers of tuna will not accept products that don’t meet minimum standards of sustainability; and second, if the international tuna management system remained mired in political gridlock, a Balkanization’ of the industry will occur, with retailers choosing some tuna as acceptable and rejecting others, increasing the costs and difficulties for the entire international tuna sector.
Although the ISSF has made huge progress in many areas, such as training captains, monitoring fish aggregation device (FAD) use, and developing more by-catch avoidance measures, the area they have fallen short is in convincing the international tuna management groups (RFMOs) to adopt harvest control rules and to abide by science based management.
Harvest control rules are a set of well-defined management actions to be taken in response to changes in stock status with respect to target and limit reference points, said ISSF.
Unless there is a pre-agreed upon action plan for avoiding overfishing or for rebuilding an overfished stock, long negotiations lead to delayed action or inaction. This delay can lead to further damage to the stock, requiring even more aggressive curtailing of fishing. The adoption of HCRs is a key aspect of modern fisheries management, and is also a requirement of several eco-label certification programs.
ISSF endorses clear target and limit reference points as called for by the United Nations’ Fish Stocks Agreement and by some RFMO Conventions. While most tuna RFMOs have at least begun consideration of limit reference points through their science committees, none have fully implemented these measures.
ISSF urges all tuna RFMOs to adopt stock-specific limit and target reference points and HCRs. This is one of the most important actions that RFMO members can take to ensure the long-term sustainability of tuna stocks.
There are two upcoming meetings where this will be discussed.
The first is the general meeting of all the tuna management bodies, and the second is the annual meeting of IATTC the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission.
At both these meetings, the ISSF should make a forceful case for harvest control rules, and at a time when skipjack prices are quite low, they should also begin to make a credible threat to reduce sourcing from those regions that refuse to adopt a scientific management system.
The promise of the iSSF was for an industry led global response to tuna sustainability. Unless they can make this happen, the alternative a Balkanized’ tuna market with competing environmental claims will develop.
As happened with the tuna -dolphin controversy more than 25 years ago, the reigniting of environmental wars over tuna can and will have a large negative impact on consumption.
In my opinion, the true test of the ISSF approach will be in how much they can show forward progress in changing the behavior of the RFMOs.
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