Hawaii fishery earns sustainability label

The Hawaii Longline Affiliation introduced final week that it has achieved a globally acknowledged certification for sustainable fishing by the Marine Stewardship Council following a 16-month assessment course of.

With the achievement comes the fitting to put the council’s blue eco-label on all of its merchandise and the potential to enter new markets that insist on a better stage of sustainable fishing practices.

However some conservationists who’ve crossed swords with the Hawaii Longline Affiliation are questioning the legitimacy of the certification.

“I don’t personally know something in regards to the certifying entity,” Earthjustice legal professional David Henkin mentioned. “All I can say is that if this isn’t only a ‘green-washing’ rip-off, this group clearly hasn’t achieved due diligence with respect to the longline fishery.”

Henkin mentioned Hawaii’s tuna and swordfish longline fisheries hurt imperiled marine species, together with sea turtles, false killer whales and sharks, whereas the business affiliation fights “tooth and nail” towards laws to scale back the quantity of bycatch, the species unintentionally caught throughout fishing.

Eric Kingma, government director of the Hawaii Longline Affiliation, mentioned recognition from the world’s largest fisheries certification program is well-deserved due to the fleet’s stringent administration and monitoring regime.

“This fishery is sustainable,” he mentioned. “It’s the most extremely monitored longline fishery on the planet. It operates with an enormous quantity of oversight by the federal authorities. And by regulation, U.S. fisheries must be sustainable.”

A fishery that meets the certification commonplace, in response to the Marine Stewardship Council, should abide by three core rules: sustainable fish shares, minimizing environmental impression and efficient fisheries administration. The usual is predicated on the United Nations Meals and Agriculture Group’s code of conduct for accountable fisheries.

The certification evaluation — good for 5 years however requiring yearly audits — covers the affiliation’s deep-set tuna longline fishery and shallow-set swordfish longline fishery.

The affiliation’s fleet consists of 142 vessels, producing annual earnings of some $125 million. That makes the Honolulu business fishing port one of many nation’s most respected, producing 95% of the nation’s bigeye tuna landings and 50% to 60% of its swordfish and yellowfin tuna landings.

Mark Fitchett, pelagic fisheries ecosystem scientist with the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Administration Council, mentioned the Western and Central Pacific Ocean produces greater than 60% of the world’s tuna provide and is the one area the place all of the tropical tuna shares are above sustainable limits.

“The Hawaii longline fishery,” Fitchett mentioned, “is broadly thought-about the gold commonplace for a well- managed and well- monitored tuna fishery.”

A part of the explanation, he mentioned, is because of the administration of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Administration Council, which has taken the lead in establishing vessel-monitoring methods for U.S. longline fisheries and has advocated for the rise in longline observer protection all through the Pacific.

Kingma mentioned the fleet has been working out of Honolulu with integrity for greater than a century, rising to turn into Hawaii’s greatest meals producer.

“We imagine our fleet produces the very best quality and highest stage of monitored tuna on the planet,” he mentioned.

Henkin, nevertheless, mentioned the Hawaii Longline Affiliation has intervened in each case Earthjustice has introduced involving the fisheries’ “documented hurt” to species protected below the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Safety Act and Migratory Fowl Treaty Act, together with sea turtles, false killer whales, sharks and albatrosses.

“This litigation goes again to the Nineties and continues by way of right this moment. In each case, the fisheries have opposed each new conservation measure and, once they have misplaced, have lobbied exhausting to undo or water down these protections,” he mentioned.

Grace Bauer, an Earth­justice oceans legal professional, agreed together with her colleague, noting that the impression of the fishery on a number of species of marine life, together with inexperienced sea turtles, big manta ray and false killer whales, stays unknown and, by regulation, the Nationwide Marine Fisheries Providers should nonetheless make formal assessments concerning these species.

“Contemplating (the Marine Stewardship Council’s) second precept standards is ‘environmental impression of fishing,’ it appears MSC shouldn’t have licensed HLA with out, at a minimal, first having a organic opinion that assesses the environmental impression of the fishing on these protected species,” she mentioned.

Robin Baird, a researcher with Cascadia Analysis Collective and affiliate school member with the College of Hawaii’s Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, mentioned the Hawaii Longline Affiliation has been preventing efforts to raised defend Hawaii’s uncommon false killer whale inhabitants.

“They’ve been pushing again for 13 years,” mentioned Baird, a member of the False Killer Whale Take Discount Group established by the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2010. “That doesn’t appear to me like efficient fisheries administration.”

Greater than 420 fisheries world wide have earned MSC’s blue eco-label.

Conservationists level out that the MSC mannequin requires every fishery to pay for the certification, which calls into query the independence of the evaluation.

The payment, which might vary from $20,000 to $100,000, goes to the certifying company. In Hawaii’s case, the company was Management Union, a United Kingdom group that makes a speciality of auditing, certification, inspections and chain of custody assessments, amongst different issues.

Kingma wouldn’t say how a lot the the Hawaii Longline Affiliation paid for its certification, solely that it was nearer to $100,000 than $20,000.

“Most marine safety organizations have already long-considered this certification a sham, pay-to-play scheme, benefiting solely industrial fishing pursuits,” mentioned Inga Gibson, coverage director of Pono Advocacy LLC.

Gibson mentioned the HLA fishery certification evaluation, which is on the market on the MSC web site, papers over a number of the fishery’s flaws, particularly on the subject of bycatch.

At one level the evaluation summarizes 19 “situations,” but there are solely three situations that “should” be met, she mentioned.

“This can be a long-held criticism about MSC — that there isn’t any oversight or final accountability below the certification,” Gibson mentioned.

However Kingma mentioned the fishery should meet sure yearly benchmarks below guidelines of the certification.

In line with MSC, along with preserving fish shares and the marine surroundings, the certification course of ensures that merchandise could be traced to a MSC-certified fishery by way of required record- retaining.

Kingma mentioned the fishery has already labored to enhance by itself. Final 12 months the fleet vessels voluntarily switched from utilizing wire leaders on their gear to monofilament leaders to advertise shark conservation.

The fishery additionally pioneered the usage of satellite- based mostly vessel-monitoring methods within the late Nineteen Eighties to spatially monitor fishing places in close to real-time, officers mentioned, and excessive ranges of unbiased observer protection had been instituted within the fleet because the early Nineties.