FADs, Chains And Skipjack

When it comes to the assessment of tuna stocks, the coming years might give some unwelcome surprises concerning the state and prospect of the sustainability. Serious questions can be asked about the health of the stock of skipjack in the Indian Ocean (IO) and if these worries are confirmed this might result in an overexploited stock in the 2018 assessment of the Indian Ocean stocks. This might result in skipjack joining the fate of the already overfished yellowfin tuna stocks in the IO. This was concluded in the presentation of the French tuna scientist Dr. Alain Fonteneau at the fisheries session of the 6th edition of the European Tuna Conference held on April 24th in Brussels.

When it comes to sustainability issues, this was one of the three main problems the industry is expected to cope with, according to the industry, the NGOs and the academic contributors to the European Tuna Conference.

The other core issues that are expected to affect the market profoundly are the massive use of Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) and the increasing importance of the traceability and transparency of sustainable chain of custody.

Skipjack was until recently considered a species with a very robust stock due to its quick reproductive capacity. If an upcoming overfished status of the skipjack should occur, it will have far stretching consequences in the near future for the fisheries’ effort of the purse seine fleet in the Indian Ocean, but also for the MSC certified Maldivian pole and line fisheries. Being the main tuna species in the canning industry, this will inevitably lead to a shift in even more supply of skipjack coming from the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

Fonteneau, who is considered one of the most experienced and respected academic tuna researchers globally, was critical on the quality of many of today’s stock assessments. According to Fonteneau the level of uncertainty of the estimations of the stocks sometimes result in outcomes that are ‘totally unrealistic’. This might have been the case with the 2014 skipjack assessment in the Indian Ocean, by not taking into account statistical deficiencies, major changes in the purse seiner fishing power, lack of realistic skipjack catch per unit effort (CPUE) and, most of all, the major increase of technologic high developed FADs.

According to Fonteneau’s own investigations, the seeding of large amounts of geolocated FADs with underwater sonar have, in the last years, not resulted in the expected increase of skipjack catches in the Indian Ocean. On the contrary: Fonteneau saw declining skipjack catches of purse seine and pole and line fisheries, serious decline of the skipjack catch per FAD sets and low average weight. “Strong indications of skipjack overfishing and a quite poor stock status”, according to the scientist.

Fonteneau’s estimations are that many tuna stocks are now exploited at levels close or slightly over their Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), the popular scientific standard in fisheries management that represents the largest possible catch of a species maintaining the size of the population on a sustainable level. The good news is that most tuna stocks are highly resilient: they remain much less overfished than many coastal resources. Another positive factor is that tuna fisheries and tuna resources are now at least quite well monitored by each of the 5 tuna RFMOs. The bad news comes from the fleet and their gear: a universal overcapacity of tuna fleets, combined with increasing FAD numbers and FAD catches that remain widely out of control. Fontenau pleads an increasing need to be more efficient to control tuna fisheries, as most of the tuna stocks are fully fished today.

This 6th edition of the European Tuna Conference coincided with the 20th anniversary of the MSC - the certification that is broadly considered as the golden standard in wild fisheries. Part of the discussion and presentation shifted the attention of certification issues from the fisheries to other parties downstream the global value chain and to the chain of custody as such. In his presentation, Dr. Simon Bush of Wageningen University Sustainable Policies Department, underlined the increasing commitments of retailers, suppliers and big brands with a large variety of different sustainability schemes. New forms of coordination between these firms and these schemes can be expected to be developing in the coming years. According to Bush, among the growing amount of different schemes that compete there is a growing need to address the current coordination failures to create more meaningful improvements that are credible and accessible to a wide range of tuna fisheries.

Mr. Henk Brus, Managing Director of Pacifical, the joint venture of the PNA countries to market their MSC free school certified skipjack and yellowfin tuna, expected the massive use of floating FADs to change the character of the fishing industry in an irreversible way. Now at a yearly rate of 100,000 FADs deployed, the new fish tracking technology on these FADs will continue to increase the catch and has a particular effect on the already existing overcapacity in the fleets. The use of FADs is also promoting a new form of cherry picking for the fisheries at those FAD sites that show the best available catch. Eventually FAD technology might change fishing from a kind of hunting into a harvesting activity. When it comes to certification, the use of FADs is also resulting in a growing marketing of the so-called ‘FAD-free’ fished tunas - mostly self-certified - that are appearing in the Central and Western European markets and increasingly replacing FAD caught tuna. In regards to the prices of skipjack on the Bangkok market, Brus questioned if we will see an end to the predictable decline in the price that each year was registered as a result of the ending of the simultaneous bans (the IATTC fishing ban in the Eastern Pacific from July until August and the WCPFC FAD ban in the Western Pacific from July until September) after fleets started oversupplying the markets. Last year, such price decline was not repeated as a result of La Niña, which meant a clear disruption with the existing trend of the past years.

Brus is also expecting an important shift in attention from the fisheries to the chain of custody when it comes to sustainability claims. Parallel to the EU-efforts to make the chain more transparent and traceable in the fight against IUU fisheries, there will be more pressure from retailers and brands on the industry to assure, through third party verification, that the fish the consumer buys has indeed been caught sustainably.

The pitches of the represented NGOs at the conference, i.e. of International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF), World Wildlife Fund (WWF,) the PEW Charitable Trusts and Greenpeace, highlighted the different sustainability issues that the industry can expect in the upcoming years. IPNLF Outreach Director Ingrid Kelling stressed the point that the industry has to develop better business plans to involve the small and medium scale tuna fisheries in sustainability schemes. This is not only to guarantee the verifiable and sustainable products in the chain, but also to engage the smaller fisheries in resource decisions. WWF Director for Latin America Pablo Guerrero and PEW Senior Associate Grantly Galland underlined the shift from industry yearly negotiating quotas to harvest strategies approaches with controlled reference points as well as fishing gear as an important issue on bycatch. In particular the FAD fisheries will become an evolving problem, according to Greenpeace Ocean Campaigner François Chartier. The lack of appropriate management rules for FADs at RFMO level, but also the lack of ambition of the market players to develop the more sustainable free school fisheries, will increasingly threaten a sustainable future of tuna fisheries, according to Greenpeace.