After a contested process years in the making, the Marine Stewardship Council certification process for the Echebastar purse seine skipjack tuna fishery has taken a major step forward. An independent adjudicator, UK attorney and mediator John McKendrick, evaluated the scoring of the fishery used by the third-party assessor, Acoura Marine — known as a “conformity assessment body” (CAB) in MSC parlance. Acoura recommended in February that the fishery’s certification bid, launched by the Spanish tuna harvesting firm Pesqueras Echebastar, should be approved. However, during the public comment process, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) argued that the fishery did not meet MSC standards and should be disallowed. The decision then fell to McKendrick, a veteran British attorney known as a Queen’s Counsel who also serves as the attorney general of the UK overseas territory of Anguilla. He considered the six grounds made in the WWF’s objection, which involved risks to Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna, the use of fish aggregating devices (FAD) and the impacts on silky sharks. After considering the grounds, he dismissed four of the six. A fifth led to Acoura “providing a proposed re-written rationale offering greater detail and clarity on a score related to yellowfin tuna”, the MSC said in a press release. The WWF withdrew a sixth ground with the agreement that “as a condition of certification the fishery will investigate the effects of FADs on key ecosystem elements including both tuna and sharks”. McKendrick’s decision that the scoring was “justified” means that Acoura will now update its final report on the fishery before moving ahead with certification in the coming weeks. Whilst I agree with the CAB’s scoring, it is important to acknowledge areas of the final report will be strengthened because of WWF’s helpful engagement and crucially important scientific research will now be carried out in respect of the effect on sharks of the deployment of FADs in the Indian Ocean,” McKendrick said. “This is an important conservation measure and one that will add to the protection of marine environments whilst permitting sustainable fishing. WWF’s engagement strengthens the overall mission of the MSC. Drifting FADs The MSC assessment included two “units of certification” for skipjack caught by the six vessels in Echebastar’s fleet, using free school and drifting FAD sets in the Indian Ocean. The MSC said that the Echebastar fishery will be the first certified fishery to use drifting FADs for tuna and that extra measures will be taken to avoid bycatch. These include 100% observer coverage, new non-entangling FAD designs to reduce shark and turtle bycatch and the use of second conveyors on Echebastar’s vessels that will allow fr the quick release of unwanted catch back into the ocean, the MSC said. The WWF has yet to respond to the fishery’s likely certification. Two other groups, International Pole and Line Foundation and the Shark Project, withdrew from the MSC process in September over the Echebastar fishery and said they would formally complain to the MSC. The WWF’s objections were based on several considerations, including the overfished status of yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean, and the lack of overall harvest control rules (HCRs) for yellowfin, which is a significant bycatch species in this fishery, it said. In addition, WWF contends that the fishery is not using the best available practices for FAD management including a credible, written and audited FAD management plan. WWF argued that there is no strategy in place to address the bycatch of silky sharks or the impact of the fishery on other endangered, threatened or protected species; something which MSC has come under pressure for of late. WWF also believes that the monitoring, control and surveillance system in the fishery does not meet necessary standards.WWF said that prior to seeking certification, it encouraged the Echebastar Indian Ocean skipjack tuna fishery to first undertake a fishery improvement project in order to improve performance to the level of the MSC standard. New process The fishery has been assessed using an updated MSC assessment process, developed following public consultation throughout 2016. “The aim of this process is to reduce the complexity, uncertainty, cost and barriers to accessibility of the MSC program, while maintaining and improving the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement and ensuring that the high bar, and rigorous assessment, required for MSC certification are maintained,” MSC said. The new assessment process was piloted in 2017 involving seven fisheries of varying sizes and scale, a mix of previous assessment experience and varied methods of entry into assessment. In the case of the Echebastar fishery, a previous assessment effort for skipjack and yellowfin in the Indian Ocean and its continued work towards overcoming some of the challenges identified during the original objection to the fishery becoming MSC certified, made it a good candidate to test the streamlined process, MSC said. That fishery again The WWF has disagreed in the past with certifiers’ decisions to award the Echebastar fishery MSC certification. At the end of 2016, a leak of a draft WWF document detailed the struggles it found while attempting to utilize its position as a stakeholder in the certification of Indian Ocean tuna fisheries over the past six years. The issue of HCRs under the IOTC came up in the certification processes for both the Maldives pole and line skipjack and yellowfin tuna fishery, and Echebastar’s later attempt to gain certification. In November 2015 it was finally decided the Echebastar skipjack fishery could not be certified at that time. Based on its experiences with the application of the MSC fisheries standard to HCRs in Indian Ocean tuna fisheries, WWF said in 2016 the case is weak that [we] will see any substantial conservation gains from continued engagement as a participating stakeholder in individual MSC fishery assessments. The NGO felt that despite being a stakeholder in the certification process, its contributions to the latest round of fishery standard reviews were largely ineffective, at least when it came to requirements for HCRs.