- Orange roughy populations are only starting to recover after being almost wiped out by overfishing in the 1980s and ’90s
- Orange roughy is a slow growing fish that may not reach sexual maturity until 70-80 years old, making it highly vulnerable to overfishing
- Fishery applied for MSC certification in 2021 but failed because orange roughy is endangered
- MSC weakened its standards so its consultants could ignore governments’ declaration of endangered species; AMCS will again object to certification
The Australian Marine Conservation Society has appealed a baffling decision to recommend a fishery that directly targets an endangered species for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) sustainability ‘blue tick’ of approval.
The orange roughy fishery failed in its first MSC certification attempt in 2021 because it was classified as an endangered species in Australia, and now MSC has weakened its standards so its assessors can ignore governments’ endangered species declarations.
Australia’s endangered species classification system includes a special category just for fish called “conservation dependent”, where endangered species can still be targeted and sold by commercial fishers.
Australia’s orange roughy populations are only starting to recover after being almost wiped out by overfishing in the 1980s and ’90s when the fishery collapsed. Orange roughy are a slow growing fish that can live to up to 250 years, but they also breed slowly, with recent studies suggesting they don’t reach their sexual prime until 70-80 years old, making the population highly vulnerable to collapse from overfishing.
AMCS Sustainable Seafood Program Manager Adrian Meder said: “How can fishing an endangered species be considered in any way sustainable? An endangered species list is not a sustainable seafood shopping list.
“Most Australians would be appalled at the thought of eating an endangered animal, yet there’s a special carve out in the Australian endangered species classification system just for fish that allows fishers to still hunt and sell some endangered species.
“MSC will undermine its credibility with the public as an authority on sustainable seafood if it gives the orange roughy its trusted blue tick.
“The orange roughy fishery failed to get MSC certification in 2021 only after AMCS and WWF-Australia appealed the recommendation on the grounds that it was an endangered species. MSC usually accepts an assessor’s recommendation unless someone is willing to pay thousands of dollars to object to the recommendation.
“MSC has now weakened its own standards so its assessors can ignore governments’ endangered-species declarations. MSC’s accredited assessors, paid for by the fishery to certify a fishery, can unilaterally reclassify endangered species as ‘certified sustainable’ if a simple set of conditions are met. MSC has not demonstrated how this weakened standard solves any environmental problems. It seems designed only to appease its industrial fishing clients.
“MSC must reject the orange roughy certification application, and fix its slipping standards to prevent this ridiculous situation arising again.”
The assessor, MRAG Americas, was responsible for the orange roughy fishery’s first attempt at MSC certification in Australia, and the only other certification of an orange roughy fishery, in New Zealand. The NZ certification has been dropped for large parts of the fishery after its stock assessments proved so flawed they had to be abandoned altogether.
Its latest assessment of Australia’s eastern zone orange roughy fishery is based on assumptions and contradictions. It uses orange roughy population structure assessments that include a fish population from an adjacent fishing zone, which the Australian Government has declared “overfished”. Even MSC’s slipped standards won’t certify an “overfished” fishery, so the assessor argues that the orange roughy populations in the two zones are not highly connected, a claim without scientific evidence. The assessor then argues that the southern zone is not “overfished”, and should be reclassified as “unknown” without evidence.
Multiple genetic and other studies have found some differences between orange roughy populations, but studies have not found any differences between the populations in the eastern and southern zones that MRAG Americas argues are not highly connected.
Mr Meder said: “MSC is supposed to rely on a precautionary approach in assessing fisheries, but this seems to have been thrown out with the bath water. MRAG Americas’ assessment is based on assumptions and contradictions. A credible, science-based, and trustworthy sustainability assessment should choose to be far more careful when looking at endangered species, rather than less careful.
“Things have only gotten worse for Australia’s orange roughy fishery since it failed to get MSC certification. In 2021 CSIRO cut its estimates of the eastern zone orange roughy population and recommended catches be halved, but was ignored. Australia’s only orange roughy fishery thought never to have been overfished, the Cascade plateau, is considered the healthiest, but in the last fishing season fishers caught just 1.6% of the allowable catch and raised serious concerns the fish had disappeared.
“If a fish species is anywhere near an endangered species then we aren’t going to feed the world with it. We invite the MSC to focus on certifying the fisheries that don’t and have never put anything on our endangered species list. There’s a multitude of Australian fisheries more sustainable than orange roughy under this simple metric.”
