Three new and two amended conservation measures to facilitate continuous improvement of global tuna fisheries have been announced by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) today. The five measures cover reducing incidental capture of sharks and marine turtles, supply and tender vessel monitoring, transhipment observers, and capacity management and will come into effect on January 1, 2018.
Two new measures are the first to affect longline vessels specifically. The ISSF Status of the Stocks report shows that longline fishing accounted for 12% of the tuna catch globally in 2015; longline fishers caught nearly 143,000 tonnes of albacore tuna, for example. All ISSF conservation measures directly impact how nearly 30 global seafood companies that participate with the foundation do business with vessels on the water, at the processing plant, and in the marketplace.
“ISSF continually reviews its conservation measures to update existing standards or to create new measures based on scientific research, fishing methods and conservation needs,” said ISSF President Susan Jackson. “With about 75 percent of the world’s canned tuna processing capacity conforming to multiple ISSF measures for sustainability best practices, and with major tuna companies being transparently audited against those measures, we have a real opportunity to make changes on and off the water.”
New ISSF Conservation Measures — Mitigating Bycatch, Improving MCS Efforts
Bycatch Mitigation
Some tuna regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) and/or national governments have adopted requirements for fishing gear modifications in longline tuna fisheries — such as the use of circle hooks and monofilament lines, best-practice bycatch handling techniques, and/or prohibition of “shark lines” — while others have not.
ISSF is committed to supporting the global use of these techniques, which reduce the catch of non-tuna species, by longline vessels. To that end, new ISSF Conservation Measure 3.6 Transactions with Vessels Implementing Best Practices for Sharks and Sea Turtles is adopted to further support the implementation of RFMO conservation measures for bycatch mitigation in longline tuna fisheries. The ISSF measure requires participating tuna companies to conduct transactions only with those longline vessels that commit to following such best practices to protect sharks and marine turtles.
ProActive Vessel Register — Supply and Tender Vessels
Supply and tender vessels are used in many oceans by purse seine vessels. These vessels help to seed and maintain FADs in good condition and in the appropriate areas, but they are minimally monitored and regulated by three of the four major tropical tuna RFMOs.
ISSF has adopted new Conservation Measure 7.4 Supply and Tender Vessels to further support the implementation of RFMO conservation measures for supply and tender vessels, and the collection of data and effective monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) of such vessels. The new measure applies to ISSF participating companies that have controlled supply or tender vessels that operate with purse seine vessels fishing for skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye tuna. It requires those companies to:
Monitoring, Control & Surveillance (MCS)
At-sea transhipment is the act of transferring a catch between vessels, or to a vessel used for cargo, away from a port. New ISSF Conservation Measure 4.4 (c) Transhipment At Sea – Observer Coverage requires tuna companies that do business with large-scale longline vessels to conduct transactions only with longlines whose at-sea transhipment activities are 100% monitored by human observers, either onboard the main vessel or onboard the transhipment vessel.
This measure aims to improve tuna product traceability and to curtail illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Amended ISSF Conservation Measures — Effective Capacity Management
Amended ISSF Conservation Measure 6.2(a) Requirements for Inclusion in Record of Large-Scale Purse Seine Vessels Fishing for Tropical Tunas, first adopted in 2012, rss amended to clarify when a new large-scale purse seine vessel is permitted to be added to the ISSF Record of Large-Scale Purse Seine Vessels as a replacement for a vessel already on the Record that has sunk, has been scrapped, or otherwise permanently transferred out of the tropical tuna fishery.
Read more on Conservation Measure 6.2(a).
Amended Conservation Measure 7.2 Threshold Requirement for PVR Listing, first adopted in 2014, is amended to specify procedures regarding ISSF Record of Large-Scale Purse Seine Vessels and ProActive Vessel Register listing that must be followed when a vessel owner is replacing a vessel that is being scrapped.
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