CALL TO MAKE PELAGIC FISHERIES MORE SUSTAINABLE

Call to make small pelagic fisheries more sustainable

As an MSC briefing underlines the need to protect small pelagic populations, two stakeholders in Mexico tell how they put their differences to one side to chart a sustainable path.

The Gulf of California was once described by the marine explorer Jacques Cousteau as “the world’s aquarium”. Home to 900 fish species and 170 different types of seabird, its pristine waters have also been the setting for an extraordinary meeting of minds between an industrial fishery and an ecologically-minded NGO.

In 2011, the Sonora Small Pelagics Fishery, Mexico’s largest by volume, was close to meeting the sustainability Standard set by the Marine Stewardship Council. Operating off the state of Sonora, dozens of vessels were using purse seine nets and new sustainable techniques to catch sardines and thread herring in large shoals.

Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI), a local marine conservation organisation, regarded the Sonora fishing industry as “the enemy”. Landings of Pacific sardine had crashed in the early 1990s and the NGO was determined to flag concerns it had over stock levels and interactions with native bird populations.

The MSC’s transparent objections procedure offers the opportunity to resolve such disagreements and, after last-minute consultations with the state government and the fishery, COBI took a momentous decision.

“We changed our mentality,” declares Francisco Fernandez, a marine biologist with the NGO. At the time he was engaged in robust exchanges both with the fishery and internally with scientific colleagues. “We decided among ourselves that the best course of action was to sit down with the industry and work with them to improve the environment.”

Realising that such a decision would attract the ire of other NGOs, Fernandez says “we had to put aside our problems to be open to collaboration with people we had often fought with in the past”.

León Tissot was on the other side of the negotiating table representing the fishing industry. They viewed the NGO with suspicion and were certain they were not at fault, but MSC certification required them to work out its outstanding issues with COBI.

Tissot, now Vice President of the National Chamber of Fishing and Aquaculture Industries in Sonora (CANAINPESCA), says: “We believed then and now that we were not overfishing. But, without COBI’s intervention, we just wouldn’t have received certification. We thank them for that.”

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