ECUADORIAN SKIPJACK TUNA MSC CERTIFIED

Ecuadorian skipjack tuna MSC certified. Ecuadorian skipkjack tuna recently received MSC certification, a species that represents around 70% of the tuna catches made by the Ecuadorian fleet.

This certification granted by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) distinguishes the responsible management of the tuna purse seine fishery produced, processed and marketed from Ecuador to the world.

This is another great step that Ecuador takes in its quest to ensure that all its fisheries are certified and sustainable.

Certification of yellowfin tuna had already been achieved last year and certification of bigeye tuna is expected to be achieved next year. Furthermore, Ecuador is also on track to achieve this objective for fishing small pelagics and pomada shrimp.

Against all odds

Despite the economic crisis that is still being experienced worldwide due to the effects of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, as well as other problems such as insecurity, the tuna companies grouped in the Tunacons Foundation have worked “against wind and tide” to achieve the most recognised and rigorous international certification of fishing sustainability worldwide.

From the beginning, in 2017, Tunacons started with an ambitious project, so with its work plan last year it managed to certify yellowfin tuna and now it does so with skipjack.

The five founding members of Tunacons, which represent 47 boats, and which today achieve the second certification for skipjack tuna products, are the Ecuadorian companies: Nirsa, Servigrup and Eurofish; the Panamanian company Pesquera Jadran; and the American Tri Marine.

These two important objectives would not have been possible to achieve without the assistance of the national fishing authority and the technical support of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC).

 Strategy and commitment

“All this has been achieved under a strategy and permanent commitment of businessmen to cooperate with various public and private organisations at a national and international level to develop effective actions that help reduce the various impacts on marine environments,” says Guillermo Morán, director from the Tunacons Foundation.

To achieve these objectives, explains Morán, Tunacons worked on three principles towards sustainable fishing, which are: maintaining tuna populations at healthy levels, minimizing impacts on the ecosystem and promoting orderly and responsible management of the fishery.

Teamwork

For his part, Cristian Vallejos, director of the MSC Programme for Latin America, stated that the fishery has carried out extensive and complex teamwork with the different actors in the fishing industry in Ecuador to be the first in the region to achieve certification. .

“We are very happy about the addition of a new fishery in Latin America that meets the highest standards of environmental sustainability,” he stressed.

The tuna industry is the main activity of Ecuador’s industrial fishing sector. In its three phases, that is, capture, processing and marketing, the tuna industry is the most regulated by government entities and global organisations.

It is the third most important non-oil export item and the first in industrialised products of our country.

Worldwide, Ecuador is the second largest exporter of tuna, only after the giant Thailand. 80% of processed products are exported to various international markets, the most important as a region being the countries of the European Union.

The fishing vessels that catch the most tuna in the Eastern Pacific are those with the Ecuadorian flag with approximately 300,000 tons, making us the first tuna producing country in the Eastern Pacific.

Ecuador has more than 20 tuna processing plants with a processing level between 550,000 and 600,000 tons per year.

The Ecuadorian tuna fishing fleet is the largest in the region and one of the most important in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO). At the moment there are 112 fishing vessels with the Ecuadorian flag, of which 47 are part of Tunacons.

It is estimated that between capture and processing, the industry generates more than 30,000 direct jobs, which leads to a total of approximately 100,000 indirect jobs throughout the entire tuna value chain. At least 53% of people employed in tuna processing plants are women.

The Ecuadorian tuna industry focuses particularly on the capture of yellowfin, bigeye and skipjack species.

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