The Independent Adjudicator has made his final ruling on the Echebastar Indian Ocean tuna fishery case and has concluded that the fishery will not be certified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard.

The Independent Adjudicator upheld WWF’s objection to the fishery being certified and made his final ruling on the case, reiterating his initial finding that the scoring by certifier Acoura Marine could not be justified and requiring that the earlier recommendation for certification be withdrawn.

WWF lodged a formal Notice of Objection to the decision reached by Acoura Marine, with the objective of preventing the certification of the Echebastar purse seine tuna fishery to the MSC standard.

The organisation’s main concern centred on the absence of any effective management controls or tools to limit or otherwise manage the exploitation of tuna. These are a key requirement of the MSC standard for sustainable fishing and must occur across all tuna species under the RFMO management. Although the MSC policy and standard are clear and unequivocal on this point WWF says that there has been repeated and contagious misapplication in many tuna assessments, as demonstrated in this case by Acoura Marine.

Dr Wetjens Dimmlich, WWF’s Indian Ocean Tuna Programme manager, said, “The situation in the Indian Ocean is absolutely clear with regards to control of tuna stocks; fisheries managers are currently unable to limit or in any way influence the exploitation of overfished stocks and, although work is underway to address this, there is still some way to go before the necessary management tools will be available to them. The attempt by Acoura to claim otherwise was astonishing to many who work in this region and inevitably couldn't withstand scrutiny. WWF will now work closely with tuna fisheries seeking MSC certification to ensure that management in the Indian Ocean is improved to meet MSC requirements.”

The Independent Adjudicator declared that Acoura Marine had failed to establish that the required management tools were either in place or even otherwise available to managers, concluding that this flaw was “fundamental, irremediable and fatal” and that certification of the fishery was therefore not warranted.

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