Orange roughy ruling victory for sustainable fisheries and for ocean loving Australians

Strikes by the fishing trade to get Australia’s orange roughy fishery licensed as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) have failed in a victory for conservation and sustainable seafood in Australia.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) has welcomed the choice by an unbiased adjudicator following an objection from AMCS and the World Large Fund for Nature-Australia (WWF). To our data, solely two of 46 such objections have beforehand been upheld for the reason that MSC’s certification commonplace was established.

Orange roughy stay for over 150 years in our deep southern seas and are caught by deep sea trawlers round south-eastern Australia. It’s red listed within the AMCS’s GoodFish Guide due to the affect of trawling on fragile historical corals and since orange roughy is a protected species, listed as ‘conservation dependent’ beneath Australian setting legal guidelines.

Adrian Meder, AMCS’s sustainable seafood program supervisor mentioned: “The choice is a victory for conservation, and ocean loving Australians.

“It justifies the laborious work put in by so many actually sustainable fisheries to attain actual sustainability, in addition to the hundreds of AMCS supporters who made submissions to the MSC on this matter. We heartily welcome this determination.

“Orange roughy numbers have solely simply begun to get better in small components of their inhabitants from historic overfishing, and scientists have indicated that numbers are prone to decline once more this decade attributable to lingering impacts from fishing that occurred some 30 years in the past. A blue tick for this fishery may have been disastrous for this species and its habitats.”

In July, the MSC’s plan to offer the fishery its coveted blue tick was exposed as a sham by AMCS for failing to think about damning scientific proof that undermined the sustainability certification.

Official objections towards the certification have been lodged by AMCS and WWF together with 10,000 AMCS supporters and even MSC itself, which led to the 4 day listening to in regards to the certification earlier than an unbiased adjudicator in November.

The Australian orange roughy fishery was dominated inadmissible for certification as a result of it targets a protected species beneath Australian environmental regulation.

“As a protected species, our orange roughy ought to by no means be into consideration to be marketed as one in every of Australia’s most sustainable fisheries,” mentioned Mr Meder.

“If we’re going to fish such a susceptible species in any respect, get the science accomplished first and permit our orange roughy to get better to really sustainable ranges. That would take many years – however the trade ought to have and will have been extra cautious.”

Mr Meder mentioned if the fishing trade tried one other shot at certifying orange roughy as sustainable, AMCS could be able to battle it once more.

“Whereas this greenwashing try was thrown out primarily based on one key difficulty raised by AMCS and our co-objectors WWF Australia, we stay alarmed that the adjudicator waved by means of as legit a bogus evaluation of the fishery’s destruction of ultra-sensitive deep seamount coral gardens containing a number of evident scientific falsehoods,” added Mr Meder.

“As one instance, the MSC’s assessors claimed that these deep sea corals have been protected on 36 seamounts surrounding however exterior the fishing grounds. In reality, 26 of these 36 seamounts are just too deep underwater for these corals to probably exist on them – making these terribly susceptible habitats extra uncovered to fishing harm than is claimed.

“That’s like destroying the alpine snowfields of Mt Kosciuszko, however claiming that’s positive as a result of there’s no plans to do the identical at Mt Druitt and Mt Isa. If that’s the kind of evaluation that may get a fishery licensed as ‘sustainable’ beneath the MSC’s commonplace – it’s time for them to make their commonplace stand for one thing deserving of your belief.”

The adjudicator has given the group which assessed that the orange roughy ought to be MSC licensed till 19 January to reply to her determination.