The information below is from the Shark Guardian website.
Shark Guardian first exposed these negligent and illegal practices in the Western Central Pacific Ocean in May 2022 (Slipping Through the Net), but a lack of meaningful investigation by the MSC demonstrates that its ‘Blue Tick’ seal of sustainability has ongoing systemic problems.
Our new report ‘Behind the MSC Blue Tick’, is the result of an investigation into further unreleased fishery observer data, (2017-2021) obtained from whistleblowers.
The report identifies a total of 330 incidents of shark, ray, dolphin, and cetacean interaction that took place on MSC-certified vessels. In most of these cases, these species of special interest were mistreated. 47 out of these incidents occurred during MSC-eligible sets.
In following up the industry response to our previous report, we found that Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs), the independent auditors monitoring the MSC standard, failed to identify numerous issues raised by observers.
Alex Hofford, Shark Guardian’s Marine Wildlife Campaigner said “We fail to understand how a CAB can assess any fishery against the MSC Fisheries Standard without observer reports being examined, even in the most cursory way. The MSC’s ‘business-as-usual’ attitude suggests they still approve ‘blue tick’ sustainability certificate requests from destructive fisheries, including fisheries that use indiscriminate and harmful drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs), which is unbelievable considering how unsustainable dFADs actually are.”
