The Spanish tuna fleet will invest €3 million this year in its Fishery Improvement Project developed in conjunction with WWF. This brings the level of investment to the FIP, launched in 2017, to a total of €12 million. The objective is to achieve MSC certification for all of its catches by 2021.
This year, the fleet under the OPAGAC (Producers’ Organisation of Large Tuna Freezers) grouping and WWF will continue to promote the FIP in each of its three major principles.
In relation to the sustainability of the stocks, they will encourage RFOs in charge of managing the tropical tuna fishery in the waters where the Spanish fleet operates to adopt Harvest Control Rules (HCR) to ensure the sustainability of stocks in the long term. In addition, OPAGAC will support the training of the crews of its fleet, for which four new best practices workshops will be held in collaboration with the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), at least one of them in the Basque Country and another in Galicia.
Regarding the principle of environmental impact, the tuna fleet will continue to evaluate the effects of FADs in collaboration with RFMOs and scientific institutions. In this regard, OPAGAC will evaluate the results of FAD-Watch, its pilot in Seychelles to retrieve lost FADs. It will also expand its participation in projects that evaluate the effectiveness of biodegradable FADs, such as the one carried out by the European Union, with the collaboration of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and the AZTI technological institute, in which the fleet has invested more than €360,000.
R03;Concerning the MCS activities included in the FIP, the objectives will focus on compliance with reporting obligations to the RFMOs, for which OPAGAC will promote its model, which includes the implementation of regional observer programmes. 100% of the OPAGAC fleet is equipped, with the technological collaboration of the Spanish company Satlink, with VMS and with human / electronic observers as a complement to the human observers from IEO/AZTI, which record all fishing activities carried out on the 47 vessels in the fleet. These are owned by the nine companies within the group, between them accounting for 400,000 tonnes of catches annually, 8% of the worldwide catch in this fishery.
‘Our FIP is the first initiative in the world that comprehensively addresses a sustainable management of tuna,’ said Julio Morón, managing director of OPAGAC.
‘The fact that we can market our fishing as a FIP product means that consumers can opt for a food made from raw materials that come from a fleet that is actively working for its sustainability. During this second year of the project, we will continue advancing with our mind set on this main objective.’
He added that in its first year of operation, the OPAGAC/WWF FIP has become the most comprehensive FIP for a tropical tuna fishery in the world since it covers the three target species of this fishery – skipjack (SKJ), yellowfin (YFT) and bigeye (BET) – in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
‘All the advances of the FIP during its first year of life have been above expectations. In fact, the project has used the MSC scorings to measure its effectiveness, with all four ORPs (IATTC, WCPFC, IOTC and ICCAT) scored above expectations at the end of year one,’ he said.
Evaluation has been carried out by independent consultant Jo Gascoigne based on the 89 improvement objectives established for the year 2017, which indicates that the progress of this FIP is above expectation in all the oceans, and for all stocks. The advances in sustainability of the OPAGAC fleet came together with progress of all tuna RFMOs in stock assessments and further progress on the evaluation of the measures required to maintain catch or effort levels for tropical tuna stocks at the recommended levels. In addition, some RFMO members improved their compliance with management measures.
