Another Sock in the Eye

Among the sockeye salmon that return to the Fraser River every year are members of more than 40 genetically distinct populations, some heading home to small streams, others to particular gravel reaches of great rivers.  All of them bear adaptations to slightly different conditions, like temperature tolerance, feeding strategies, breeding timing, a host of refinements which represent the future potential of the species.  We know now that the future will soon be different, and the sockeye that can meet that future will derive from those capable of tolerating the new conditions.  If there are such fish they are among these variants.  They need to be protected.

In the early 1900’s Fraser sockeye returned in numbers exceeding 100 million; in 2009 the prediction was between 3.5 and 37.5 million (90% confidence) but fewer than 2 million appeared.  The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), at the behest of the BC Salmon Marketing Council, has proposed a finding that this fishery is sustainable, which it has upheld against formal protest. Just these numbers cry out for caution.  When any vertebrate population reaches 2% of its historic high extinction encroaches as a distinct possibility.

But circumstances are much worse than this.  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has grouped Fraser River sockeye into 11 sub-populations and determined that 6 are ‘vulnerable’, 3 are ‘endangered’ and 1 is ‘critically endangered’ – and all threatened by over-fishing.

There is no sustainable fishery possible in a context like this.  It is almost unbelievable that anyone could think so.  Even the Prime Minister was moved to call a judicial inquiry, in progress this very moment, to investigate the cause of the parlous return in 2009.

The technical requirements of MSC assessment, the conduct of the assessment by for-profit (and pretty expensive) ‘independent’ certifying bodies, and the preferential advantage a certified fishery gains in the marketplace from an increasingly concerned and naturally not fully informed purchasing public is a potent mix of possibility and opportunity.  It might explain why “it is not the purpose of the objections procedure to review the subject fishery against the MSC principles and criteria for sustainable fisheries, but to determine whether the certification body made an error that materially affected the outcome of its determination.”

A close reading suggests that MSC has created an objection process that fundamentally ensures that a fishery proceeds to certification while objections appear to have been fairly dealt with.  This weakness in the process must be addressed.  Methodology and information are at the heart of any assessment process, and any objections procedure that walls them off from subsequent consideration is clearly flawed.  The fish deserve better.