4/22/13
Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program should revisit toothfish designation - MontereyHerald.com :
Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program should revisit
toothfish designation
By CASSANDRA BROOKS Guest commentary Monterey County Herald
Posted:
MontereyHerald.com
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has been rightly celebrated for its Seafood Watch program, which produces
industry-leading recommendations on healthy and sustainable choices.
I've handed out hundreds of these cards to friends, families and colleagues. But I think the aquarium got it
wrong with its recent decision to again rank toothfish as sustainable. The aquarium is particularly wrong about
the Antarctic toothfish, which is sold as "Chilean sea bass" alongside its cousin, the Patagonian toothfish.
As a marine scientist who has studied Ross Sea Antarctic toothfish, I am aware that toothfish fisheries have
solved some major industry-crippling problems. The illegal toothfish catch, while still a problem in the Southern
Ocean, has been drastically reduced from the early 1990s, when it was estimated to be an astounding five
times the legal catch limits set by the Commission for the Conservation of Marine Living Resources
(CCAMLR).
Seabird by-catch, too, has been reduced to only a few birds a year. But these improvements don't change the
life history of toothfish. These are fish that grow slowly, live to be at least 40 years old, don't mature until their
teens and likely don't reproduce every year. These characteristics, shared by many deep-dwelling fish, make
them vulnerable to overfishing, even with more carefully managed fisheries.
We still have much to learn about the life history of toothfish, particularly the Antarctic toothfish, which lives
around the Antarctic continent and survives the freezing waters by producing anti-freezing proteins in its blood.
The Ross Sea Antarctic toothfish population supports the most remote fishery on Earth and though it carries
on, we have yet to learn when and where exactly they spawn, or how often they reproduce. No one has found
an Antarctic toothfish larvae or egg. How can we call a fishery sustainable when we still don't know these
fundamental facts about their basic life history? In the past we have fished first and asked questions later, and
this has led to the depletion of many fish species, particularly deep-dwellers like the toothfish.
The Ross Sea is considered by many to be the last intact marine ecosystem left on the planet. This has led to
an international movement — supported by more than 500 scientists, including dozens of the world's top
Antarctic and Ross Sea scientists — to designate it as a marine protected area so that we can protect this last
living laboratory.
We have to ask ourselves whether we should be encouraging a fishery that targets a top predatory fish in the
southern-most and most intact body of water in the world. The Ross Sea toothfish fishery represents
approximately 1/300th of 1 percent of the world's global industry. Shouldn't our goal be to protect our last
best places — if not for ourselves, then for future generations?
The Seafood Watch program understandably wants to support certifiably sustainable fisheries, and many
toothfish fisheries have, in fact, recently received "sustainable" certifications by the Marine Stewardship
Council (MSC). However, behind the scenes, the certification for Ross Sea toothfish was very contentious.
Scientists and members of ocean conservation groups fought against it because of the paucity of information
about the fish and the potential impacts on the Ross Sea ecosystem. After three years of battle, the fishery was
www.montereyherald.com/ci_23074760/monterey-bay-aquarium-seafood-watch-program-should-revisit?IADID=Search-www.montereyherald.com-www.monterey…
1/2
4/22/13
Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program should revisit toothfish designation - MontereyHerald.com :
indeed certified.
But rather than engendering support for the fishery or for the MSC, the certification has attracted intense
scrutiny. Even Safeway refuses to sell Antarctic toothfish from the Ross Sea, despite the MSC eco-label. I am
among many Antarctic scientists who hope that the Monterey Bay Aquarium will re-examine the facts about
these fisheries and these fish and rescind the new recommendations.
I am confident that this will occur, and I hope it is soon. Because until then, I don't know which seafood guide
I'll be able to support and hand out to people.
Cassandra Brooks is a doctoral student at Stanford University studying Antarctic Ocean policy, particularly
marine protection in the Southern Ocean. At the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, she has studied the life
history of the Ross Sea Antarctic toothfish.
www.montereyherald.com/ci_23074760/monterey-bay-aquarium-seafood-watch-program-should-revisit?IADID=Search-www.montereyherald.com-www.monterey…
2/2