Sustainable Seafood Purchasing at the University of British Columbia – What’S the Catch?

Sustainable Seafood Purchasing at the University of British Columbia – What’s the catch? An evaluation of the sustainability of current seafood purchasing practices at UBC Anna Magera SEEDS Directed Studies Project April 7, 2006 Professor: Dr. Amanda Vincent Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Page 3 THE SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD MOVEMENT – A BRIEF HISTORY 3 Sustainable Seafood – What is it? 3 Main Concerns in Fisheries Today 4 The Sustainable Seafood Movement 5 Ecolabeling and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) 5 Seafood Choice Guideline Systems 6 Interdisciplinary Sustainable Seafood Coalitions 10 THE UBC SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD PROJECT UBC and Sustainability 10 Project Description 11 Goals 11 Objectives 11 Phase One Project Focus 11 Project Partners 11 UBC Food Service Providers 12 Seafood Evaluation Guidelines Used in the Project 13 Methods 14 Main Assumptions 16 Results AMS Food and Beverage and UBC Food Services 16 AMS Food and Beverage 17 UBC Food Services 21 Challenges and Recommendations 28 Avoid List Products 28 Traceability 29 Gaps in Seafood Guideline Systems 32 Future Directions 33 CONCLUSION 34 REFERENCES 35 APPENDICES A. Other seafood assumptions 39 B. Additional Purchasing Guideline Recommendations 39 C. Table V. AMS Food and Beverage Sourcing Information 40 D. Table VI. UBC Food Services Sourcing Information 43 2 Sustainable Seafood Purchasing at the University of British Columbia – What’s the catch? An evaluation of the sustainability of current seafood purchasing practices at UBC INTRODUCTION Seafood consumption around the world is increasing (FAO, 2004) and seafood is predicted to soon become the fastest growing component of the protein market in the U.S. (SCA, 2006). However, over 75% of the world’s fisheries are being exploited at or beyond capacity (FAO, 2004). Aquaculture has been hailed by some as a solution to the depletion of wild stocks (Pauly et al., 2002; Folke et al, 2006). It is one of fastest growing food sectors and supplies over one third of the world’s seafood, but it currently comes with its own set of ecological problems (Pauly et al., 2002; Folke et al, 2006). Threats to the world’s oceans are widely recognized (Pauly et al., 2002; Myers and Worm, 2003; Kaiser and Jennings, 2002), and a number of groups from international to local scales have begun to take action. At the University of British Columbia, a multidisciplinary advisory group has decided to examine the sustainability of seafood purchasing on campus and the feasibility of enacting more sustainable buying practices with the UBC Sustainable Seafood Project. This report provides context on: • sustainable seafood, • the UBC Sustainable Seafood Project, including its goals and objectives, • methods for evaluating the ecological sustainability of seafoods, • results from the first phase of the project, including baseline seafood sustainability ratings for the two main food service providers on campus, • a discussion of the challenges of the seafood sustainability evaluation process and preliminary recommendations for enhancing sustainable seafood purchasing at UBC, and • future directions for moving the project forward. SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD – A BRIEF HISTORY Sustainable Seafood – What is it? Since the publication of the Bruntland Report in 1987 (WCED, 1987), the term “sustainability” has grown to become part of the common lexicon, but what exactly is sustainable seafood? The Monterey Bay Aquarium defines sustainable seafood as seafood “from sources, either fished or farmed, that can maintain or increase production into the long-term without jeopardizing the affected ecosystems” (www.mbayaq.org). Fisheries and Oceans Canada offered a similar definition in 1998, stating “sustainability is understood to mean the harvesting of a stock in such a way and at such a rate that it does 3 not threaten the health of the stock or inhibit its recovery, thereby maintaining its potential to meet the needs of present and future generations of fish harvesters” (Emmett, 2001, p. 9). Thus, sustainable seafood can be understood as seafood harvested in a way that promotes both ecological conservation and intergenerational equity. Historically, the world’s fisheries resources have been seen as limitless. Increasing attention to the concept of sustainability has spilled over into resource management and fisheries (Roth et al. 2000), resulting in a push for change to more sustainability-oriented management paradigms. At the Great International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883, Thomas Huxley was famously quoted as saying: “That the cod fishery, the herring fishery, the pilchard fishery, the mackerel fishery, and probably all the great sea fisheries, are inexhaustible; that is to say that nothing we do seriously affects the number of fish.” (as cited in Hutchings, 2001) With the size of the world’s oceans and the high fecundity of many commercially exploited fish species, Huxley could not envision a scenario where the fishing methods of his day could risk depleting fish stocks. Over a century later, scientists have proclaimed that the exact opposite is true: fish stocks around the world are facing drastic declines (Pauly et al. 2002; Myers and Worm, 2003). Main Concerns in Fisheries Today Why have world fish stocks collapsed? To answer this question, one must consider some of the key threats to aquatic ecosystems: • Overfishing: In 1998, UBC’s own Dr. Daniel Pauly introduced the concept of “fishing down the food web,” describing the notion that humans have systematically removed the largest predatory fish from the oceans. As these large fish become increasingly scarce, fishers sequentially target smaller species at lower trophic levels, all the way down to invertebrates. The notion that we could soon deplete fish stocks to such low levels that we would have to start fishing species such as jellyfish (Pauly et al., 1998) caught the attention of not only the scientific community, but also the public at large. • Bycatch : Bycatch, or the unintended catch of species not targeted by fishers that are usually discarded in a dead, dying or injured state (Kaiser and Jennings, 2002), is also a prominent concern for marine conservation (Harrington et al., 2005). Annual global discard levels, or the amount of bycatch thrown away, are estimated at 7.3 million tonnes (Zeller and Pauly, 2005). Certain fisheries, such as shrimp, may have especially high bycatch levels (Harrington et al., 2005). • Habitat destruction : o Destructive fishing practices : Many methods of fishing also destroy aquatic habitats. For example, the effect of towed bottom fishing gear on ocean floor ecosystems is often likened to clearcutting a forest (Kaiser and Jennings, 2002). o Pollution: Excess nutrients and toxins are often introduced into aquatic systems via land run-off or dumping agricultural chemicals, silt and industrial waste (Folke et al., 1998). 4 o Coastal development: Growing cities and coastal development are putting increasing pressure on coastal areas around the world (Folke et al., 1998). • Poorly managed aquacultural expansion : The rapid expansion of industrial aquaculture and the disease (Bakke and Harris, 1998), nonnative species introductions, escaped farmed fish, habitat damage and pollution often associated with it is also seen as a threat to aquatic environments (Folke, 1998). The impacts of all of these factors vary by location, but there is little doubt that humans and fishing have altered marine ecosystems globally (Kaiser and Jennings, 2002). Clearly many of these issues are systemic problems and require increased top-down government regulation and enforcement on regional, national and international scales, for example, in restricting the use of bottom-trawls. However, grassroots actions, through market-driven initiatives, can also complement policy and regulation (Pauly et al., 2002). The Sustainable Seafood Movement Consumer-driven actions to address seafood sustainability issues initially took the form of boycotts, public education and publicity campaigns. The first widely publicized consumer-based appeal for more sustainable fishing practices was with dolphin-safe tuna in the late 1980s (Pickering et al., 2002). Public pressure to address the high dolphin bycatch in the tuna fishery resulted in the US government defining and enforcing dolphin-safe tuna fishing legislation (Kaiser and Edward-Jones, 2006). The fact that enacting this legislation was achievable by making minor adjustments to fishing gear and the manner in which fish were caught, and that the animals of concern, dolphins, were highly enigmatic marine mammals likely aided in the success of this public appeal campaign. In 1997, the National Environmental Trust championed the cause of a less attractive, but very popular and expensive, species – the Chilean Sea Bass (a.k.a. Patagonian Toothfish). The “Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass” campaign aimed to draw consumer and industry attention to the severely depleted Sea Bass populations (Iles, 2004) as well as the illegal fishing and high levels of seabird bycatch associated with the fishery (Brownstein, 2003). In a similar manner, conservation groups convinced over 700 chefs to boycott swordfish until fishing quotas were reduced in the 1998 “Give Swordfish a Break” campaign (Brownstein et al., 2003). These endeavours targeted primarily consumers as opposed to fishers (Iles, 2004), encouraging them to use their buying power to influence legislation and harvest practices. Consumer education was key to these strategies, allowing consumers to make informed decisions

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