Since WWF helped launch the MSC in 1996, roughly 300 fisheries have achieved certification, and many retailers, such as Kroger, now sell millions of pounds of seafood from MSC certified fisheries each year. The MSC is now its own nonprofit entity, and WWF helps fisheries meet the standard for certification by providing technical guidance to fisheries wanting to improve their practices, and by facilitating connections to the larger market that supports those fisheries’ business plans.
After the Bahamian spiny lobster fishery conducted its certification pre-assessment, the industry knew it had work to do. Among the staunchest advocates for reform was Glenn Pritchard, president of Tropic Seafood, the country’s largest lobster exporter. “If you have a new company contact you, the first thing they’re gonna ask is what third-party certification you have,” Pritchard says in a conference room overlooking Tropic’s production floor—a cavernous warehouse space packed with stainless steel tabletops and conveyor belts that can process 25,000 lobster tails in a single day. “But with the way we were doing things, this fishery was not going to be healthy 10 or 15 years down the road.”
To Pritchard’s left, Mia Isaacs, managing director of Heritage Seafood, nods in assent. Isaacs, the elegant, black-haired scion of a commercial fisherman, is Pritchard’s staunch competitor—but when it comes to the improvement project, they’re partners, jointly committed to remaking their fishery. “At the end of the day, we can still come and sit together and communicate,” Isaacs says. “The financial value is extensive, but having your resource here for generations is the real reward.”
If the spiny lobster industry was indeed going to meet that vision, Isaacs and Pritchard knew they had to fill in its sketchy science. So the erstwhile rivals formed the Bahamas Marine Exporters Association (BMEA), a coalition of seafood companies that all chipped in to hire independent biologists and support the FIP process writ large. The researchers’ first stock assessment, in 2011, showed that overfishing didn’t seem to be occurring, and that good numbers of young lobsters appeared to be surviving to spawning age. The second assessment will soon enter peer review—“exceptional,” says Isaacs, considering the data gap seven years ago.
Other initiatives soon followed. Fishers agreed to fill out forms certifying their catch each time they returned to port, providing additional data that is fed into the fishery management system. The Bahamas Spiny Lobster Working Group—an advisory panel composed of processors, fishers, government employees, scientists, and nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy (TNC)—worked with consultants to develop a “harvest control rule,” a mutual agreement to reduce harvest levels and exports if lobster numbers sink below predetermined levels. The processors also adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward selling lobster tails shorter than the legal limit. If fishers turn in an undersized tail today, even accidentally, its value is deducted from their paycheck.
To be sure, the various stakeholders haven’t spent the last seven years singing “Kumbaya.” The harvest control rule proved especially contentious. But Felicity Burrows, marine conservation manager at TNC and the FIP coordinator, says the urgency of certification— and working toward proper management of the fishery for many reasons—trumped differences of opinion. “People put their money where their mouths are and came up with a sustainable funding mechanism to support the advancement of the FIP,” says Burrows, a native Bahamian. “Our resources are more intact than in a lot of other places. We cannot afford to lose what we’ve always had.”
