As fishermen, processors, suppliers, buyers and retailers strive to meet the growing demand for seafood, the ability of Pacific islanders to feed their families and make a living from the sea is reduced. Within 15 years, an additional 115,000 tonnes of fish will be needed across the Pacific to provide communities with the livelihoods and protein they require, and to satisfy the demand from industrial-scale coastal fishing operators.
What was also abundantly clear to me was the fact that the food security threat faced by Pacific Island communities, associated with overfishing, is largely one created by foreign nations, like Australia, which source the majority of their tuna from the western and central Pacific.
In response to this, we established WWF’s first regional tuna fisheries program, with support from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, in an effort to stem overfishing in the region. The intent was to promote market-based improvements to the way tuna was sourced by leveraging the purchasing power of big businesses at various points in the seafood value chain, and thereby securing large-scale change for the better.
Now, a decade and a half later, we have arrived at a transformational moment in the realisation of that goal. Australia’s largest supplier of canned tuna – John West Australia, with 43% of the market – has made a market-leading commitment to only source tuna from the western and central Pacific that has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.
The MSC is widely recognised as the world’s most credible sustainability standard for wild-caught fish, and is the only wild-capture fishery standard to meet the United Nations’ guidelines for eco-labelling on fishery products.