Have Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs) adequately addressed key needs to monitor and mitigate fishery impacts on endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) species? A review, with recommendations to the supply chain

ABSTRACT

Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs) are time-bound, public efforts to improve specific aspects of environmental or sustainability performance in a fishery. They rely upon a joint effort by seafood stakeholders to leverage action to move a fishery toward greater sustainability through developing and implementing better policies, management and fishing practices, supported in part by the supply chain exercising informed purchasing choices of fisheries products. This study sought to examine available evidence of the ability of FIPs, through the actions of the FIP participants if successfully implemented in the future, to galvanize conservation and sustainability improvements in fisheries at various spatial and jurisdictional scales. Twenty-seven publicly reported FIPs (and their associated fisheries) were reviewed to: (1) identify endangered, threatened, or protected (ETP) species interactions with the fisheries considered, (2) analyse which FIPs had planned or were already implementing measures to specifically address aspects of bycatch of ETP species, (3) identify new or additional necessary improvement actions for ETP species in FIP workplans, and (4) develop general guidance to improve the development of the ETP-related components of FIP workplans. Out of the FIPs included for final consideration, only two appeared to have no interactions with ETP species. We identified three main areas related to addressing ETP bycatch where the remaining FIP workplans were found to be inadequate: (1) mitigation, (2) monitoring, and (3) stakeholder engagement. In addition, six key recommendations to FIP implementers and stakeholders were developed.

KEYWORDS:

• Bycatch
• ETP species
• FIP
• fisheries
• management

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the BAND Foundation for its generous support of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Unless it can be shown that the particular population of the CITES-listed species impacted by the fishery under assessment is not ETP.

2 A FIP needs to meet the minimum requirements and to be actively implementing its FIP workplan and report its progress on stages 3, 4, and 5 publicly. For more details, see Updates to the FIP Evaluation: A standardized tool for measuring FIP progress https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-uDxBtDRNAcl_ELuPpW-EBjY3M8YB4Dm/view.

3 SFP priority species seafood sectors include those in reduction fisheries, salmon, shrimp (small and large), tuna (with products destined for the fresh/frozen and shelf-stable markets), crab (cold water, warm water, and blue swimming), snapper and grouper, whitefish, squid, and octopus fisheries.

4 Seafood Sectors & Supply Chain Roundtables from https://www.sustainablefish.org/Programs/Improving-Wild-Fisheries/Seafood-Sectors-Supply-Chain-Roundtables.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the BAND Foundation.