Benefits of Certification for Small-scale Fisheries - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 314

The Baja California spiny lobster fishery (Plate 15.2, and see Chapter 12) was
the first small-scale fishery from a developing country to achieve MSC certifica-
tion (Plate 15.3). This achievement resulted in positive attention from a variety of
sources, including the offer to become the test case fishery for a bio-complexity
study (http://micheli.stanford.edu/projects/baja.php) that hopes to more completely
understand what makes this fishery and the associated human communities sustain-
able. When the Baja California spiny lobster fishery was awarded certification, the
certifier required some of the assumptions being used in the management system to
be tested, and these were established as conditions of certification. Before the fish-
ery was awarded the MSC certificate it was required to agree to a timeline to meet
the conditions. The CFP contacted the principle investigators of the bio-complexity
study and discussed the possibility of their study helping the fishery meet the MSC
conditions in the process of data collection for the study. It was agreed that there was
enough common interest between the scientists' interests in the study and what the
fishery was required to demonstrate. Consequently, the fishers are directly involved
in data collection in the study, and this will help to ensure an ongoing data collection
process can continue after the bio-complexity study is completed. The fishery has
completed two MSC annual audits and is on target to meet the conditions of certi-
fication. Thus the combination of the MSC certification as a vehicle for requiring
increased data and information combined with the bio-complexity study as a mech-
anism to gather the data will result in a better understanding of the lobster fishery,
and will hopefully result in even better management of the resource and ecosystem.

15.3.3 Lobbying power

Around the world in both developing and developed countries small-scale fisheries
struggle to be heard. Small-scale actors are commonly under-represented or sim-
ply not listened to because the larger players in the fishery sector have more of
the market share, more of the profits, directly control more employment and this
translates to more of the lobbying power. In many developing countries wealthier
middlemen will provide capital to community fishers, and in return the fishers are
required to sell to the middlemen exclusively, and at a set price (WWF-Eastern
African Marine Ecoregion Programme, personal communication, August 2006).
Such systems ensure that the community fishers have little, if any, voice. In other
cases, governments with limited financial resources might sell the fishing rights
of their countries to the highest bidder without much consideration of the impact
on small-scale fisheries and the communities that rely on ocean resources for their
survival (Copes 1999). The MSC certification process is a tool that can be used
by small-scale fishers to make themselves heard. Although there are difficulties
to be overcome (see Chapter 14), the process and the deliverables can be used by
small-scale fishers as a way to lobby for change.
The power of the MSC process is two-fold. First, the third-party certifica-
tion system provides objectivity and independence that first-party or second-party