The New Zealand Best Fish Guide - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 368

to protect fish stocks and to increase economic efficiency. The quota system has
operated for 20 years in New Zealand's most commercially significant and bi-
ologically large fish stocks in inshore, mid-water and deep-water fisheries. The
QMS establishes individual tradable quota (ITQ) within an overall quota or total
allowable commercial catch (TACC), a portion of the total allowable catch (TAC).
Sustainability measures of the catch limits ('output controls') are augmented by
'input controls' in the form of a variety of measures that are supposed to ensure
sustainability. In practice there has been both regulatory and market failures in
New Zealand fisheries management, and the environmental promise of the QMS
as a market-based instrument has not been fulfilled. Fish stocks have been allowed
to drop to very low levels (Wallace & Weeber 2005).
Stocks of orange roughy ( Hoplostethus atlanticus ), hoki ( Macruronus novaeze-
landiae ), oreos ( Allocyttus niger, Pseudocyttus maculatus ), rock lobster ( Jasus ed-
wardsii ), paua ( Haliotis iris ), and hake ( Merluccius australis ) have experienced
major stock declines. This has been brought about by discount rates exceeding the
net rate of growth of the value of the fish stock in the sea and by government officials
and ministers who failed to enforce effective limits on fishing (Wallace & Weeber
2005).
When the UK-based MSC came onto the scene, the prospects for a market-
signalling instrument driven by informed consumer preferences seemed strong.
The MSC certification seemed an ideal vehicle for surmounting the information
asymmetry between fishing companies and consumers. The prospect of the 'tick'
provided by the MSC process, in which local stakeholders including fishing com-
panies, government officials, scientists and environmental NGOs could have input,
seemed ideal.
The New Zealand experience of the certification by MSC of the hoki fisheries
on the authority of an assessment team assembled by the certification company
SGS Product & Process Certification from the Netherlands revealed fatal flaws in
the MSC process. Forest and Bird participated along with the Environment and
Conservation Organisations of NZ (ECO-NZ) and other stakeholders in the MSC
processes for the assessment of the hoki fisheries in late 2000. Both organisations
opposed the certification of the hoki fisheries on the grounds of declining stocks
and inadequate management responses, severe information gaps and the impacts of
trawling on marine mammals, seabirds and the host environment including inverte-
brates and non-target fish. The MSC assessors, SGS, acknowledged the problems
in the fishery but declared those matters for 'minor corrective actions', and certified
the hoki fisheries.
The Forest and Bird objection was followed up with an appeal in April 2001.
The ECO-NZ, a peak body with over 70 member organisations, associated itself
with the appeal. The bases for the appeal were failures in MSC processes and
procedures, errors of facts and information, the declining state of the hoki fishery
and adverse impacts of fishing. Specifically, the appeal was based on the failure of
the MSC assessment to adequately address the impact of the hoki fishery on NZ fur