Sustainability notes

This is an overview of how the Mexico Baja California red rock lobster fishery scored in assessment against the MSC standard. For the certifiers evaluation please download the full public certification report with detailed information on the performance of this fishery against the criteria of the MSC environmental standard for sustainable fishing.

The  fishery scored as follows in assessment against the MSC standard for sustainable fishing. The highest possible score for each principle is 100 and a fishery must score at least 80 against each principle to get certified:

Sustainability strengths

Some of the points on which the fishery scored over 90 are outlined below. 

Principle 1: the state of the fish stock

• The red lobster fishery of Baja California is a community-based fishery operating with small boats over short distances from port and generally run as a family or small community operation organized in cooperatives. There are control rules to limit the fishing effort by total number of traps, by fishing season and by zone. All of the fishers in the cooperatives fishing the central zone follow the harvest strategy without exception. Statistics of catch and fishing effort are carefully recorded daily.

Principle 2: the impact of the fishery on the marine environment

• There is a well-defined and effective strategy to ensure that ecological impacts of the fishery are monitored, and restrained to minimize impacts on endangered, threatened, protected or icon species. Impact of the fishery on such species is found to be rare.

Principle 3: the fishery management systems

• The fishery is managed and conducted in a manner that respects international conventions and agreements and not under any controversial unilateral exemption to an international agreement. 

Challenges

In order to ensure its continuing sustainable operation this fishery made a commitment to improving its performance where it scored between 60-80. Some of the actions the fishery has committed to are: 

• A specific strategy must be developed and incorporated into the management system (at any level) that provides for understanding the importance of ecosystem impacts from fishing and details how potential impacts will be identified, monitored, and managed, and what timeframes (yearly, every 5 years, etc.) will be used to review this information.