Pot/Trap

The Surat Thani blue swimming crab fishery is an important export product for Thailand with an export value of $60-80 million USD. The unit of assessment is located in the Gulf of Thailand Gulf of Thailand (between 6° and 13.5° North and 99° and 104.5° East). There are a number of critical issues facing this fishery, including the overexploitation of populations in heavily fished inshore areas, harvest of undersized crab and gravid females, lack of management plans or harvest strategies, and lack of enforcement capacity. Through the active involvement of FIP stakeholders - including the Department of Fisheries (DoF), Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR), Thai Frozen Food Association (TFFA), Thai Crab Product Group (TCPG) - and FIP participants, the sustainability challenges facing this fishery are being addressed.

Note: This FIP went inactive on February 1, 2019.

Odyssey Enterprises (Seattle) hosts a fishery improvement project (FIP) for Barents Sea crab with a goal to contribute to fishery readiness for MSC certification.  Odyssey Enterprises is a buyer of Russian snow crab and Russian red king crab.  Red king crab graduated the FIP when the fishery became MSC certified in 2018.  Snow crab entered the MSC program in March 2019. 

Snow and red king crab are invasive species in the Barents Sea ecosystem.  The purpose of the FIP was to contribute improvements to help raise the Barents Sea crab fisheries to the MSC standard.  The FIP unit of assessment is the Russian fishery.  The FIP pre-assessment, planning and tracking have also included Norway due to joint management efforts and the two jurisdictions covering the stock in the Barents Sea.  Despite several moving parts between Russian and Norwegian fisheries, and to recent efforts by other countries to access the stocks, rational management of the crab fisheries has been implemented, and with extraordinary progress year on year.

Overview of the Status of the Crab Fisheries in the Barents Sea

Snow crab and red king crab are invasive species in the Barents Sea.  Today these species are harvested commercially in Russia and Norway by vessels utilizing traps (crab pots).  Snow crab and red king crab are designated as sedentary species within their respective economical zones, which means the crab are managed domestically and not inter-governmentally.  The two countries have a history of cooperating on fishery science and management that has resulted in common principles to manage the crab as a new biological resource across their ranges in the Barents Sea.  In Norway, snow crab is fished partly under quota and partly as an invasive species with unrestricted fishing, depending on the location of fishing. In Russia, both species crab are fished within quotas and other harvest control rules and tools that are based on rational harvesting of the stock.  Russia and Norway operate a joint fisheries management agency and continute to share science. Their fleets no longer fish in each others national waters for crab, as they did until 2017, however.

The blue crab fishery in the Yucatan is an artisanal fishery where blue crab is caught by ring net/pot traps and sometimes with dipnets. It includes areas from the Mexican states of Campeche, Tabasco & Yucatan. Catches from these states represent 14% of swimming crab catches in Mexico.  70% of the suppliers catches are from Sabancuy and Isla Aguada, Campeche where Callinectes sapidus predominates.

Pontchartrain Blue Crab (based in Louisiana, USA), and PESMAR, its Yucatan suppliers, launched a fishery improvement project in April 2013. A preliminary assessment against the Marine Stewardship Council Standard (July 2013) suggested the fishery would score in the 60-80 range.  The two lowest scores were for bycatch monitoring and information (PI 2.2.3) and for monitoring the performance of the management system (PI 3.2.5).  Mayaland Seafood LLC integrated to the project in this period.  A preliminary assessment against the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch criteria in 2015 found more information was needed on bycatch.  Leadership was handed to CeDePesca starting on 2019, workplan was updated and activities were re-established.

FIP is engaged with industry, fishermen, government entities and academic institutions looking forward to strength this collaborations.

The Brazilian red and green lobster FIP is being implemented by CeDePesca, Tequesta Bay, WWF, Associação Pesca Sustentável de Icapuí, M M SEA,  Federação dos Pescadores do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (RN), Colônia de Pescadores Z-33 do RN,  Colônia de Pescadores Z-17 do RN and Colônia de Pescadores Z-4 do RN with the ultimate goal of achieving an MSC-certifiable status for the fishery in the shortest timeframe possible.

The Brazilian red and green lobster FIP started in July 2011, as a result of a partnership between the United Nations Environmental Program and CeDePesca.  In November 2011, a CAB was selected by CeDePesca to conduct an MSC pre-assessment with funds granted by the Resources Legacy Fund.  The results of the MSC PA (Feb 2012) showed that: (a) no official stock assessment had been conducted since 2006, when the stocks had been found to be overfished; (b) no adequate limit or target reference points had been set for the stocks; (c) the harvest strategy showed signs of failure, arguably due to difficulties in applying timely management tools and enforcement; (d) existing rules regarding effort limits were solely based on the number of traps, while the fishery was known to include fishing nets and diving –which are still considered illegal fishing gears; (e) there was a general lack of data regarding the impacts on other ecosystem components; (f) the fishery-specific management system lacked specific short-term goals and clear instruments; (g) the management committees were not responsive enough and the decision-making process was not publicly documented; (h) no research management plan was in place, and (i) there was no regular evaluation of the performance of the management system.

CeDePesca disseminated the results of the MSC PA among fishery stakeholders in 2012, including local producers and exporters in the state of Ceará, and importers in the USA with the collaboration of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership.  As a result of this outreach efforts, seven US importers and ten Brazilian exporters expressed their interest in becoming partners to the FIP.  In parallel, as a product of the Resources Legacy Fund grant and the UNEP-CeDePesca partnership, the first FIP workplan was designed by CeDePesca in May 2012 with the goal of addressing the shortcomings identified in the MSC PA.  Most FIP activities were implemented at the time with funds provided by UNEP, the RLF, and by US importers through the SFP.

On the other hand, Brazilian exporters agreed to support the FIP and in February 2013, SINDFRIO signed an agreement with CeDePesca.  SINDFRIO provided funding and participated in the FIP between February 2013 and February 2022. In March 2022 they informed CeDePesca of its decision not to renew its participation in the project.

Current partners to the FIP include the fishers association Associação Pesca Sustentável (since 2015), based in the community of Redonda in Icapuí, Tequesta Bay (since 2020), WWF (since 2020), M M SEA (since 2022),  Federação dos Pescadores do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (since 2022), Colônia de Pescadores Z-33 do RN (since 2023),  Colônia de Pescadores Z-17 do RN (since 2023) and Colônia de Pescadores Z-4 do RN (since 2023).  The FIP is currently open to new participants.

For more information on the background of this FIP, please visit CeDePesca's Brazilian Lobster FIP Public Report .