ONLINE CURRENTS VOL3 - Flipbook - Page 15
It is important to highlight that the timing of this MSC engagement into observer safety
closely followed the publishing of a condemning Human Rights at Sea report.
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pointed to the fact that five observer deaths
This report
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actually occurred aboard MSC-certified tuna
vessels. The MSC, however, by way of retort, clarified the technicality that “MSC does not
certify vessels – it certifies fisheries”.25 They then further stipulated that their fishing standard
is entirely focused on ecological sustainability26 , thus willfully ignoring the precarious role of
the observer, being not only the prime - and sole - witness to this ecological sustainability,
but also the key agent within the monitoring of “the overall fish population”.27
In other words, there can be no oversight on the ecological stability of our oceans without the
role of independent onboard observers being one that is itself monitored and protected.
With a certification authority, like the MSC, admitting that they have no safety policies in
place to safeguard the role of an observer, they are implicitly admitting that the situation is
out of their hands. The known unknowingness of who and how policing actually occurs in
these remote areas are too difficult to build functional policies around.
This dynamic highlights the wider issue of sea affairs, in that there is no concrete protocol
because there are so many stakeholders in what is ostensibly - and tragically for the
environment - a no-man’s land.
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