Is a stock overfished if it is depleted by overfishing? A response to the rebuttal of Agnew et al. to Froese and Proelss 'Evaluation and legal assessment of certified seafood'

摘要

This contribution is a response to the rebuttal of Agnew et al. (2012) to Froese and Proelss (2012) "Evaluation and legal assessment of certified seafood". It corrects some factually wrong statements in the rebuttal, revisits the definitions of 'depleted' and 'overfished', and notes that the rebuttal agrees with the international definition of 'overfishing' (F> F_(MSY)) that was used by Froese and Proelss (2012). The rebuttal presents an analysis of 45 MSC-certified stocks. Of these, 27% are 'depleted' (according to the definition used by MSC) or 'overfished' (according to the definition used by Froese and Proelss 2012) and 16% are subject to 'overfishing', basically confirming the critique of Froese and Proelss (2012). This response concludes that MSC has to change its rules for certification such that (1) overfishing is not allowed and (2) 'depleted' stocks are marked as such.