Tuna Sustainability and The Work of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation

0:00 How much can an organization that's involved in tuna fishing and making tuna fishing sustainable get done in one year? Well, that's what we're gonna talk about on today's episode because I have the president of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, Susan Jackson, on the episode today to talk about all the work that they did in 2024 and what they plan on doing in 2025 based on the successes and the challenges that they face in 2024. We're gonna talk about not only about transparency, we're gonna talk about advocacy and policy. We're gonna talk about financial commitment to science and their commitment to science in general. Stakeholder engagement workshops, electronic monitoring and compliance. There's so much that we're gonna talk about on today's episode.

0:41 Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're gonna be talking to the president of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, the ISSF, Susan Jackson, who is here to talk about not only how she became president of the ISSF and for the last 15 years, what they've been able to accomplish, but what they were able to accomplish in 2024 last year, talking about the annual report, and you're like, Andrew, why are you talking about annual report? They're boring. Like it's just a mouthpiece for the organization to talk to their funders and stuff like that. But this is not it.

1:22 At all. Susan comes with the receipts of what they were able to do. They have a small staff. They were able to accomplish a lot, not only with just the staff, that they have collaborators on all fronts of the supply chain in sustainable seafood, in tuna fishing in general. And I think it's amazing. This conversation really ignited my hope for sustainability, my hope for collaboration, but also my hope for private sector funding, being able to accomplish so much more than just waiting around for funding to come around, which is not very available these days in these times. And a lot of organizations, nonprofit organizations are suffering because of lack of funding. They can't get the work that they need done.

2:04 ISSF has funding. From private sector that are willing to say, let's put our money where our mouth is. Let's be able to make this more sustainable. Let's work with not only fishers, but with vessel makers. You know, let's work with RFMOs. Let's work with scientists. Let's work with advocacy people. Let's work with policy makers and government. This is the legit, this is what goes on in ocean conservation, in fisheries management that we never get to talk about. We're talking about on this episode, and that's why I have this podcast is to talk about these wonderful things that are being done that nobody ever hears about. And I think that's really important to talk about. So getting an annual report that's just put on a website and only available for the people who go to that website who know about that website has now transformed into a podcast where you get to hear about this.

2:48 And I'll tell you, Susan comes with so much energy. I just love it. So here is the interview with Susan Jackson, president of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, talking about their 2024 annual report. There's so much in here you're going want to hear all of it. Thank you so much for joining us and I can't wait to talk to you after. Enjoy the interview. Hey Susan. Welcome to the head of Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation's annual report? Hey, Andrew. Yes, I absolutely am. Thanks for having me here today. You bet. I'm, I'm very excited for this, and I know it's weird to say I'm excited about, uh, talking about an annual report, because a lot of times those get published and it's, you know, it's like a white paper and a lot of people will go through it and just be like, oh, this is kind of cool.

3:30 But I always go through these reports and I'm always just like, how in the heck did you get all of this done in one year? So, we're gonna be focusing on the 20, 24 year, but of course, we're gonna be talking a little later on about, you know, we're already halfway through 2025. So, you know, what are the primary goals for 2025? Building on the successes, some of the challenges that you may have faced in 2024 to go to 2025. But I think it's interesting to talk about, you know, your organization's work, uh, the ability to get stuff done, uh, and what you're able to get done. So we we're gonna talk a lot of things like talking about supply chains and fads and all this kind of stuff. It's, it's gonna be pretty exciting. But before we get into all of that, Susan, why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do. Thanks. Yes. I'm Susan Jackson and I am the president of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, or ISSF as we call ourselves.

4:18 I love it now, uh, to be the president of ISSF. What kind of background did you have? Like how did this become like your career? Mm-hmm. Where did it all start? Yeah. Well, it all started with me being, what I like to say, a real lawyer. Um, I actually practiced real law, uh, for, um, gosh, about 12 years and That's awesome. A, a number of them or in-house with the HJ Hines Company who owns stares at the time. Okay. So, and I was assigned to the Starkest business unit, so I started working in tuna in, uh, the late nineties. Yeah. Okay.

4:58 And, uh, just fell in love with it immediately. It's fascinating. It's global. You know, I've been to. A whole bunch of countries I can imagine. Um, and no matter what issue speaks to your heart, tuna touches it in some way. I can promise you. Um, so I sort of morphed around in my tuna career from the law department to the business side. And then Star was a founder of ISSF and I was the point person at StarKist at the time. Okay. And it just, uh, there were eight companies and, um, for a number of reasons I was. The first president of ISSF, and I've been here ever since.

5:39 Amazing. So I'm sort of, I'm, I'm the poster child for if somebody comes knocking on your door and it sounds like an interesting opportunity, say yes, because you never know where it's gonna lead you. Well, here, let me ask you the question, like as it, so you went into corporate law, I guess, when you were, when you were becoming a lawyer. Uh, what made you decide to go into corporate law As a lawyer? Yeah. Actually I was a litigator, believe it or not. Oh, okay. Okay. And um, yeah, my specialty was on criminal defense and plaintiff's civil rights work. Oh, interesting. And yeah. And so some of the cases that I did in Pittsburgh caught the eye of the folks of the Heinz Law Department at the time, uh, and because they realized they didn't have anybody in their law department that had actually tried a case and they had a lot of litigation.

6:25 So it might be helpful to have someone right on their team that actually knew their way around the courtroom. So that's kind of, I, I learned some of the more, uh, you know, corporate side of it, but I was still really doing litigation management and then. Uh, the corporate side of star cast and had, had you had a lot of information about tuna before that, or is this, was this more of a I need to adapt, this is the, this is the company that I'm working for. They're all about tuna, so I need to adapt and figure it all out. And then I guess the follow up question right away to that is like, how did you adapt so quickly to it? I mean, when I started. At Heinz. Yeah. I thought that light meat, tuna and white meat, tuna were like different parts of the same fish.

7:10 That's, that's how little I knew about tuna. I ate a lot of it, and I knew I liked tuna, of course, but also when you go work for a conglomerate like Heinz was at the time I had. Ketchup cases and tomato paste cases and pet food cases. So you learned that was a fabulous part of that experience as you learned so much about the business. And then I became more and more and more aligned with this, um, tuna business unit and started going to plants and doing procurement contracts and, um, you know, other, other things at, at their facilities around the world and Right. Really got a much deeper knowledge of tuna, the. And, and when you started from that perspective. 'cause I think it's so interesting, a lot of the guests that we've had on are, are come from a science background or a conservation background, and they are learning it from, you know, population ecology and, and how to, uh, predict populations and look at fisheries management and look at sustainability from the side of science.

8:06 Right. And looking at science-based policy, you are coming it from a, a litigation standpoint. You're learning about the business and the corporation, uh, and you're not getting it necessarily from the science part. You might learn about the science as you go along, but what was that like now, especially, you know, you know, 12 years of, of working with the ISSF, uh, is it 12 years? Is that, that's what you said before, right? Uh, 15. 15, sorry. 15 years. So knowing what you know now, like, and, and what you learned, did you know, a, were you learning about the sustainability, uh, maybe issues or successes that Tuna was having as you were going through the process of learning about the different parts of the business? I was, um. Back when I was running seafood procurement for STAR Kiss as part of my maneuvering through the corporate world, it was actually the procurement team at Star Kiss that was very active on the US delegation to the tuna regional fishery management meetings.

9:03 So very early on, like within my first month, I think I went to, uh, Apia in Samoa in the middle of the western Central Pacific. Yeah. To a meeting a, a big tuna RFMO meeting, which was the first time I, I learned also about how tuna are managed because Right. Obviously it's very important for tuna companies to have a tuna supply. And so part of learning about the business also included learning about tuna management and then tuna science. That's incredible. That's so cool. And then now you've been working, so when you got the opportunity to be like president of ISSF, what was your first reaction to, was this something that you've been.

9:45 Had been thinking about, or I guess like, I guess ISSF was created, they asked you to become president. Mm-hmm. Um, were you part of the creation of ISSF? Yes. Like, were you part of those conversations and, and like what made you lead towards this is what you wanted to do, you know, full-time from now on, it was the opportunity to really start something new. Uh, you know, when we started, we had eight founders, right. Um, and roughly at the time we estimated they were about 50% of the tuna that was purchased went through one of those eight companies. So it was a nice number where you could. Heard the cat, so to speak, and develop a vision for a new organization, but also you were meaningful at the very beginning.

10:28 Right. They were major purchasers of every species and stock of tuna except bluefin globally. So we started with the global footprint, started working in every ocean, um, right, right from the beginning. We also had a fabulous tuna scientist, Dr. James Joseph, who mm-hmm. Um, died about two years after we started, but he was our founder and he developed for us a scientific advisory committee with all the best tuna scientists in the world. Again, from a geographic dispersal and right. That, that was fabulous. Um, and I, I do often think back to those days when it was me, half of a communications person and you know, like 40% of Jim Joseph saving the world.

11:14 And it was really fun. Um, and since then, obviously we've grown from eight founders to now 24 companies still global. Um, we have five full-time scientists on staff, two communicators on staff, plus Taylor's team, and, you know, some other, uh, consultants. And then we have some great, uh, policy experts as well who help us with our advocacy and outreach at the RFMOs who have diplomatic backgrounds. Right. So it was, it really was that thrill of, of seeing that we could do something meaningful. Um, but yet started up.

11:55 And so this is always an interesting aspect for me as someone who doesn't have a lot of experience through the, the private sector and starting organizations such as the ISSF, where that you're focusing in on sustainability. It's in the word. And, and a lot of people may look at something like where companies get together to find, to, to put together an organization like this, and they probably wonder about conflict of interest. Like these are companies who want tuna, they want to focus on catching tuna, but then they've got sustainability in there, they've got seafood in there, and they've got these, these keywords that are really important to a lot of people that associate it with conservation. How do you, how does an organization like yourself where, where you come from a corporate world where they're catching tuna and you're working with a lot of different communities around the world, as you mentioned, you have representation from around the world, scientists around the world.

12:44 You know, arguably the best experts in the world. And you, you're balancing the sustainability with the ability to still have these companies grow, uh, in terms of, of economic prosperity. How does that, what, what's that balance like? Was that a, a tough thing to do to, to, to have that balance? Mm-hmm. Yes. And you forgot a really other important factor, which is competition law, antitrust law. In the US we call it the rest of the world. Okay. Calls it competition law, you know? Right. Anytime you get competitors planning to do something, um, you have to make sure it's done correctly. Ah, interesting. Okay. The eight founders were really visionary. They knew that tuna stocks, I should say we knew right.

13:28 Um, that tuna stocks needed to be healthy. 'cause if you didn't have healthy tuna stocks, you weren't gonna have a business for law. Of course. Right. They knew that we needed scientific advice and we needed to do what the scientists said, and we needed to help the governments and the regional fisheries management organizations that manage tuna follow the advice of the scientists. Mm. We could help get the science more data, we could help make the science better, but we should also be. Urging the governments to follow the scientific advice. When we started, there was this breakpoint where one of the regional fisheries management organizations had met and failed seven times to adopt a management measure that the sci, there was no dispute.

14:14 The scientists were saying, you need to do this, and seven meetings later, they still hadn't done it. So we were at a point where it was clear that something had to be done. Um, the companies knew that something had to be done. They were motivated to do it. We had great scientists. The companies knew from day one the science was gonna tell us what we needed to do, but also the companies knew from day one that they couldn't just say they were doing it. We needed to, they needed to follow the scientific advice when they could, and they needed to demonstrate to the world that they were in fact doing it. It would make them more credible. Mm-hmm. It would also make us more credible advocates to the governments when we were urging them to do something.

14:57 So the foundation of ISSF from the very beginning I think got a lot. Right. Yeah. And where a lot of other initiatives have, have maybe fallen short recently, where they don't share that commitment, for example, to clearly demonstrating that they're doing what they needed to do. Mm-hmm. Or where, or, and I should say also credibly or that foundation of trusting the science. Investing the science. Mm-hmm. And just, you know, there have been many examples where we put scientists on board vessels and we're like, go figure this out. And they come back and they're like, yeah, we figured that out, but we found another problem. And we're like, okay, so what do we do about that?

15:38 And, and really that is the ethic of the work that we're doing. Find problems, solve problems, teach fishers how to solve the problems, and then get the governments to require that those. Solutions to be implemented. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to hear you say that. Uh, from, you know, just from a corporation side, the, you know, there's a, in conservation there's a big component to conservation. You have the science side, you have the advocacy side and the activist side. But then a, a lot of times the, uh, corporation aspect, the, you know, gets either ignored or pitted against the other side. Either they do it on their own or it happens just in the business that they do.

16:22 Uh, and, and that becomes a problem. And the collaboration really. Uh, makes things better. It helps solve problems. And the one thing that the private sector is really good is solving problems quickly. You know, they, you wanna solve, as you mentioned, you know, sometimes, you know, science is, is, is, is very straightforward. It's either you, you, you pose a question, it either answers your question the way you think it's gonna answer it, or it answers the questions a complete opposite way. It's gonna answer, it's pretty black and white in terms of, of of the question that comes out in, in the math and the statistics that you put forward. And sometimes you may like the answer and sometimes you may not like the answers or it discovers a further problem. And I love when you're saying it's like, oh, we found another problem. We solved this, we found another problem. How do we solve that? Like, let's just keep solving problems as we go along to make things better.

17:05 It is so refreshing to hear that because I can't tell you how many times it's been frustrating to hear, you know, companies realize that this could like, 'cause like, let's be honest, some of the. The problems that come up could impact the bottom dollars of a lot of the companies that are involved in in the ISSF. And that is a hindrance. And you could ignore certain things and just continue to going on the way things are going, which weren't working in the past. Or you can say, no, no, we're gonna solve this and we're gonna figure this out. We're gonna put all our minds together, which I think. In, in my opinion, that's the way we, we solve problems, is everybody coming together, the science, the conservation, the corporations, and they, and they, they bring it together to have like a, a true sustainable solution. I mean, that's the first part of sustainability.

17:46 So I love, and, and I just love how refreshing that is. So that's just wonderful. So I appreciate you. Thank you. You answering those questions right off the bat. Um, it kind of, it definitely gives us a sense of where ISSF is coming from and where it wants to go. Now there are a lot of programs in each, in, in each of this, and I'm gonna refer people to, uh, the, the website iss, uh, do or-foundation.org. And I'll put it in the show notes so people can take a look. But we're looking at tuna conservation, the fad management, the marine. Ecosystem health. The PVR lists, the, uh, VOSI, which I assume is tracking of ships, uh, uh, bycatch reduction. There's just, it goes on and on and on, and, and illegal phishing prevention. And there's so many things that, that, that you cover, which is great.

18:28 And these are your priorities and tools, and that's just amazing. And I remember before we press record, like we have a small team, but we get a lot done and, uh, and I love that. Mm-hmm. Um, but we're gonna talk today, we're gonna focus a lot on what you did in 2024, and it's the annual report that you put out, obviously every year. Uh, and there's a lot within that. So I, I want to get started if that's okay on that. Um, and I guess for, if you, when you put out these annual reports, the first question is. What do you want people to get out of this, of this report? Mm-hmm. I think the number one takeaway is the commitment. It's the effort and the commitment. This is not a campaigning organization, this is not, um, an advocacy organization.

19:14 Mm-hmm. We, yes, we do a lot of talking, but we do so much more than talking. And it is all that other work that we do that makes what we say more credible. And so, and I have the same reaction and it's usually around February where I get presented the statistics from the prior year. I get exhausted when I read it. I was like, I, I knew we did a lot, but until you really see those numbers. Um, so it is the actual activity that makes our goal. Achievable and really drives the progress forward. Yeah. Um, we talked at the beginning about how important science is to us and how we're grounded in the science.

19:57 Um, it's almost half of our budget. Mm-hmm. But that's the amount that flows through our bank account. That goes to science is a lot, but it's the multiplier effect that we bring. We work with other science organizations and we call them coordinated science projects, which means one of our scientists is a co-author or on a steering committee or part of the design last year, and that's not money that goes to our bank account. Last year, the value of that was over $13 million. Um, then we're, we're putting scientists on boats, or boats are reporting data, or they're buying equipment and we're putting scientists and they're reporting data.

20:39 And so we keep track of the value of that commitment by industry participants. Mm-hmm. Who let, let's say, scientists fuss with what they're doing. Mm-hmm. The value of that last year was over $50 million. Wow. And depending upon the research program in any year, it's ranged from about 30 million to over a hundred million. Um, obviously years when scientists are on board, like taking active control, that costs in kind more than if it's, Hey, buy these things, buy these materials, make biodegradable fads, deploy them in a certain way and send us the data.

21:20 That's still some, um, but that's not as much of an in kind contribution. So that multiplier effect is huge. And I don't, I mean, we do real science. When I say we have five scientists on staff, yeah, they do a lot of writing and reading and attending of meetings and outreach, but they also do a lot of real science. The result of that real science. Was last year, 16 peer reviewed papers. A lot of people are happy if they do one. We had 16. Yeah. Uh, on top of that we published seven technical scientific papers ourself, and some were co-authors of 33 science papers that were submitted within the tuna regional fisheries management science ecosystem.

22:07 They all have a scientific advisory body. Mm-hmm. And some science working groups. 33 additional papers went through that. Um, we attended 56 science meetings because you know what the best advocacy is when your science or science you've done with others. It's not just us that's saying it, it's if the science committee of the RFMOs who have to take the action, recommend it. So it's really important to us to do real science in partnership with others who are leaders in the tune of scientific space. And then. Get the output of that science as part of the recommendations that that go before the RFMOs through their science bodies.

22:49 Um, gotcha. I, we talked about the coordinated science. There's 36 active coordinated science projects going on right now. We did 34 in-person skippers workshops touching over 500 skippers, and then another almost 1500 reviewed last year's version of the material online. 'cause I always say to the scientists, if somebody on a boat doesn't do something differently tomorrow Yep. Then they did today. Yep. We're not having an impact. So that outreach that we do, that's really robust outreach to the skippers. First we learn from them. They tell us their ideas. This their sounding board for the scientists who sometimes say, Hey, I was thinking about, and the skippers will either be like, yeah, no, or you might have something there.

23:35 Right. And, but then also we're helping them keep up. Because let me tell you something. Vessel companies are also huge constituents to governments when they go to RFMO meetings. Oh really? Oh, yeah. Uh, longer than tuna companies actually. Wow. Um, so you do well if you talk to them a lot in advance and get them comfortable with your ideas, have them form a part of creating the solutions, because then when their government says to them, what do you think about this? Mm-hmm. You hope that they say, oh yeah, I've been doing that for three years. That's a really great thing.

24:16 And then it makes it a lot easier for the governments to agree to require it so that skipper's outreach is really important. Absolutely. We have almost 2000 vessels that have volunteered to be on one of our vessel lists, which means our third party auditor. Audits them. Annual. So it's like a certification in a way, right? Not a certification. No. Okay. It it, because it's an audit, a certification would mean you could only be on there if you had all, all greens. It's an informa, it's a credible information platform. Gotcha. So it and it, but it is an annual audit Yeah. That the participating companies use. Because they can only be buying from vessels that comply with our conservation measures.

25:01 But also we hope that real retailers would make use of it, other NGOs would make use of it as they're developing their retail advice. And then you mentioned our V-C-V-O-S-I. Yep. That's V stands for vessel, but in my mind V stands for voluntary. What are these vessels doing that they don't even have to be doing that are like the next wave? Are they in an MSC certified fishery? Are they voluntarily providing data? Mm-hmm. Are they participating in trials of experimental fad designs or are they implementing, um, bycatch mitigation? So again, these vessels undergo audits to, to demonstrate that they are on the water implementing these best practices.

25:48 Reg Americas is our third party auditor and they audit our companies and they audit all the vessels. That's amazing. So let me ask this question. It's probably one of the most important questions we're gonna ask today. Uh, how did you guys figure out how to have more than 24 hours in a day? Because it sounds like you guys are doing way more than, than everybody else. Like how was this? No, we used, we used the time zones and the international dateline to our advantage. I mean, like, and, and to do those science, like to do that you said mentioned 16 peer reviewed, uh, papers that were, that were published last year. I know for some people who are not used to doing these, these peer reviewed papers or publishing peer reviewed papers, that is a, a, a, a really large number even for an organization.

26:31 Mm-hmm. Um, you know, five scientists, uh, and, and I assume there's collaborators in there as well to, to get that published sometimes takes years to get a paper published, you know, and so to have those done, you know, you have to be efficient, but you really have to know your stuff. You really have to design. Those studies really, really well to ensure that you have the, the right information. There's not a lot of review going back and forth. 'cause as, you know, as soon as the reviewers see it, they're like, no, this is good. Like, we're gonna do it. Um, how is the, like the setup? Is it just the five scientists or there a lot of collaborators with, you know, universities or colleges around the world or even other government institutions? And then how does that collaboration work?

27:12 Uh, if, if that's so over, like, you know, across, like you said, time zones and, and, and cultures and, and different professions. There are absolutely a lot of other scientists. In addition to the five we have on staff, we have our scientific advisory committee that has I think nine ish. Um, and they really are the lead tuna scientist in a region. So like the Eastern Tropical Pacific, one of their scientific staff from that RFMO is, is on our science committee, for example, or the Secretary of the Pacific community who's the science provider for the W-C-F-W-C-P-F-C in the Western and Central Pacific. They're on our committee.

27:52 Um, we have a bi catch expert who kind of runs the tuna group at IRDA French Research Institution. We work very closely with as D in Spain and many, many others. Mm-hmm. Um, and so it kind of starts with the staff. Then it goes to the sac, right? And then it goes to the organizations that they work with and through, and their partner organization. So there's absolutely a multiplier effect. I love it, but I love it when you said sometimes these things take years. I mean, that is, that is the special place where I sit because, um, you know, scientists, they take years and industry expects it to take like maybe a week if it's hard. So, you know, we, we have these kind of, yeah, yeah.

28:35 Right. Um, so that's the balance, right? I, you always want to get the peer reviewed paper, but you also need to be putting out a technical report, includes something in a skipper's guidebook, and start training the skippers on it so that your science remains robust, but also you're getting that early uptake on the water that you need. I love it. I love it. Now, we, we've talked a lot about sort of like one of the, the, you know, the things that you've, you've covered and all the things that you've been able to do. Let's get a little bit more specific. So can you elaborate on, uh, key specific, like, scientific in initiatives that the ISF undertook in, in 2024 particularly, I, I really like the development of the, of the jelly fad construction guide.

29:18 Yeah. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So the jelly fad name was inspired by watching a jellyfish. You know, if you go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I could spend all day in the jellyfish room. So Nice. It is so beautiful. Yeah. Um, so fads, for whatever reason, fish like to hang out around them. Could be a shady spot, could be a food chain, could be the singles bar. Nobody really knows, but, but it is what it is and we just go with that phenomena, right? Fishers realized it way back in the day when I started in tuna boats would look for birds. With a helicopter or binoculars. Yeah. And they would, because usually under the birds were a bunch of fish.

29:59 Mm-hmm. And oftentimes in the middle of that bunch of fish was a log. Mm-hmm. Or a dead animal or something that sort of created this. So boats got smart and they put little radio antennas on those logs so they can find them. Again, fast forward humans being humans, they started creating them and deploying them using old phishing nets and satellite buoys. And there can be very harmful 'cause they never go away. Right. So one of the ideas that our scientists came up with was how to make them biodegradable so that they last just long enough to catch fish.

30:42 Right. But not so long that they don't ever go away. And I. This project started before COVID. I, I can't, you know, COVID does weird things to your concept of time, but I know it was before COVID and we were testing, that was like 45 years ago, I think. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yep. We were testing in the Mediterranean Sea, different ropes and different fabrics to see how long they would last. Mm. And then started using the longest fabrics that would biodegrade in the, to look like an old fad, but there was too much stress. It was, and so they were failing. And so then one of our scientists said, Hey, what if we do something, look at the, like, like a jellyfish so it doesn't have that much structural stress.

31:30 Right. Will it last longer? But still be biodegradable. Mm-hmm. Fast forward years of getting vessels to do the type of research I talked about earlier where, hey, you buy the stuff and you buy the buoys and we want you to, now when you put fads in the water, put two one like you used to make and one like a biodegradable fad that we're gonna teach you. Right. And we did those trials in every ocean to make sure that they traveled in the same way. Did they attract fish in the same way? Mm-hmm. Did they last long enough? And we got it. We got the research to a point that with, by 2024 we're like, okay, we're ready to, we're ready to write this up.

32:15 Yeah. Like we've been talking to skippers, we've been trialing them. But that fad, biodegradable fad guide is the combination of six or seven years of research and many, many. Sets and fad deployments by, um, cooperative vessels. Yeah. And the exciting thing is now every tuna RFMO has implemented a timeline by which their vessels should be switching to using biodegradable fats. So like our scientists came up with the idea, worked with other scientists, figured it out, out. We started advocating for it. We started working with skippers to get them to understand and accept it.

32:56 Mm-hmm. And including in our advocacy asks. And the RMOs now have timelines for requiring. Biodegradable biodegradability in fats. When you said like the guide, the construction guide. Mm-hmm. So are these fats being made by the fishers? Like by the vessels? By the captains or, or, or the deck hands or whoever. Like they're being actually made. So this guide teaches 'em how to make it and what materials they need to uses. Fabulous question. And it varies. It depends upon. Where, where the home base is. Right, right. Okay. And that is one of the things that our, one of our scientists, g Moreno, she's still doing is like going, talked to her last time. Different countries. Right. And finding what's locally available there.

33:37 Uh, that would work. Got you. Because it, you know, you're kind of ruining the whole environmentally friendly thing if you're shipping something in a container halfway around the world. True, true. You wanna, you want them to find local materials that will work, that will buy at degrade, that will be strong enough, um, so that it's cost effective. Mm-hmm. As well as having the desired environmental impact. Um, sometimes there are some fleets that make them on land because they're mm-hmm. They fish close enough and they come back and they direct the deliver to, to factories that are right on land. So they've found that the fleets just go together and they have. Fad production facility. But there are others that they put all the ingredients, if you will, on board.

34:20 And, you know, that's what they do on their steaming days out at sea is they, they make fads and probably everything in between. You know what I like about this? 'cause like, you know, what I was thinking when I first heard about it is it's like somebody created this like an engineer and, and, and, you know, marketed it to the vessels and they would have to pay for this fad and they would have to go out and, you know, it get set at a certain price and that would go into their operating costs. What I really like about this is that they make it themselves. Uh, it's, it's locally done, but what I really like is it's like democratizing the making of this. Mm-hmm. And when you, when you start to put all these different minds together and they, they're all making a similar device, but maybe you, like you said, using different local materials or things like that.

35:02 You almost get better and better as you go along because someone's gonna figure out something that makes it better. You know, makes it either last a little longer or maybe degrade better, or, you know, maybe attract a little bit better. And then share that information across, you know, the, the, the network and be like, oh, okay, let's see if we can replicate that over here. So you're allowing, 'cause these, these, these fissures are, are geniuses in their own right. They know the world. Absolutely. They know these fads. They know how tuna behave. Right. A lot of the times for scientists. We depend on these fishers to tell us what's happening locally. Mm-hmm. Because it's all unique. Right. And, and I, I think that's such a great opportunity to make these feds even better, you know, and work with scientists and so forth and be like, Hey, we've actually figured out something that catches it a little bit more efficiently, um, you know, and, and last a little longer, but then it will degrade better and all these different things.

35:55 I think that's such a great idea to allow, like just empower the fishers to make it themselves and, and make it even better because they're engineers in their own right. Let's be honest. They've, they've made, they've fixed boats on the, in, in probably bad seas and things like that, and they've, they've seen it all. Um, and I just love the fact that, that, that allows them to do that. And I'm sure, um, they're, I'm sure they're, they're enjoying that part as well. Um, absolutely. So, so that's awesome. So let's move on. I, I think it's, it's, it's really, it's really interesting to, to see that guide do so well in the dev develop development of that guide. Mm-hmm. Um, now when we talk about, you know, we're always talking, we're looking at, uh, at Tuna Fish, we talk about. Bycatch and, and I, I apologize to the else, we're gonna be switching to a lot of things because it's, you guys covered a lot of things last year.

36:38 I want to be able to cover as much as possible. Um, so how did the research contribute to bycatch mitigation, uh, strategies for species like, like, you know, sharks, modular rays, uh, and seabirds Because, you know, a lot of the times, you know, we see, you know, shark, uh, populations decreasing. We see, uh, different things happen, um, with sea birds, but we don't talk a lot about that in sort of like mainstream meat wise or when we talk about, um, you know, saving these, these species as, as biatch. So, so how did that, that research contribute to that mi, those mitigation strategies? So with a lot of the, especially long line bycatch mitigation measures, a lot of those have been known.

37:21 And so we were partnering with other organizations to get the word out it, you know, we don't just have skipper's workshops with per se vessels. We now have a whole skipper's workshop series with long line vessels, both in person as well as online, um, materials available to them so that they too. Can be learning and refreshing themselves about the bycatch mitigation measures. Um, maybe by the time this airs soon, uh, we'll be adding some new columns to our VOC that illustrates actual implementation of some of the bycatch mitigation measures that are more applicable to long liners.

38:01 And we're really excited about that new rollout for sure. Um, on the at sea part, we have been working for a couple of years now with these nets, the large nets and the hoppers to help large animals be released quickly and safely for them. So that's the manta ray work. Um, also some of the large shark work, you know? Yeah. Part of the skippers, um, outreach. For years with all gear types is how to safely handle a shark safe for you. Yeah. Safe for the shark for sure. It can be done like you have to motivate them to want to keep the shark safe and then you have to demonstrate how to do it.

38:44 Mm-hmm. Um, the hoppers and using the large nets for the large animals, these are things that are showing promise. We, this, it, it's hard to do the absolute research 'cause they don't encounter them that often. Mm-hmm. So you need a scientist on board that does encounter them, that's able to put a tag on them to make sure that when you try this technique, they actually live. Um, these are all the, the fun parts of real science. Um, but they're showing great promise. It also would involve some costs on the part of the boats to, to modify their boats with these techniques. But we're happy with how. Those research cruises have gone and we've made some good progress in 2024 on, on those large animals as well.

39:32 I think you highlight something really important too, in terms of, uh, you know, the fishers handling the sharks, it. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong at sea when you're fishing just at sea in general. Yeah, I, I kind of mentioned it before. Conditions are never perfect, uh, and usually when things go bad, conditions are bad. You know, that, that's, that's usually, uh, contributes to that to handle a shark at sea, I. Whether you're in large ways or whether it's flat surface, uh, it, it doesn't matter. The, the fisher has to protect themselves. It's like a occupational health and safety, but you're dealing with a shark of various size that has a lot of teeth that are very sharp and you can actually hurt yourself a lot. So I think it's really important to teach them like, look, this is, these are the ways, the best practices to handle sharks, um, the best that you can at sea, and to protect yourself and to protect the shark.

40:21 I think that's really important. 'cause that could lead to just killing the shark and throwing it overboard if somebody's not feeling safe and handling a live shark and trying to save it. And so I think it's important to talk about that and to have that, those discussions. What's the feedback when you get that, that your staff gets, when they start to talk about, you know, safety in handling, uh, sharks or other marine species that could be dangerous. What's the feedback to the fishers at that point? I think that they understand mm-hmm. That, that it is definitely important. A lot of them are also fishing in areas where, uh. Shark encounters are, are regulated, right? Yeah. And, uh, true, so true. So they want to do it right.

41:01 Um, you have to make sure that they also understand there are other, you know, that it, it's not a low priority. Don't just leave them sitting over there till you're all done. Right. Like you, the faster you get them back in the water and that's where mm-hmm. Some of the boats, I, I think the French started this have almost two, they have two conveyor belts where the, the tuna goes on one and they can immediately pull out the bycatch and it goes on the other and it goes right out back in the water immediately. Right. Again, that's, that's a, that's a vessel design issue that, that's a big thing. You can't just like bolt one of those. A lot of the conversations that, that are going on.

41:42 I, um, I love how you, I went shark tagging once. Fun fact. This is another great perk of my, of my job. Melanie Hutchinson is a superstar shark scientist. Right. Um, and when she was doing her PhD and, and we helped support it, I was in Hawaii for some meetings and, and she took me shark tagging and we tagged a very large shark. And this is, I, I got so much respect for Melanie, for shark scientists in general. Mm-hmm. And really this is when I learned that if you get your PhD in marine biology, you're actually seasick every day for like somewhere between five and seven years. Because it's like very fine motor skill to tag those sharks while the waves are going like this. Yeah. It was fabulous.

42:22 And yeah. You know, that was in a controlled environment. Yeah. Yeah. Not on a fishing trip. No. Yeah, it's, it's insane. It's insane. When you, when you think about the, you know, a lot of people don't think about that. When we talk about being in the field, every, every scientist is like, I love being in the field. It comes with, its, its, its challenges, you know? And, and a lot of that time is, is safety. Even just like when, I remember when I, just, a quick story here. When I first went, I, I worked in the, when I first graduated, I worked in the Gulf of Mexico, uh, and I worked as a marine technician on a boat. And I'll never forget, I was standing, uh, in, at, on the, on the stern of the ship and I was just standing in a way where we were tied up to, uh, an oil rig, just where Gulf of Mexico, there's a lot of oil rigs.

43:04 Mm-hmm. We're tied up to an oil rig, and there's a line that I'm standing in line with the line, like with the rope that's attached to this rig. And I remember the captain coming up to me, he's like, you need to move right now, and I'll explain after. And he goes, move over here. I'm like, okay, what's going on? He's like, if that line snaps, that's coming right back and that will split you in two. Just standing in the wrong spot, you know, if you're not aware, can be deadly. You know, and I think that's, that, it just kind of, I always tell people that it goes to show how dangerous, not only from a scientific perspective, but also from a fishing perspective. It is to be out there and to be how aware these fishers are and these scientists are being out there.

43:47 Uh, and then being able to develop these skills to tag a, a large shark who doesn't want to be outta the water for very long, wants to be back in the water, scared, is worried, and then you put it in, you put the, you do all your things that you have to do, and then you put the tag on and you put it back in the water. To do it in a slickly split is, is a tough thing to do. So, uh, like you said, the motor skills to like tag that on Yeah, it's, it's a. Definite, uh, challenge in, in itself. Uh, but that it, it, it's great to see, you know, you get to experience all these things. You get to really understand it from a, um, like, you know, somebody who's the president of an organization may not be able to do that e every day and, and that they're able to do that is, is great. 'cause you get that perspective, that scientific perspective, which I think is important.

44:29 Right? Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Let's move on to, to electronic electronic monitoring and compliance. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, what progress is made in 2024 regarding the adopting of, I'll call it, em, electronic monitoring standards for the RMF or RFMOs. Uh, you know, there it seems that, like that's always a difficult thing. There was a study that came out, uh, where a lot of the fishing vessels around the world haven't, aren't tracked. Um, you know, electronic monitoring is, is important. Uh, can you just talk about what electronic monitoring is in this context and then what progress is made in 2024 about that. Yep. So electronic monitoring is a set of pieces of equipment that goes on a boat.

45:12 It is absolutely cameras, but it's also other sensors that measure location and speed. And if your hydraulics are, are running, so you want to make sure that the cameras are set up in a way to capture all the phishing activities, but also you have those other sensors that can help you figure out what's, what's going on. Um, there are some fisheries that have been using electronic monitoring successfully for a very long time. It really had not gotten much traction in tuna fisheries. Way back in like 2011, we did one of the first electronic monitoring trials with Archipelago onboard a large scale per saner.

45:53 Yeah. To see and large scale per Sanders have a hundred percent human observers. Right. But we wanted to investigate, I mean, a human observer is not everywhere. 24 true. Seven get to sleep sometimes. Right. They have to sleep, sometimes they get sick, they get to eat, like, you know, yeah. They can be up above deck and the cool stuff is happening below deck or, or vice versa. So we did a study to see what things that electronic monitoring could do as well as a person, some things that could do better than a person. And then what, what do you need a person for long liners had been, uh. Successfully using electronic monitoring for longer than that because the action's slower.

46:35 You know, on a purer, you open that braille and like Woo falls down, tons of duna goes right down. Yeah. Where a long liner is one by one, you're taking whatever animal is off the hook, off the hook. And you've got, you know, here's your camera, here's where they're taking them, pulling in the line and taking them off the hook. Um, from 2011 through 20 15, 20 16, there was a global environment facility Tup project, part of which was doing trials of long liners on board per se, vessels and long liners on, uh, electronic monitoring on per se, looking at the fleet in Ghana and on long liners looking at the fleet in Fiji.

47:18 Those trials went on for three or four years. Still not a lot of uptake. Hmm. Um, there's was then a second and we're now in a second global environment facility. Program that was designed to bring the tuna RFMOs together and get serious about electronic monitoring. Most importantly, harmonizing globally the standards and specifications for electronic monitoring systems. Makes sense, right? You have to say, if you want a government or a science body to receive electronic monitoring, it needs to be like this. Not prescriptive, but like what are the characteristics of the system that make it good enough?

48:00 Well, I'm happy to report that between 20 22, 21, 22, when the Global Environment Facility Project presumed three workshops where we'd bring and ISF is leading this work, bring the RFMOs together to start aligning and harmonizing, mm-hmm. On these technical specifications to the end of 2024. The RFMOs all did it. They all passed between the end of 23 and the end of 24 basic specifications for electronic monitoring systems in their region. There's still some harmonization that needs to be done.

48:42 Some say it's voluntary. Some say it's a trial. Some say it's only for science. Some say it could be used for compliance. Some say it's only for long line. You know, like there are still differences to work out. Mm-hmm. But the exciting thing about this is the RFMOs lapped what the Global Environment Facility Tuna Project was thinking they were gonna be. So we're now looking at these three workshops that we'll be doing over the next three years. We had the first one last December as accomplishing much more than was. Originally designed. Mm-hmm. And this is because, you know, things, things start slowly and then it happens fast.

49:24 Yeah. And all of that pre-work and talking about it in trials and working with fleets and other NGOs getting on board and the Nature Conservancy has done a ton of work at, at a national level, reaching out to them to get them to start requiring it on vessels that fish in their waters, tuna vessels. Um, and the Tuna Transparency pledge that they spearheaded signed first by Walmart and now others, that by 2027 they want all of the tuna that they sell to be on board. A vessel that had a hundred percent monitoring, knowing that electronic monitoring needed to pay, play a large part in that. Um. 2024 was kind of that, that momentous year in, in that all four have done something.

50:08 Yeah. Now we need to move it forward and it's, it's a great success story. 'cause this again is the work of scientists, governments, NGOs, industry retailers, all kind of pushing for the same thing. And it's starting to happen really fast now. When I think that, like, if you think about electronic monitoring in general, and, you know, and Fishers, fishers don't like, like, they like to do what they've done, you know, for generations and, and they don't want somebody necessarily watching over their backs all the time. They're like, we are doing stuff. They, you know, they want people to know that they're doing stuff for the good of the ocean. They wanna fish forever. They want to be able to do that kind of stuff. Electronic monitoring, to me would've been a very difficult thing to get vessels and, and fishers to adopt the fact that you're able to do that.

50:57 You know, through the RMOs across the world, like as you said, there's still some work to be done, but to lap the GEF in the program and to say, Hey, we actually got this done. That's phenomenal. Like that, that is really phenomenal. I didn't think when you sort started telling this story, I was like, yeah, no, that didn't work. That's not gonna work. And but it is like, it does, it does work. And I think, you know, as part of compliance, as part of like these rules and having everybody on board as you just listed off all the different people, all the different parts of the supply chain on board allows that to be adopted a lot faster. Uh, allows it to be like, look, this is not just watching over the work that you do. This is to make sure that everything is done properly and, and everybody in the supply chain is responsible for that.

51:41 And I think it's a, it's a, it's a great thing to do and everybody, it, it just, it helps with the transparency. It helps with the say, Hey, look, we're advocating for the conservation of these species even though, you know, we're taking some, we're making sure that we can fish forever and these are the ways that we're doing it. I, I really, really think that's, that's a powerful message, especially when you have everybody on board across the line, across the supply chain to say yes. Like, this is what we're gonna do. Phenomenal work. Yes. Thank you. Amazing. In, in, I love that. That's powerful. Like everything, you're right. It takes a lot of talking to vessels of course to vessel owners, you know, making them understand that this is not cameras all over the boat, right? Just where you're fishing.

52:22 This is, you know, the vessel owners actually love it. Really because they own this boat that's Yeah. Way far away from them. And it, yeah. You know, yeah, sometimes I, I have some, I have friends that, um, have a house on a lake and they have a little camera on their deck and they, they like to pull up their camera and watch the sunset. I mean, there, there is just this human, um, pleasure. Yeah. I, I guess for right, for sure. So, so, so they can, both the skippers recognize that it can actually be helpful. Yeah. For them, if they get accused of doing something that they didn't do, and yep. The owners same way. And also the owners, I, I think, really get jazzed about being able to just take a peek and see what, see what their team's doing today.

53:09 Um, so, but it's very scary when you first talk about it, for sure. Definitely takes some getting used to, but, um, yeah, really, really optimistic about where this is going. So powerful. Now you mentioned at the beginning of this, when we, when I first asked that question of like, what were the priorities, what were the highlights of 2024, you mentioned, uh, an an enormous amount of workshops, 34 workshops to be specific. Mm-hmm. Uh, for tuna fishers worldwide in 2024. I know there's a lot of specifics that can go into that, and we can probably do 34 episodes for each, for each workshop. Um, but today we're gonna be talking like, what were the primary objectives and then like, you know, the outcomes that come out of those, of those workshops.

53:50 So there's the main curricula if, if you will, right. The, that most participate in, which is the bycatch mitigation. A little bit about RFMOs, the kind of the basics about, um, regulatory compliance, some, some issues and ways, ways to fix 'em, if it's a per se, and how to make a biodegradable fad, that sort of thing. Yeah. But we had a few topic specifics as well. One, we worked with, um, tuna Con and WWF Ecuador to bring globally groups together to talk about fad retrieval. Um, so if they're not biodegradable fads, how do you get them out of the water?

54:32 Right. And how do you design a fad retrieval initiative? And then we had four other regional dialogues about fad retrieval, again with the vessel community. So, so that was one, um, another longstanding piece of research. So boats or fads have eco sounder buoys on them that until pretty recently just says, yep, there's a bunch of stuff there, or, Nope. Nothing on this one. Right. Well, WeWork did a lot of research to come up with the acoustic signature for the different species of tuna. Ah. And then now we're working with the buoy manufacturers to make smart buoys and then doing training to skippers about what these buoys can do and how to use them.

55:18 So that's another kind of. Corridor of those workshop. Remember gall mentioned last time, I wanna into that. It's hugely exciting. Yeah. And it's harder, it was harder to do. Yellowfin was a tricky one. Took us a long time to get the, get the Yellowfin one. So, so that's another one, right? Working with the buoy manufacturers and then talking to the skippers. And, and this will get more robust probably in the coming years now, right? Of course. Of course. These more sophisticated buoys are available to you. Here's how you make the best use of the information that you're being given. Um, so yeah, it's different topics that just like that. Just like that. Just like that.

56:00 That's awesome. I think, and I think that's important because like these workshops contribute to something, you know, bigger into that broader, sustainable, you know, tuna fishing practices, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and, and so like when you, when you, when you guys plan a workshop, there's a lot of detail that goes into that. Um. How do you measure the success of these workshops at, by the end of it, you know, is it just the, the delivery of the curricula, or is it more of like the sentiment afterwards by the, the vessel owners and the fishers and so forth? Um, there's a couple different metrics. Metrics of success. Uh, first of all, like all good scientists and professors, they ask their students for a little feedback and we have a really comprehensive questionnaire now, and it's right not only feedback on the, the workshop itself, but itself, the ideas presented their thoughts, places for them to, to talk about issues they're encountering.

57:02 So it, it helps the scientists as well. Okay. Also, kind of like on a scale of one to five, how good of an idea do you think it this is, or how comfortable are you doing it? And we can watch those scores improve over time. Mm-hmm. You know, when we first started talking to the skippers about the notion of biodegradable fads, it was not popular. Hmm. And also, not surprisingly, it was going nowhere in our advocacy, but by around year three or four. When we had more trials going at sea, when the skippers had maybe heard about this two or three times, had a little time to noodle it, you started seeing that acceptance go from red to yellow to maybe light green, maybe not dark green, but you light green.

57:52 And once it hit that light Greenpoint point. No, shocker. That's right. The R fm OS also started taking action. So of course. So it takes a while, but you, we can mark progress of an issue. And then our ultimate definition of success is if an RFMO is able to get the needed consensus to adopt a conservation measure requiring something that. Our scientists feel should be required, our scientists and other scientists. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's huge. I think that's really important. And it is, it's great to be able to track how the sentiment is changing over time. I think that's mm-hmm. That's really great. Um, you know, we, we talked a lot about, you know, from the, the vessel aspect and from the Fisher aspect today.

58:34 Um, but there, in the report, uh, it mentions that, you know, 90% alignment between the IFFI sfs, you know, priorities with those nearly 50 other environmental NGOs. That's a lot. And, and let's, let's be honest here, like this, ISSF is a, is a con, is a, is a, a, a, a collaboration and an organization that's formed by corporations. You wouldn't think, you'd think that the big controversy with ISSF is the fact that it's corporate based. And so it wouldn't align well with the priorities of environmental NGOs, especially when it comes to tuna phishing. To be able to get 90% in alignment is a huge feat.

59:14 How was that done? Uh, and how does it advance ISS F'S advocacy efforts? Mm-hmm. So when ISSF first started there, there was one other factor, uh, uh, that was kind of pushing everyone to realize we needed an ISSF. And that is because the NGOs were all over the place. Mm. And businesses were afraid to do, to move in one direction for fear that they would be attacked by a different NGO. Makes sense for doing that. Makes sense. And, and so it was chaotic. Mm-hmm. Um, we had, and it, that wasn't just to businesses, that was also to governments. Like, yeah. That was just, would you, you know, all, you all go tell us what you want. Um, so in addition to our scientific advisory committee, we were, we created right at the very beginning, an environmental stakeholder committee, um, world Wildlife Fund, both in the US and international were founders.

1:00:06 Um, when we started, um, they brought together, uh, FishWise and SFP and Monterey Bay Aquarium, uh, and the Global Tuna Alliance and TNC, uh, you know, Marine Stewardship Council's on there. And so. That sharing and talking in time and starting to work on projects together helped. And then the foundation community, uh, started funding that the Monterey Bay Aquarium started called the Global Tuna Alliance because as you said, ISSF, um, partners very closely with industry and there were many NGOs that were not comfortable with that.

1:00:51 So to get around that problem, we now have a different organization called the Global Tune Alliance that has 40 or 50 NGOs. Now, the requirements to join that are, you either or both have to have a, a retail partner mm-hmm. That buys tuna, uh, or be an accredited observer to one or more tuna RFMOs. So that too has really helped the NGO Tuna Forum works at, you know, what are the top three, four, no more than five asks for each RFMO meeting, getting as many NGOs as possible to align on that. We participate in that and more NGOs, I think, have realized that having a common voice on, forget about what your ultimate goal is, what's your goal for this meeting?

1:01:43 What's reasonable to accomplish in this meeting given the agenda, given the work that has come out in the last year of their working groups, focusing on that necessary next step. Mm-hmm. That too was, was a lot of work to get this many groups to realize that yeah, we can all have our ultimate goals and we can make statements about the ultimate goals. Even the N GT uniform has said a hundred percent. Observation on all industrial tuna boats. So that's an ultimate goal. Yeah. Um, but being clear about your timeline, building upon the work that the RFMOs are doing in the next steps has really, so it's not like we said, Hey, this is what we're asking for.

1:02:26 And 90% agreed with it. It's that we are actively engaging in a body of work with the NGO community that's working on tuna issues and the whole community is getting aligned, which is also making it a lot easier to make progress. 'cause you don't have, if, if people are saying five different things, that's a really good reason to do nothing. But if everybody's saying the same thing, it's really hard to do nothing. And, and Susan, isn't that amazing how that, that works so well? When everybody's aligned and everybody's like, let's, let's, it is also, it's like, let's be realistic. Yes, we have these ultimate goals, but let's, what can we do now? How do we progress? How do we progress to that ultimate goal?

1:03:06 Uh, let's do it together and here are the steps that we've, you know, found successful. Here are the steps that you found successful. Let's try and amalgamate those, collaborate on those, and let's build it for who knew collaboration would do so well. Right. You know, I think it's, I I love that. What a concept. Yeah. I love that. Now. Um, look, transparency is such a huge thing in fisheries, uh mm-hmm. And, uh, especially when it's, uh, we look at accountability in the tuna supply chain. So now with the proactive vessel register, the PVR. Reaching an all time high. I think it's, I think in the report said 1,739 vessel registrations. Yep. How does this tool enhance transparency and, and the tuna supply chain?

1:03:47 And let's just before you do that, even to define what PVR is and then how does it enhance transparency in, in the tuna supply chain? So the PVR stands for Proactive Vessel Register, and these are vessels that have signed up to be audited by third, third party auditors for their compliance with our conservation measures. ISSF has now 34 conservation measures, and if you are a participating company in ISSF, you have to comply with them some, um. Are things that companies only do. Like for example, they submit once a quarter to the science bodies in the each RFMO vessel level, species size, all their tuna purchasers that the RFMO scientists use.

1:04:29 That's not something that goes to the boat. That's a, that's an example of a company specific one. Um, they're all audited on their traceability systems annually by MRA to make sure that they have robust vessel trip to finished Good. Traceability. Um, but then there are a number of them that do apply to the boats. The boat has to be flagged to a country that's actually participating in the RFMO where they're fishing. The boat has to have a unique vessel identifier, an IMO number, if they're eligible to get one. Otherwise A two V that the FAOI think gives out other, uh, so they have to have an IMO number. They, their skipper has to have undergone a skipper's training workshop with us.

1:05:12 They have to be deploying non entangling fads. The PVR audits the vessels on those things. So the participating company, if they're buying from boats that are in compliance on the PVR, then for at least the vessel part of our conservation measures, they'll be in compliance. Mm-hmm. Um, so, so that is where we are with the PVR. It, it and of itself. It doesn't help with transparency except that it is credible transparency to the practices that the vessels Right. Are doing. Of course. 'cause it's independently third party audited.

1:05:53 Yeah. And you also know that the companies have been audited on their traceability systems and we publish the individual company audit reports. Right. Also. So that's where the transparency comes from, like comes from Exactly. You're seeing the results of this, of these audits. Yep. Pass or fail or, you know, needs improvement where you're, everybody gets to see it. Correct. Interesting. And we also, I mean, in addition to our conservation measures being public, the audit protocols are public. Right. So if you wanna know exactly when MAG audits this vote for this thing. Yeah. What, what proof needs to be given it's public. You can look at it. Yeah. To, to just go a little bit beyond that, you know, having an audit is great and being able to, to publish that is great.

1:06:37 Um. The accountability part of it. Mm-hmm. What is like the pass fail rate of these, of these audits? Do you know offhand? I know I'm, I'm asking a question. I do. Okay, perfect. Because that, that's just the first thing that comes to mind because you can do the audits, but if everybody's failing the audits, then they're not really, you know, they show where the, the, the industry is at. But if they're not passing them, then we're not getting any progress. Or maybe we, we get progress in the future, but what is that rate? Is it, is it high? Is it low? Is it improving? Well, I'd love to hear that. It's definitely improving. If you look at the participating company audits, last year it was 99.3%. Uh, it was 23 companies were audited on 33 measures.

1:07:20 Okay. This year we'll have 24 companies audited on 34 measures. When we first started, uh, publishing these reports in like 20 15, 20 16. There was a much bigger spread. Right. You know, we had a few companies that were compliant on all, but we had others that had a lot of non-conformances. Um, and so it speaks to the seriousness that the companies take their compliance. Mm-hmm. It speaks to the seriousness that the retailers, their customers take about expecting compliance. Yeah. Um, that, that you see that compliance improve where it is solidly in the upper 90% now.

1:08:03 So that's for like overall. Mm-hmm. So going from like a wide range and then tightening it up, but also increasing it to like in the ni upper 90%. Yes. Yep. What? That's awesome. I know. And if you, and then, but then some people say, oh, well then they must not be very hard. Wow. If you look at all the boats on the PVR, well, first of all, I'm like, yeah, and you're doing what? Yeah. And, and any improvement at this point. Like Yeah. You know, and not only are you in, and I, and I, and I know you're gonna say something probably more profound than I am, but any, like, if we look at where people started from, you know, where they're just kind of like, if you think about it, even globally, they're probably just doing things as they learned and mm-hmm.

1:08:47 And if you have like without. Bringing together the RFMOs just as ICF has done and, and all the RFMOs have done, and, and everybody who's part of it has done, everybody was probably just doing what they knew was right. Some things were more progressive than others. Uh, and so like when you start these audits, of course you expect that there's gonna be a larger fail rate than what you would get after a number of years. But just the, the fact that you're improving to the upper 90% and, and obviously these things are not easy. Everybody's gonna say, these are easy things. These are not, these are expensive. They're, they're difficult to, to implement. Some of them more challenging than others.

1:09:28 Uh, especially with bringing on technology and, and so forth. And then changing the mindset. Let's be honest, we humans do not change. Well, we, we are not easy to change just in general. Um, and. And, and to be able to get that is a huge feat, you know, and especially looking at what th you said 33 now, 34 different types of measurements. I'm sorry. Anybody who says that these are Yeah, yeah. Any, no, sorry. You're right. Measures. Measures, yeah. So anybody who says that, you know, these are easy measures best, I, I highly disagree because they, they don't know fisheries if that's the case, you know what I mean? Like, oh, yep. These are hard to do in the first place. Uh, and the fact that we're seeing this improvement is great.

1:10:10 I'm sorry, I, I kind of interrupted what you were, you were gonna go on and say, so please continue. Well, I was, so last year for the first time. We published the same type of aggregated statistic for the boats on the PVR like we've always had by vessel, by measure transparency to the PVR. But last year we thought we should try to look at this as a percentage as well. Hmm. And so of the 1700 plus vessels on the PVR, um, they were, if you took every measure, every vessel, every measure, they were at 76% compliance, which is still, I mean, obviously there's work to do, but also obviously they're doing a lot.

1:10:53 First of all, these are the vessels that are going over and above by getting on the PVR and signing up for the audits. But secondly, they are still 76% compliant overall, which also says more about the participating companies. 'cause it's not that. All boats are doing this. This, it also shows the amount of work that they're doing with their supplier vessels to help educate them, to help them do better to, to not buy fish from that other 24%. They're making those hard commercial decisions and also investing effort to get the bolts up.

1:11:37 Yeah. Um, so I think the, the two statistics speak to both a job well done, but also hard work is still ongoing. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I love this. This is such a cool, uh, thing to talk about. Um, now let's talk about financial commitment, because these things don't, aren't free, right? All these things, it, it costs money, it costs time, uh, and all of that, uh, is, is very expensive when, when we talk about that. So nearly half of the budget for ISSF, uh, according to the report, was dedicated to science, as you mentioned earlier. Mm-hmm. In 2024. So how does this financial commitment. Reflect is S F's strategic priorities.

1:12:18 Yep. So, uh, first of all, the board, the ISSF board is different from the companies. By the way, it is a community board. There's only one company person on there, and that's Oh, interesting chair. Okay. But there are scientists on there. There are NGO representatives on there. There are former fisheries management managers on there. It is truly a community board. Um, and, and definitely science is up there. Um, also the verification piece, you know, these third party audits, uh, come with a cost. Um, the advocacy. Is basically the people that you're paying that you know, you're already paying the staff and, and we're advocating.

1:13:02 So that is important work, but it doesn't really have as large of a cost center. We have a few consultants and you have a lot of plane tickets to go to meetings, but just by the, by virtue of the nature of the work scientists, science is gonna be first and transparency and compliance is, is gonna be right up there. Yeah. Um, but, but I should point out, because this is not a, a minor matter at all. Um, our budget is roughly $5 million a year. Mm-hmm. The dues that the companies pay based upon their size is last year, 4.2 million. So a little over a million in grants as well.

1:13:43 Right. Um, but if you look at those companies and the investment they have made in ISSF since we began, it's over $58 million. These are companies that really, and that's just money to us. That is not the in kind contributions, that's not the extra staff people that they had to hire to make sure that their purchases were in compliance with the conservation measures. Um, and then if you look at the vessel side and the, we talked earlier about the fact that those in kind contributions range between 30 and a hundred million dollars a year. These companies take this very seriously is important to them that we are successful and that tunas and tuna ecosystems are healthy.

1:14:28 You know, it's, it's interesting when you, you know, again, coming from a science perspective and, and a conservation perspective where funding is always short. Right. Where it's difficult to get funding, especially in these times, funding's being cut every which way. Government now, uh, in a, in a number of different countries, you know, we're looking at potentially a poten, uh, impending recession and, and, and things like that. We are in difficult times we're, and we need more information. Mm-hmm. And we need more money to get that information. And we talk about how the private sector needs to pony up and be able to, to do that. This is a phenomenal case to show how much can get done even within a year.

1:15:14 Then of course over the last, you know, 15 when you have private sector investment in trying to improve, uh, a, a, an industry that has long been functioning, um, and has had problems and has had a, a bad rap and a lot of, you know, documentaries and, and, and, and reports and stuff to improve and to include everybody and to collaborate with everybody and to get things done faster. Mm-hmm. Obviously, and I say faster over a 15 year period to improve things, but every year you seem to be improving a certain sector or a number of different sectors. And this goes to show, this is a great example of the fact that the private sector money, when they're willing to put it in and, and let's be honest, they're putting in a, a, a decent amount each, but it's not like billions of dollars.

1:16:03 This is a good amount each, and they're putting in a, a like 58 million over that, which is a lot of money. It is, and to improve not only the conservation and the sustainability, but also to improve the business. And I think that's it. It's, it's just a great example of how private sector can do some great things for science, for conservation, fund it, get it done. Move on to the next problem and solve the next issue. It's huge. This is, this is phenomenal case and a, and a great example of that. Uh, and it goes to test that everybody in your organization who's worked over the past 15 years, including yourself, who's helped develop this and push this, this type of, of work just to get things done faster.

1:16:44 Like, it doesn't happen often. Government takes forever. You know, nonprofit organizations never get enough money. The people change over quickly because of the money situation. And, and it's a huge, it's a huge, uh, gap in, in a and to be able to have this, uh, is, is phenomenal. And this is why you're on the episode and I get to, we get to be able to talk about this. It's, it's the, the amount of stuff that you were able to do, not only in this year, but over the last 15 years or this past year, uh, is absolutely amazing. Now, of course. Thank you. When I, when I say that, I'm gonna be like, what have you done for me lately in terms of what's coming up in 2025? I say it jokingly, of course. Yep. Um, but like, what's the anticipated scientific investment for, for the upcoming year?

1:17:29 Yep. So we have high hopes for continued progress on electronic monitoring. Right. We've gotta get more fleets using those fully. Biodegradable fads, you know, those deadlines by which they have to be using them. We'll be here before we know it 'cause that's how time works. Yeah. Um, as well as ongoing research to make them better. Right? Looking for types of wood that maybe could be locally sourced in a good source of flotation or, uh, can the design be improved. Um, and then I, I talked a little bit about the new columns that we're gonna open up on the v oce, uh, and the tune of transparency pledge and retailers now making specific commitments and looking to the v oce for that proof.

1:18:12 And I really anticipate that 2025 and 2026 will be the year that you will, we'll start to see a lot more market call for. Proven implementation of specific initiatives. You know, there are 59 retailers around the world now that somehow in their commitments may make some reference to ISSF by only from an ISF participating company or only from boats on the PVR. But it's very high level and it's not really verified. And now the NGO community is starting to say, Hey, like TNC did with the transparency pledge, we want a hundred percent verification and we want that vote on the VOC.

1:18:56 So we know that it has been independently audited and verified that they do in fact have a hundred percent observation and, and I think that type of initiative is gonna be the wave of the future. I agree. I agree. Uh, Susan, I wanna thank you so much for not only coming on the podcast and sharing this, but being so enthusiastic about it. You make an annual report exciting. And that's, thank you. That's not an easy thing to do because it's a lot of facts and a lot of information, but we have good pictures too. Yeah. Great picture. We're, we're gonna share, we're gonna share it in the show notes so people can take a look. Uh, I highly recommend people go to iss uh, foundation.org. I'll put the link in the show notes. Uh, Susan, please, I would love to invite you back, uh, to, to talk next year, but also any other initiatives.

1:19:41 I feel like, uh, ISSF needs its own podcast just to be able to talk about everything and go into detail about everything. But you're more than welcome back to Come Back, love to come back, you know, to, to this, uh, to this podcast and talk more about tuna conservation and sustainability and working together and collaboratively. Thank you so much. I, I really do. That'd be Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Susan, for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'd just love the energy. I love the fact that we are able to talk about a 2024 annual report, make it exciting, make it productive. Think about how productive this organization is. A small organization that has a global reach, that has collaborators around the world, working tirelessly to make things better for the tuna industry.

1:20:27 Not only to be able to fish more, but also to be able to fish sustainably and fish forever. I think this is something that is really important. I know there's people here who are like, no, we need to stop fishing altogether. That is not going to happen. That cannot happen. Too many people rely on the protein from. Fish like tuna from fish, like a lot of different fish around the world. And we need to make sure that we are doing this sustainably and there's organizations that are working this, companies that are working on this to make sure that it's sustainable. And Susan brings the heat in terms of all the work that they were able to do. And you heard it in the episode. We're looking at scientific innovations and research, electronic monitoring compliance, stakeholder engagement and workshops, advocacy and policy influence, transparency and accountability in the tuna supply chain, which is huge financial commitment to science, which is huge.

1:21:12 And looking ahead into 2025 and re-upping that scientific commitment. When you have organizations and companies who are like, we want to invest in the science. We wanna listen to the science, but we need to get the science information so that we can listen to the science and we need to solve problems. And with that scientific study. Causes another problem or highlights another problem. We need to solve that problem. So let's do more science and let's figure out the answers to all these questions that we have and problems and challenges that we face. And this is what ISSF is doing and I love it. I just love it. Absolutely love it. Just to let you know like I am propping this organization up. They don't pay me to come on here. They ask to come on. I said yes, let's talk about it because I love what they're doing. This is conservation, this is fisheries management, this is collaboration, and this is what we need more of.

1:21:56 So I'd love to hear your comments and feedback on this episode. If you do have some, put 'em in the comments down below. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to this on the audio podcast and you feel like, Andrew, I need to talk to you about this, you know, hit me up. There's two ways to do so. You can go to speak up for blue.com/contact, fill out the form that goes right to my email, or you can DM me on Instagram at how to protect the Ocean. It's at how to protect the ocean. And of course, if you want to take more action and you want to be getting guided into taking more action for the ocean, you can join the undertow at Speak Up for blue.com/join the undertow. Join our community. There's a bit of a wait list. We're about to launch momentarily, but join the under Speak up for blue.com.

1:22:36 Join the undertow. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host Angela, and from the true nor strong and free, have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.