COOPERATION
Glaciar Pesquera S.A. and Wanchese S.A. are two companies totally dedicated to scallop fishery and focus their activities into Patagonian scallops. Most of the annual catch (6,000 tons) is exported to USA, France and Canada.

This is a new fishery – started in1996. It is controlled by the CFP (Federal Fisheries Council), body that collaborating with the SAGPyA (Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food) the INIDEP (National Institute for Fisheries Research and Development) and the fishing companies, carried out the necessary research to develop a sustainable fishing plan.

Since the beginning of the fishery, the CFP has used an strategy of co-managemet that includes the cooperation from the two involved companies. Such initiative allowed the INIDEP to get an invaluable database started with the first experimental fishery.
The INIDEP performs annual campaigns to evaluate the resource biomass and controls by-catch to study the fishery effect over other species.
A high level of cooperation between the INIDEP and the fishing companies was developed; those firms are willing to prevent overfishing and assist researchers in collecting data. This is the only Argentine fishery with a 100% coverage of observers on board in the sea. The observers take samples and collect scientific data of every catch and assure the companies' declarations.
Their work is supported by the Fisheries Division of the Argentine Navy and SENASA, that ensure the quality and security of all products, which are processed and frozen on board or immediately after landing.

HOW IS THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS
The MSC has developed “Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fisheries” which are the standards that guide accredited certifiers in an independent certification program.

The certification is a strict scientific process performed by a group of specialists with experience in:

A) Certification

B) Fisheries Science (in this case, in scallops), involving;

1- Stock evaluation
2- Stock management (detailed in a Fishery Management Plan)
3- Environmental and ecosystem impact, including the effects over threatened, endangered or protected species.

The team selected to evaluate the Patagonian scallops fishery in the Argentine platform is:

Team leader:
Dr. R. Peter Pottinger, Director of Sustainable Systems, OIA

Members of the technical team:
1- Dr. John Cranfield, Seabed Processes Consultancy, New Zealand.
2- Dr. Jaime Mendo, Facultad de Pesquería, UNALM, Perú.
3- Dr. Enrique Morsan, Instituto de Biología Marina y Pesquera “Alte. Storni”, Argentina.


CERTIFICATION REPORT
After a consulting period with the interested parties carried out during November 2005, OIA prepared the Preliminary Report of Patagonian Scallops Fishery according to MSC Principles and Criteria. Such report was presented to Glaciar Pesquera S.A. to discuss the Evaluation Team decision based on the available data and to check any possible interpretation mistake.

The evaluation team took into account the comments and information provided by Glaciar Pesquera S.A. and introduced some necessary changes in the Report for External Revision which was sent to two selected external reviewers.

The Report for Public Commentary included the scores and weights of sub-criteria and indicators used to evaluate the fishery, together with the recommendation of certification with the proposed conditions. It also included the complete reports of the two selected external reviewers. That report was open to receive comments from interested parties for 30 days from August 14th, 2006.

The documents are PDF files (Acrobat Reader) with two possibilities to view them: On line: click over the file Download to your computer: click over the file with the right buttom of your mouse and choose “Save as ” or “Save destination as ...”

Public Certification Report Spanish Version (1,6 MB) English Version (1,52 MB)