December 26, 2023 — The following transcript was released by WTXL:
“The fishing is greater than ever.”
Captain Joel Weir runs a fishing charter that goes around the world and in these waters off Panacea. “The fish we have the grouper the snapper fishing everything is phenomenal.”
He says business is good, but the Marine Stewardship Council tells me they’re concerned about the future of fishing in our oceans.
“They’re experiencing water temperatures that are higher than normal.”
October 22, 2023 — Conagra Brands has filed a new brief supporting its motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit claiming the company’s use of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for sustainability claims are “deceptive.”
The lawsuit, filed earlier this year, seeks at least USD 5 million (EUR ) in damages and heavily criticizes both Conagra and the MSC, claiming the sustainability certification organization “blatantly violates its own standards and puts the very ecosystem MSC feigns to protect in serious danger.” Plaintiffs in the case, Abdallah Nasser and John Bohen, claim the sustainability promises made by Conagra on its packaging using MSC certification “deceives and misleads reasonable consumers.”
October 12, 2023 — The Marine Stewardship Council’s updated fisheries standard includes new requirements for preventing the loss of fishing equipment, such as nets and lines, and more stringent monitoring of the impact of lost gear, also known as “ghost gear.”
In a peer-reviewed paper, a team of scientists led by Victor Restrepo, the vice president of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, has documented the process the Marine Stewardship Council underwent to revise its policies around gear management for MSC-certified fisheries.
September 13, 2023 — The Marine Stewardship Council is an international nonprofit organization that sets globally recognized standards for sustainable fishing and the seafood supply chain. Fisheries representing 19 percent of the world’s wild marine catch are engaged in its certification program.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the non-profit responsible for the world’s leading sustainable seafood eco-label, is calling on global leaders to recognize the vital role of sustainable fishing in delivering urgent progress to safeguard our ocean, livelihoods, and food supplies.
August 2, 2o23 — California’s historic market squid fishery is making history again: It has achieved Marine Stewardship Council certification.
The premier market squid fishery in California has a long history, dating back to the mid-1800s, when Chinese immigrants fished out of skiffs in Monterey Bay, using torches of burning fat pine to attract squid. Now, an alliance of six historic California squid processors recently announced that California’s market squid fishery has achieved MSC certification, the recognized pinnacle of sustainability in fishery management.
The California market squid purse seine fishery also is being evaluated under a different certifier, for a different client group.
The Alliance of California squid processors includes Cal Marine Fish Company, Monterey Fish Company, Southern Cal Seafood, Southern Coast Trading, Neptune Foods and J. DeLuca Fish Company. The group represents multiple generations of fish buyers and fishermen, dating back 80 years or more, who have produced the lion’s share of the market squid landed in the Golden State, according to a press release from the group.
July 27, 2023 — Alaska’s fish and game commissioner has tough words for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the seafood certification body whose familiar blue-fish logo can be found in every supermarket. MSC certifies the sustainability of fisheries around the world, based on stock levels, management practices and environmental impact – but not the politics or warfighting posture of the coastal state. Alaska Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang disagrees: he believes that Russia’s belligerence in Ukraine should be a disqualifier for Russian fishing vessels, and that Russian fish should not be marketed with the same “sustainable” check mark as Alaskan fish.
“MSC . . . has observed Russian actions in Ukraine, assessed the implications for its Russian client fisheries, and chosen a path of accommodation and appeasement,” Vincent-Lang argued in an editorial this week.
Vincent-Lang took a step further and accused MSC of ignoring the invasion in order to keep receiving revenue from Russian members. “[This] gravely misleads consumers and markets who believe that the seafood they are buying is certified to the highest environmental and ethical standards,” he asserted, and letting Russian fishermen keep MSC certification “denigrates the certification” of Alaska fishermen by association.
July 20, 2023 — The following is an excerpt from an article published by Sustainable Fisheries UW:
Seafood produced by bottom trawling can have a lower environmental impact than chicken or pork, according to a new review paper published yesterday. Writing in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, Hilborn et al. 2023 argues that banning bottom trawling would increase negative environmental impacts by increasing terrestrial protein production.
Hilborn et al. 2023, reviewed dozens of papers about bottom trawling impact, including stock sustainability, bycatch, ecosystem impact, and carbon footprint. Though bottom trawling is generally the most impactful kind of fishing, well-managed bottom trawl fisheries produce food with a much lower environmental impact than any terrestrial animal protein.
A review paper summarizes the current knowledge on a particular topic by combing through and presenting conclusions from recent publications. In this case, Hilborn et al. 2023 reviewed the existing literature on the environmental impacts of bottom trawling and summarized four major impacts: Sustainability of target species, impact on benthic ecosystems, bycatch and discard, carbon emissions.
The key to reducing impacts and sustaining fisheries is management. Bottom trawling can be a low-impact form of food production in places with effective management. Bottom trawling can be highly destructive in areas with little capacity for environmental management (like many developing nations in Asia).
In this post, we summarize the findings from the four major impacts, discuss what effective bottom trawling management looks like, and compare the environmental impact of bottom trawling to other forms of food production.
June 23, 2023 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has claimed a recent report by On The Hook misrepresents the program and doesn’t give proper credit to its sustainability efforts.
On The Hook released a report on 14 June claiming that the MSC certified harmful fishing practices. It also claimed the MSC is failing to keep up with the pace of change needed to deliver sustainable seafood.
June 15, 2023 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:
McDonald’s China and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) have announced that the restaurant chain will now include the blue MSC ecolabel on McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich, Double Fish burger and Kids Fish Fillet burger, served in more than 5,000 restaurants in China.
May 16, 2023 — At its Seafood Futures Forum on 25 April at the 2023 Seafood Expo Global in Barcelona, Spain, Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) executive said they will continue for more fisheries certificaiton and wider acceptance and uptake of sustainable seafood.
The event featured MSC Chief Executive Rupert Howes, MSC Chief Program Officer Nicolas Guichoux, and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Fisheries and Aquaculture Division Director Manuel Barange, and was attended by more than 300 seafood industry stakeholders.