How does the MSC support seafood sustainability?
Hey everyone! Welcome to week two of my National Seafood Month campaign with the Marine Stewardship Council.
Last week, we gave you an introduction to the MSC and took a deep dive into their two certifications: The Fisheries Standard and the Chain of Custody Standard. This week, we’re talking about how the MSC’s certification standards are supporting sustainable fisheries around the world.
For me, sustainability is a holistic term that needs to encompass a variety of factors. In terms of sustainable seafood, this means thinking beyond just the sustainability of the fish stock itself. Personally, I want to know more. I want to feel confident that not only is the stock sustainable, but that the gear types being used aren’t damaging the marine environment or resulting in high levels of bycatch. I also want to feel confident knowing that there are management practices in place to build capacity and support long-term sustainable management of the fisheries resource.
The MSC’s core principles that lay the foundation for their certification do exactly that. The three core principles guide their certification standards with a holistic view of sustainable fisheries that looks beyond the resource and at the big picture.
The MSC program’s core principles are also aligned with several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), which aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Through their certification standards, the MSC is supporting the UN SDG’s below.
But I still had some questions about how the MSC program works to drive change on the water – so I spoke with Kurtis Hayne, the MSC’s Program Director for Canada and former West Coast Fisheries Manager. Check out our conversation below.
In conversation with Kurtis Hayne
How does the MSC define sustainable seafood?
Ultimately, sustainability for fisheries is complex. But the MSC defines it as fisheries that catch fish in ways that ensure the long term health of a stock or species and the long term well being of the ocean. So when a fishery goes through an MSC assessment and is certified against our standard, the auditors look at three main principles to assess whether a fishery meets our standard. The first of those principles is healthy fish stocks. So it looks at the stock of that fishery, the target species that they’re harvesting, and it makes sure that the fishing is at a level that ensures the long term sustainability of that stock. The second Principle ensures a fishery is minimizing environmental impacts. So it looks at things like bycatch, ecosystem impacts and habitats to make sure that the fishery is minimizing impacts on the surrounding ecosystem. And then equally important, or kind of underlying all of that is the third principle, which is effective management. This Principle ensures that MSC certified fisheries are complying with relevant laws and legislation. And really, that they are managed effectively; they’re responding to ecosystem changes and changes in stock health. And just ensuring that there’s effective management and those fisheries.
The MSC Fisheries Standard has 28 sustainability criteria that fisheries must meet in order to achieve certification. Can you tell us a little bit more about how those criteria were decided on?
The MSC program was built to reflect globally acceptable best practice for fisheries. It does this through the 28 performance indicators that make up the three Principles in our Fisheries Standard.
The process began back in 1997 by our co-founders, WWF and Unilever and involved years of consultations and workshops by many different folks in the fisheries and sustainability sectors. There were over 300 organizations and individuals that participated in the process that produced the first version of our Fishery Standard. And our current standard now reflects well over 20 years of collaboration with fishery scientists, fishing industry and conservation organizations.
We repeat this review process at minimum every five years to make sure that our standard represents a level of worldwide best practice in sustainability, that reflects the most up to date understanding of internationally accepted science, and best practice management for fisheries.
More information: And as fisheries stocks change due to climate change and other factors, the MSC’s approach is remaining flexible to change alongside it. The MSC works regularly with scientists and researchers to ensure their approach to sustainability is relevant for current conditions.
Furthermore, the MSC has several case studies showing how the impact of their certification program has had long-lasting benefits on marine conservation including a significant reduction in bycatch in Fiji’s tuna fishery and international collaboration to improve fisheries management in the Barents Sea.
TIP: Unsure if that sustainability label on your seafood is credible/trustworthy? Check their website for a page on “Measurement and Evaluation” or “Impacts.” Are they helping drive change in the sustainability of fisheries or transparency in the supply chain? (hint: # of partners, social media followers or news articles alone doesn’t mean they have measurable impacts on the water.)
How does the MSC accurately monitor the fisheries certified under its ecolabel? What is the process for reporting and how is the MSC sure that what’s been reported is accurate?
A lot of it is done through annual audits. When the independent auditors visit the fishery they speak with the management body – in Canada, it’s usually the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), they also speak with the fishery directly to gather what information?. And they want to see, publicly available information to back up a lot of this information that they’re collecting. They also want to see updated stock assessments, how much fish was landed, and they speak with DFO about monitoring and compliance; basically, they want to see whether there’s compliance against the MSC standard. And then on top of that, every audit that occurs is publicly announced so that interested stakeholders can submit information and data they think is relevant and should be considered during that audit. There are different groups that might do that, like fishermen, or other NGOs that have an interest in the fishery and want to participate in the process. And this ensures that auditors have considered all the possible available information to basically confirm whether that fishery should remain certified. All of the audit reports are transparently available. So you can go online to our MSC “Track a Fishery” website and see all of the work that was done, and how the certifier came to the conclusion of whether the fishery can remain certified to the MSC standard.
More information: Read more about how the MSC monitors their impact HERE.
One interesting thing to note about the MSC Fisheries Standard is that after fisheries become certified, they don’t just stay at their current sustainability level, but rather, they continuously improve on their sustainability to keep up with global best practice. According to the MSC, average scores of fisheries increase significantly between their initial certification and when they are reassessed, after five years.
Both large scale and small scale fisheries can achieve MSC certification. Larger scale fisheries or “industrial fisheries” often get a bad rap. Can you speak a little bit about some of the industrial fishing methods that are considered sustainable?
In general, when we talk about large scale or industrial fisheries, we’re talking about vessel size or volume of catch. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about large scale fisheries – an assumption that it always means destructive fishing practices, or that they’re the ones responsible for large scale overfishing. That is unfortunately an incorrect generalization.
The MSC program has to remain non-discriminatory and open to all fisheries wanting to demonstrate their sustainability. Science proves that a fishery’s sustainability does not depend on the size of its boats or the gear it uses but instead on the impacts it has on the marine environment. Both small scale and large scale fisheries can be managed sustainably. And since at the basis, the MSC’s vision is to ensure that seafood supplies are safeguarded for future generations, and our oceans are teeming with life, to really achieve that overall vision, we need to work with both large scale and small scale fisheries. The truth is that a large vessel or large fisheries can be operated sustainably. We’ve got a lot of really good examples in the MSC program. Fisheries like Alaskan Pollock, one of the largest fisheries in the world that achieves a really, really high bar in terms of sustainability. They do a lot of work, they’ve implemented a lot of improvements to demonstrate that they’re sustainable.
On the other side of things, I think small-scale fisheries present their own challenges. At the MSC, we recognize that a lot more focus is needed on small scale, and even subsistence fisheries because they’re so important to worldwide ocean health. And they present their own interesting challenges. We’re doing a lot of work on engaging small scale fisheries, even here in Canada. For example we’re currently working with a number of lake fisheries in Manitoba, and we have two others certified in Lake Erie Ontario.. And at times, it’s challenging to achieve a high level of sustainability in small-scale fisheries because of insufficient scientific data, or the fact that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on management.
So both small scale and large scale fisheries can basically pose interesting challenges, but either can be sustainable and it’s both of them together that we really need to work with to solve overfishing worldwide.
TIP: Check back on November 3 when I’ll be talking more about the sustainability and challenges of certifying small-scale and large-scale fisheries.
What can the average consumer do to ensure they’re purchasing only sustainably harvested seafood?
That’s a pretty easy one. I would say the most reliable way is by looking for the MSC blue ecolabel when buying wild seafood.
What that does is it ensures that the fish is from a certified sustainable fishery, and it’s traceable through the supply chain to avoid things like seafood fraud, mislabelling and greenwashing.
A lot of work is necessary, both on the water and through the supply chain, to bring a truly sustainable, correctly labelled seafood product to consumers. We try to make it easy so people don’t feel like they need a PhD to know their seafood is sustainable.
If there isn’t a visible certification on the fish, then you can also ask the seller if it meets a reputable sustainability standard. If they claim they’ve “done their homework themselves” take it with a grain of salt and wonder how much they actually know about fisheries science and each individual fishery to be able to make that call themselves.
Some people will prefer to buy local as a way of consuming sustainably. It’s a good approach if you want to lower the carbon footprint of your food and support local businesses, but you have to keep in mind that local doesn’t automatically mean ecologically sustainable. If it was that easy then every fishery in the world could technically be called sustainable since they’re all local to someone.
Then add the fact that if you don’t actually live on a coast, your definition of “local seafood” might be very different from someone who does, and you can start to see how trying to oversimplify the definition of sustainability can lead to some pretty inconsistent conclusions.
Overall, I think staying curious, becoming informed, asking questions, learning more about seafood, and just asking your local grocer or fishmonger for more certified sustainable options are all fairly simple ways any consumer can contribute to the health of our world’s oceans.
TIP: Get more advice on how to buy sustainable seafood in this free Sustainable Seafood Guide.
Will we really be able to continue eating seafood in the long term? (i.e. are the oceans really not going to run out of fish?)
I think the really stark “the oceans will be empty” type comments are wrong but there are challenges that face our oceans. Overfishing is one of these biggest problems, the UN FAO SOFIA report that showed 34% of global stocks are overfished.
In terms of challenges our ocean face, climate change is an absolutely huge one. So is a growing global population and the increasing demand that places on not just wild fish but protein in general.
But we also know, and science has proven, that when they’re sustainably managed fisheries have the amazing ability to rebuild and become abundant once more. This is why I can say I have a lot of hope for the future. I have hope that we have the scientific know how to do the right thing and harvest our natural resources sustainably – not just fisheries.
I have hope because people are becoming more aware of the impacts their food choices can haver and want to do better.
I have hope because I truly believe we can get to a point where the world’s oceans are managed properly, and overfishing becomes a thing of the past. And that wild seafood continues to be an important, nutritious part of the food security equation.
Ultimately, we all have to do a little better, work a little bit harder, and improve our choices as much as we can. For seafood and healthy oceans teeming with life, this means making sustainable choices and voicing our desire for businesses to provide more of them.
What is your vision for the future in terms of sustainable fisheries? What would the ideal world look like where all seafood that’s consumed is sustainable?
We really just want future generations to be able to enjoy seafood, and oceans full of life forever. That’s our top line vision. And we know that all fisheries around the world may not have the resources available to meet the MSC standard. So we really want to achieve that broad scale level of sustainability. It will require a large global effort from all parties involved; fisheries, science, academia, governments, management bodies, industry, and other NGOs. And also consumers play a really large role in that, by choosing certified sustainable seafood.
Really, we just want all fisheries to be able to continue to strive towards meeting the MSC standard, because we’ve seen that it helps improve fisheries, we see that it helps improve the health of our worldwide oceans. And we have a lot of impact data and proof to show that our programs are effective. So that’s our North Star as a program.
For fisheries that can’t quite achieve our standard, we’re hoping that there’s a lot of work and investment put into striving for that end goal, because the MSC standard provides a credible, respected blueprint for fisheries to work towards. We have an increasing kind of tool book for these fisheries to look towards. We have our ocean stewardship fund which is helping small scale and Global South fisheries achieve the MSC standard. But really it’s going to be a collective effort in improving the health of our world’s oceans. I think we’ll get there.
TIP: If you are a marine and fisheries scientist or postgrad student, an MSC certified fishery or represent a fishery that is working towards MSC standards, or an NGO that is researching marine conservation efforts, the MSC Ocean Stewardship Fund is accepting applications for its 2022 recipients. Learn more.
