The Marine Stewardship Council's Impact on Fisheries

The Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) Fisheries Ecolabeling program began in 1999 and over 13% of global wild capture fisheries are now engaged .  The MSC was created as a market incentive to help improve management of global fisheries, partly in response to collapses of several large and highly important  fisheries.  The basis for the MSC program is a voluntary audit of the fishery against MSC’s standard by third party Certification Bodies (CBs).  MSC requires CBs to use a defined methodology and guidance and to use teams of independent experts, peer reviewers, allow for stakeholder input, and provide transparency.

Starting in 2005, MSC reviewed the first 10 certified fisheries and found 89 environmental gains had occurred and certification appeared to stimulate about 65% of the gains observed.  Since the 2005 study, there has been significant growth in the number of fisheries entering the program. In 2009 the MSC developed a new methodology for assessment against its standard Principles and Criteria called the Fisheries Assessment Methodology (FAM), with the intent to standardize the assessments being undertaken by the third party CBs. In 2010 a new project was initiated to expand the original environmental gains analysis to take into account the large number of fisheries that are now available for analysis, including some that have used the FAM. The performance of 27 fisheries that have been certified with at least 2 annual surveillance audits, and 20 fisheries that have had at least one time-bound condition, is being examined.  The research team has reviewed specific MSC Outcome based performance indicators related to target stock status, target stock reference points, target stock rebuilding, non-target retained species, non-target by-catch, non-target ETP species, habitat, and ecosystems.

Results to date indicate that some improvements continue to be made in fisheries after they have been certified, whereas others simply maintained the sustainable level they had already achieved. For some fisheries and some indicators, reductions in performance are recorded, often as a result of environmental factors outside the control of the fishery, for instance recruitment.

This analysis is extended to consider not just the changes that have taken place within fisheries after they have been certified, but also those that took place prior to certification. This latter stage is being addressed through an analysis of the pre-assessments that are often undertaken on fisheries seeking certification. This work is ongoing, but results will be available at the time of the presentation.