Last week SeaChoice attended The Brussels Seafood Show – the largest annual fishing industry trade event with producers, processors, buyers, and national agencies represented from all over the world. We were there to host and participate in discussions and workshops around credible eco-certifications for fisheries.

SeaChoice is a leading stakeholder in Canadian seafood certifications by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the most prominent global certification program for wild fisheries. In September 2017, SeaChoice released the first review of all Canadian MSC certifications – and found that certifications have led to little change to fishery practices on the water to directly improve their impacts on habitat, non-target species and ecosystem function. We have taken our concerns into a global conversation among organizations and marine experts to ensure the credibility of the certification scheme remains high. We are among over 75 organizations and experts that are part of Make Stewardship Count – a coalition working for significant and swift improvements to MSC, an important tool in the work to ensure global fishery impacts are limited and sustainable into the future.

It was our participation in Make Stewardship Count that brought us to Brussels, at which we participated in a forum focused on improving MSC implementation of “Principle 2” of the MSC Certification Standard and Certification Requirements – bycatch and retained species, habitat, and ecological impact. NGOs and academics with years of marine conservation and seafood certification expertise in addition to years of stakeholder participation in the MSC program have identified a set of clear asks of MSC – designed to ensure MSC fisheries properly protect habitats and marine species not considered as “target species.

As stakeholders in MSC certification processes, SeaChoice member organizations will continue to engage and encourage these improvements, both at a fishery level and with the standards themselves.