Tuesday, June 1, 2010

MSC certifies Alaska flatfish as sustainable

Last month we noted the Marine Stewardship Council was close to certifying Alaska's flatfish harvest as sustainable and well-managed.

Well, today comes this announcement that Alaska flatfish has indeed achieved the MSC eco-label.

Flatfish trawlers target a variety of soles, flounder and plaice.

The MSC announcement asserts the flatfish harvesters have
"significantly reduced bycatch" and cut the bottom contact of their trawl gear by 90 percent.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, MSC is officially a joke now.

Whats next:

News Flash "BP is MSC certified"

Anonymous said...

Should read "significantly reduced OBSERVED bycatch".

Anonymous said...

This is crap. MSC is a joke. No bottom trawl fishery should ever be sustainable in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

Could the bar be set any lower? How about Japanese Antarctic whaling? Flag of convenience toothfish? "MSC sustainable" is now officially meaningless, save your money and don't bother.

Anonymous said...

Yet another shameful fishery that MSC certifies. MSC keeps on lowering their standards, making $$$ in the process, their certification process is a joke. It's about time they get exposed, too bad most of the public is unaware of this and more fisheries that shouldn't be certified by ANY stretch of the imagination do get their S$tamp of approval. This feels like preaching to the choir unfortunately.

Fishyfellow said...

As the conservation ethic for marine ecosystems slowly evolves, we may be able to get support to move to less destructive harvesting methods.

Currently most fishing methods have their downsides, whether it be bottom trawling, longlining, gillnetting, dredging or purse-seining.

Rod-and-reel, handlining, jigging, poling and harpooning are probably the best methods of fishing but are labour-intensive and often not economically feasible.

At the very least, we need large marine reserves with no fishing to try to partially offset destructive fishing gears still in use, and the expansion of the fishing footprint into previously unfished areas should cease.

I think it is true to say that MSC pays too little attention to the collateral damage caused by fisheries it certifies.

Anonymous said...

Wow! I sincerely hope you are all successful in your efforts to shut down the kodiak trawl fleet. With your hooks and strings, you'll have a hard time supplying the amount of product needed to keep the plants open. Without anyone catching the predatory fish, wonder what would happen to your fish?
I would suggest you read some of the science available, but since none of you can even spell...
At least look at what has happened to fisheries in other parts of this country when everyone was too pig-headed to try to work together, they barely exist at all anymore.
What if Sole were the golden fish instead of Halibut? Oh I forgot, you guys only catch your "targeted species".
The observers are coming, good luck with that.

Anonymous said...

No other fishery is killing massive amounts of crab, halibut and salmon, only trawlers. All fisheries have some by-catch, but none of the others are that huge. Thanks for offering to kill the predators but we'd rather take our chances. Any spelling mistakes?