The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was established in 1997 to certify that commercial fisheries were “sustainable” and do not harm marine ecosystems. But the organization has become increasingly controversial, certifying a number of fisheries that are not at all sustainable and that continue to harm ocean life.
In 2017, MSC shocked the world by certifying that Mexico’s dolphin-deadly tuna fishery, in which thousands of dolphins are annually killed, is “sustainable” and able to use the MSC sustainable label on canned tuna.
The World Wildlife Fund, which helped establish the MSC label, strongly objected to the certification, and recommends that Mexican tuna not be considered sustainable, despite the MSC decision to the contrary.
The International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) of Earth Island Institute and Humane Society of the US also fought the certification. MSC now makes a number of false claims about the Mexican tuna fishery, ignoring extensive peer-reviewed scientific research conducted by the US National Marine Fisheries Service in favor of alternative "fake news" by the Mexican government and tuna industry.
IMMP’s Director David Phillips blasted the MSC decision: ““MSC is fraudulently rewarding the single most dolphin-destructive fishing method in world history with its ecolabel. ”
A coalition of organizations has been formed around MSC’s certification of fisheries that harm the marine environment, called Make Stewardship Count. The Coalition has been attempting to engage the MSC leadership in efforts to try to improve the MSC standards used to rate sustainable fisheries. So far, they have not made much progress.
The Make Stewardship Count group, made up of 70 organizations around the world working to protect marine life, have noted, for example, that the MSC certified tuna fisheries within the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, a series of eight island countries in the Pacific. Yet, despite a strict ban on shark finning by these fisheries as part of the certification process, there have been 429 incidents reported of shark finning on these vessels between 2012 and 2015. MSC claims finning has decreased, but still maintains and even extended the "sustainable" certification.
Thus, consumers may well be buying fish they believe is from a sustainable fishery, without realizing that the fishery continues practices such as drowning dolphins or finning sharks, activities that are not at all sustainable.
MSC has certified swordfish fisheries, despite huge catches of blue, porbeagle, and mako sharks, as well as 1,200 endangered sea turtles annually. MSC has also labeled crab fisheries on the Atlantic Coast as “sustainable” despite the entanglement and drowning of endangered right whales in the lines attached to crab traps on the bottom.
All told, the MSC seems intent on adding new fisheries to their list of sustainable fisheries without regard to the impact of the fisheries on many nontarget species.
The certification process, despite claims of transparency, is long, complicated, and often of dubious scientific merit.
MSC gets funding from the fishing industry in the form of a 5% charge on fish sales for use of their MSC sustainable logo.
Clearly, the MSC program has serious flaws and in many cases simply green-washes seriously damaging fishing practices.
At the very least, the program needs to de-certify fisheries that in fact threaten rare and endangered species and that deliberately target dolphins and whales.
