End The Greenwashing

Seafood marked as sustainable, should be in fact, sustainable.

The Marine Stewardship Council is the world’s pre-eminent seafood eco-label and allows fishing industry clients to select third-party companies to assess their fisheries against the MSC’s standards. The objecting conservation organizations believe that the assessment company, MRAG Americas, has not done its due diligence in characterizing how the fishery operates, significantly underestimating its impacts on at-risk salmon populations in B.C., Washington, and Oregon.

It’s not just salmon, the fishery impacts endangered southern resident killer whales too.

The assessor also failed to recognize that the Southeast Alaska troll fishery is not only unsustainable, but unlawful. “The catch in the chinook fishery, more than 90% of which is not from Alaska, deprives endangered Southern Resident killer whales of their primary food source,” said Misty MacDuffee, of Raincoast Conservation Foundation. “This fishery violates both the U.S. Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act because there has not been an approved remedy to the consequences of this prey removal,” she concluded.

The Alaskan salmon fishery was first certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council in 2000 and its current certification expires this year. The fishery has still not met conditions imposed from its previous assessments more than 10 years ago.

Throughout the recertification process, which began at the end of 2022, conservation organizations have raised concerns about the fishery’s impacts on at-risk salmon, steelhead, and seabird populations, as well as the impacts of artificial hatchery production on wild salmon returns. These impacts are inconsistent with the Marine Stewardship Council’s purported criteria. The third-party assessor has largely dismissed these concerns, and recently advised the Marine Stewardship Council that the fishery should be re-certified.

The notice of objection should instigate an independent review of the decision, on the basis that the assessment company has undermined the fairness of the assessment.

Fisheries that profit by harvesting another country’s endangered fish are about as far from sustainable as you can get.