The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) released its State of the Water Report 2023 to reflect on its 15 years in Canada.
The MSC is an international, non-profit sustainable seafood certification board. In 2008, the organization certified its first Canadian fishery with the addition of a Newfoundland and Labrador shrimp fishery. Since then, the MSC has certified 26 Canadian fisheries across the country. These 26 fisheries, according to the MSC, account for 61.5 per cent of all Canadian landings and cover 19 different species. While Canada ranks 23rd in seafood production worldwide, it sits in the top five countries worldwide for MSC adoption in its fisheries.
Catch from an MSC-certified fishery can be identified by a blue MSC label found on the packaging of many different seafood products.
“That’s the sign that the seafood is from a certified fishery,” said Kurtis Hayne, Program Director for MSC Canada. “A certified fishery meets a really, really high bar of sustainability against our MSC fishery standards. They’re audited annually, and they need to demonstrate that they’re sustainable — they’re protecting the stock of whatever they’re fishing, they’re minimizing all of the bycatch and habitat damage in their fishery and they’re managing their fishery effectively.”
MCS has highlighted over 150 positive changes in Canadian fisheries that have worked to improve their fisheries practices in line with MSC’s three principles of sustainable fish stocks, minimal environmental impact and effective management since 2008.
“Across the board, MSC-certified fisheries significantly improved their sustainability scores against our standards,” said Hayne. “That leads to healthier fish stocks and marine ecosystems, and that’s really important. Since 2008, these fisheries have implemented 152 improvements to their practices to make Canadian fishing far more sustainable and serve as an example for others.”
Examples of these 152 improvements given by Hayne include gear modification in the yellowtail flounder fishery to reduce Atlantic cod bycatch and the introduction of Trackwell technology that is used to limit the fishery’s impact on the surrounding ecosystem.
“For us, that’s really important, because it’s demonstrating that we’re making progress; these fisheries are continuing to improve, even though they’re meeting the high bar of our standard by becoming certified,” said Hayne.
Of the 61.5 per cent of Canadian fisheries that are MSC-certified, Hayne said that Canada’s east coast has led the way in setting an example for the rest of the country.
In Canada, we have 19 different fisheries that cover 26 different species. On the east coast, we have really high levels of coverage — almost 90 per cent by value is certified,” said Hayne. “We’ve got really good coverage, and a lot of Atlantic Canadian companies are really leading the way.”
Hayne claimed that well-managed fisheries, such as those that are MSC-certified, are better able to weather issues facing the world’s fisheries today, such as climate change, habitat destruction and overfishing. In knowing this, MSC has set a goal to engage with one-third of fisheries globally by 2030. He said that not only does the environment benefit from the sustainable practices encouraged by the MSC, but the fisheries that practice them do as well.
“We want to give certified fisheries better market access to sustainability-minded markets as best we can,” said Hayne. “Choosing to put the eco-label on the product is really important at point of sale because it empowers consumers to make an informed choice. That’s how we try to drive that value back to the fishery.”
