Creating market-based incentives to eliminate bycatch
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Fish traders, processors, retailers, and consumers can stimulate better fisheries practice through their purchasing decisions.
How? By selectively buying seafood products coming from fisheries with low or no bycatch.Such market-based incentives require a system for recognizing sustainably caught seafood products. This is provided by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) - an independent organization that certifies well-managed and sustainable fisheries and their products. One of the certification criteria concerns minimizing bycatch and ecosystem damage.
Twenty-four fisheries around the world are already certified according to the MSC standard, and further 11 fisheries have announced they are seeking MSC certification. About four million tonnes of fish are either certified or in assessment, representing 7% of the world's edible seafood catch.
By sourcing seafood from these fisheries, fish processors, traders, and retailers both reward responsible fisheries and create a powerful incentive for other fisheries to improve their fishing practices and receive certification. Consumer demand for MSC-certified products also provides a key source of pressure on the fishing industry.
This is in everyone’s interest. If fishing continues on its unsustainable path, it’s not just species caught as bycatch that will suffer - the future of the entire fishing industry will be in peril.
Good progress so far
More than 100 major seafood buyers have now pledged to purchase MSC-certified seafood products, including large supermarket chains in Europe and the US - two of the world’s largest markets for fish. In 2006 the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, pledged that within 3-5 years it would source all fresh and frozen wild-caught seafood from MSC-certified fisheries.Consumers in 26 countries currently have a choice of around 1000 MSC-certified seafood products - ranging from fresh, frozen, smoked, and canned fish and seafood to fish oil dietary supplements.
