MSC has plan a conservation scheme intended to protect stocks has also led to a massive boost in income for fishermen around the world. But fishermen are finding that consumers are increasingly willing to pay more for seafood sporting the MSC’s blue badge. In the Pacific, the world’s only MSC-certified tuna fishery became accredited in August 2007 and saw the value of its fish rise from $1,700 to $2,250 per tonne.
As per the current situation some environmentalists fear that the scheme is flawed as fish stocks are at record lows, meaning that a fish population may be certified as sustainable when it is in fact close to collapse. It is said that MSC market is worth more than $1.5 billion a year and accounts for more than six million tonnes of seafood, or seven per cent of the global wild harvest. More than 150 fisheries are either certified, or undergoing assessment.
Rupert Howes, the head of MSC, said that the programme is driving positive change in the way the oceans are fished which is good news for fishers, the environment and consumers. Not that the shifting borders in the sea always co-operate. Fishermen in the Thames estuary near the Blackwater river invested in getting their herring-fishing operations certified, and when they won certification in 2000, the value of their catch rose immediately from £2 to £3 a stone.
