Marine Stewardship Council is moving toward the recertification of the Pollock fishery as sustainable and on the other hand Seafood Watch lower the label of the fish from best choice to good alternative. Pat Shanahan, the program director for Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers, said the certification is additional evidence of the health of the fishery and having it improves sales.
She added that the MSC certification is important to the pollock industry mostly because it’s important to some of our major customers. She told that in Alaska fisheries are very well managed and sustainable, but these retailers require an independent certification of that. To get MSC certification, pollock industry members paid an independent group of fisheries experts, Moody Marine, to evaluate the fishery according to the MSC’s standards.
It is informed that the fishery was shown to be managed to protect the longevity and sustainability of the fish stocks as well as to minimize environmental harm. But scientists and assessors from Seafood Watch disagree slightly. Seafood Watch recently moved pollock from their top-level “Best Choice” category down to “Good Alternative.”
Communications director Ken Peterson said that they have information from NOAA published science that demonstrates that the pollock trawls are often fished on the ocean bottoms, which raised concerns for us about the impact that the trawling is having on sea floor habitats that are needed for other marine life.
He told that their main aim is healthy ocean habitats both for species that are targeted commercially, like Alaska pollock, and for a variety of other marine life, and in the long range, ecosystems that can support a healthy and robust fishery that puts people to work and puts food on our plates.
