Fisheries in trial assessments

The MSC is committed to ensuring access for all fisheries to the MSC program. There are, however, situations in which a fishery may have insufficient data to show that it meets the MSC environmental standard for sustainable fishing. To ensure that these fisheries can participate in the MSC program, the MSC has developed methodological guidance, the Risk-Based Framework (RBF) to assist certifiers involved in assessing such fisheries.

As a part of the project to develop the RBF, in 2007 seven fisheries underwent trial assessments against new guidance for the assessment of small scale and data-deficient fisheries, to test the guidance during fisheries assessments.  

Feedback from these trials went into a review of this guidance which has resulted in the development of the RBF, launched in 2008. The RBF complements the existing MSC Fishery Assessment Methodology and enables the robust assessment of data-deficient fisheries against the MSC environmental standard.