The north East Atlantic mackerel fishery managed by Irish Pelagic RSW and Processors Sustainability Group – consisting of the Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation, Irish Fish Producer Organisation and the Donegal Fish Merchants Association – has entered full assessment with a view towards certification under the Marine Stewardship Council standard for sustainable and well-managed fisheries. If successful, 86% of the 49,643 tonne Irish mackerel quota will be eligible to carry the MSC eco-label.

The mackerel is caught by a fleet of 23 Irish owned and operated large RSW (refrigerated seawater) pelagic mid-water trawl vessels and fishing takes place in the North sea, the north, west and south west of Ireland. All of the RSW vessels are members of the Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation (KFO) or the Irish Fish Producers Organisation (IFPO). The majority of the mackerel is exported – frozen – with larger fish being sent to Russia and Japan and medium and smaller fish to Russia, Japan, the EU, Egypt and West Africa.

The Irish Pelagic RSW and Processors Sustainability Group said: “We are delighted that the full assessment process for North East Atlantic Mackerel fishery has started and we look forward to a fruitful conclusion.”

Rupert Howes, Chief Executive of the Marine Stewardship Council says: “I am delighted that the Irish Pelagic RSW and Processors Sustainability Group has decided to enter the MSC full assessment process for the mackerel fishery. This is the first Irish fishery to enter full assessment and I hope the Sustainability Group and the members they represent will reap the benefits of their pioneering work with a successful result to their assessment.”

The assessment will be carried out by independent certifier Food Certification International and is expected to take around 12 months.

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Notes to editors

[1] Marine Stewardship Council (MSC): The MSC is an international non-profit organisation that was set up in 1997 to promote solutions to the problem of overfishing. The MSC runs the only widely recognised environmental certification and eco-labelling programme for wild capture fisheries. It is the only seafood eco-label that is consistent with the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards and UN FAO guidelines for fisheries certification. The FAO ‘Guidelines for the Eco-labelling of Fish and Fishery Products from Marine Capture Fisheries’, require that credible fishery certification and eco-labelling schemes include:
- Objective, third-party fishery assessment utilising scientific evidence;
- Transparent processes with built-in stakeholder consultation and objection procedures;
- Standards based on the sustainability of target species, ecosystems and management practices.
MSC has offices in London, Seattle, Tokyo, Sydney, The Hague, Edinburgh and Berlin. In total, over 120 fisheries are engaged in the MSC programme with 31 certified, 75 under assessment and another 20 to 30 in confidential pre-assessment. Together the fisheries record annual catches of over 5 million tonnes of seafood. They represent over 42 percent of the world’s wild salmon catch, 40 percent of the world’s prime whitefish catch, and 18 percent of the world’s lobster catches for human consumption. Worldwide, over 1,600 seafood products resulting from the certified fisheries bear the blue MSC eco-label. For more information, please visit www.msc.org