Iceland Sustainable Fisheries (ISF) has entered the country’s wolfish, blue ling, plaice, monk and tusk fisheries for Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) assessment.
A multitude of MSC certificates
ISF already holds MSC certificates for Iceland’s cod, haddock, saithe, ling, golden redfish, lumpfish and two herring fisheries. In addition the local capelin fishery is in MSC assessment. Total annual landings of Icelandic MSC certified fisheries are around 600,000 metric tonnes.
The total annual landings for those five species represents a further 22,000 metric tonnes. Due to the revolutionary approach taken by the Icelandic fishing sector, seafood from ISF’s MSC certified fisheries can be sold as MSC certified in the market when sold through any one of the 48 members of the ISF.
Kristinn Hjálmarsson, Project manager at ISF, says: “ISF did a multi species pre-assessment project and the outcome was promising. As a part of that we are now entering five species into full assessment as expedited audit from saithe and Golden redfish certificate. By doing expedited audits, so called P2-P1 assessment, we utilize better our investment in other fishery certificates and the expedited audit is cost saving compare to standard full assessment. The assessment cost of these five species is similar cost as two standard full assessments.”
Gisli Gislason, MSC manager for Iceland, Faroe and Greenland, says: “We are pleased to see fisheries from the pre-assessment project come into full assessment. We are even more pleased that out of these five fisheries, then three are entirely new to the MSC program. There are no MSC certified monk, wolfish, blue ling or tusk fisheries, but the Norwegian tusk fishery is also in MSC full assessment. We welcome new species entering into the MSC program. We look forward to receive positive feedback from market upon completion and we congratulate the Icelandic industry on this latest bold step”
Expedited audits
When a fishery is certified against the robust MSC standards for sustainable of environmentally friendly fishery, the bycatch, or secondary catch species are listed. These bycatch species are not eligible to bear the MSC label unless they are listed as a target species.
Gisli Gislason explains: “The bycatch can become eligible to be certified by performing an expedited audit from that certificate. The ecosystem impact and the management of the fishery are already known, and it is simply a matter of assessing the stock levels of a ‘bycatch’ species to treat it as a targeted species for MSC certification. Hence it is treated as an extension of the original certificate.”
This option was developed by MSC to enable fishery clients to better utilize their existing investment enabling more bycatch species to be assessed and reap the market benefits available to seafood from MSC certified sources.