The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has announced it will channel €5.6m in funding to its Ocean Stewardship Fund, which helps fisheries advance their sustainability, by 2030. The announcement was made by Chief Executive Rupert Howes at MSC’s event Towards a Blue Food Future: Accelerating the Transition to Sustainable Fishing for Food Security, Governance, and Global Collaboration at the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice, France.
The third United Nations Ocean Conference marks a pivotal moment for global action to protect and sustainably manage the ocean—at a time when it is more urgent than ever. Our oceans are under increasing pressure from climate change, overfishing, and biodiversity loss, all exacerbated by a growing global population and rising demand for seafood. Increasing funding to support sustainable fishing is essential. SDG 14 remains the least funded Sustainable Development Goal, receiving less than 0.01% of total sustainable development funding.
Since its creation in 2019, the Ocean Stewardship Fund has awarded more than €7.7 million to support over 200 fisheries and projects worldwide, including nearly 90 in developing economies. These initiatives range from marine wildlife protection to the trial of new technologies and the promotion of more sustainable fishing practices.
In 2025, a hake trawl and longline fishery in Namibia was one of a selection of projects that received funding to work with scientists and engineers to deploy the use of Targeted Acoustic Startle Technology, to minimise potentially harmful interactions by Cape fur seals with fishing gear.
A unique multi-stakeholder inter-governmental collaboration also received support through this year’s Ocean Stewardship Fund. Five MSC certified albacore tuna fisheries will work with NGOs and inter-continental agencies to develop and implement a science-based stock-wide harvest strategy for albacore tuna, a highly migratory species. By targeting long-term sustainability and resilience, this project will create a replicable model for the management of albacore tuna stocks.
This commitment contributes to the $8.7billion ocean-related financial commitments announced by Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, 9 June during the Blue Economy and Finance Forum.
