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Commercial purse seine fishers haul their net while fishing for pink and chum salmon in the Chatham Strait, Admiralty Island, Alaska. Photo: by Waters
Adjudicator accepts B.C. groups' challenge to Alaska 'sustainable' fishery
CANADA
Monday, April 29, 2024, 01:00 (GMT + 9)
The following is an excerpt from an article published by Richmond News:
The decision clears a major procedural hurdle, and gets the B.C. groups one step closer to challenging the Marine Stewardship Council to suspend Alaskan salmon as 'sustainable.'
.png) An independent adjudicator has accepted a complaint from three B.C. groups that last week called on the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to suspend Alaskan salmon as “sustainable.”
The official challenge to the MSC, the world’s premier seafood certification body, came after SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and Raincoast Conservation Foundation accused Alaskan salmon fishers of intercepting millions of fish bound for home rivers in B.C., Washington and Oregon.
In a letter to the B.C. groups, independent adjudicator Melanie Carter's decision to proceed with the complaint cites a dispute process requiring challengers have a “reasonable prospect of success” that is “neither spurious or vexatious.”
Misty MacDuffee, Raincoast’s wild salmon program director, said in a statement that in accepting the objection, the adjudicator acknowledged “there may be flaws in the assessment of Alaska’s salmon fishery.”
Together with Watershed Watch Salmon Society, whose name was not on the documents but is supporting the complaint, the groups also allege the Alaskan fishery has not met past MSC conditions for certification, relies on incomplete data under the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and mischaracterizes certain fish stocks.
One of the central complaints alleges the state is mischaracterizing basic facts about how purse seine fishery off Alaska’s Panhandle operates. Purse seine boats fish by casting out a large net that is later drawn closed and cinched up like a drawstring bag. [continues....]
Author: Stefan Labbé | Read the full article by clicking the link here
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