User:Scottspr/Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

Marine Stewardship Council[edit]
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organization that runs a certification and ecolabelling program for traceable, sustainable seafood.

To achieve certification as sustainable a fishery must meet a standard based on three principles:


 * 1) ensuring healthy fish stocks
 * 2) minimal impact on the marine ecosystem
 * 3) effective management (which includes ensuring the fishery operates within national and international laws).

Fisheries that meet the MSC standard for a sustainable fishery can use the blue MSC ecolabel on their seafood products.The second element of the program is a certification for seafood traceability. This is called MSC Chain of Custody. From the fishery, every company in the supply chain that handles the certified fish is checked to ensure the MSC label is only applied to fish products that come from a certified fishery. This requires effective record-keeping and storage procedures. This traceability element of the program helps to keep illegally fished seafood out of the supply chain by linking seafood sold in shops and restaurants to a certified sustainable fishery.

The MSC eco-label enables consumers to identify sustainable seafood when shopping or dining out. As of June 2014, there are over 14,000 MSC-labelled seafood products sold in over 90 countries around the world. The MSC website lists outlets selling MSC-certified seafood.[non-primary source needed]

The six MSC-certified Patagonian toothfish and Antarctic toothfish fisheries (which are the South Georgia, Ross Sea, Heard Island, Macquarie Island, Kerguelen Islands and Falkland Islands fisheries) provide an example of how good fisheries management can reverse the trend of illegal fishing. These fisheries took, among others, the following steps to exclude illegal vessels from their waters:


 * strict vessel licensing systems are rigorously enforced,
 * each vessel must have at least 1 CCAMLR approved Government observer on board its vessel to verify catch data,
 * each vessel must have port-to-port monitoring of its movements via two tamper-proof Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) units on board,
 * all toothfish product that is transported must be accompanied by a CCAMLR Dissostichus Catch Document (DCD), with details of where and when that fish was caught[non-primary source needed]

Regional Fisheries Management Organizations[edit]
Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) are affiliations of nations that co-ordinate efforts to manage fisheries in a particular region.

RFMOs may focus on certain species of fish (e.g. the Commission for the Conservation of Southern bluefin tuna) or have a wider remit related to living marine resources in general within a region (e.g. the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR)). This wide diversity of mandates and areas of application, and also effective implementation of regulations, opens up opportunities for IUU vessels.