Friday
Jan222010
Sustainable sockeye ‘eco-fraud'
Friday, January 22, 2010 at 12:00AM 
Those big brains at the British based Marine Stewardship Council are about to give British Columbia's sockeye fishery, including the troubled Fraser River run, international certification as a sustainable fishery.
LINK (Via: The Globe and Mail)
tagged save our wild salmon in Conservation
save our wild salmon in Conservation
Reader Comments (4)
These listings have always seemed problematic to me, as they don't speak to the he health of fishery, but to diligence of management regimes. And yet can we seperate the two, shouldn't management ensure population health, and if it doesn't, is it then sustainable?
I don't know what people think these certifications mean, to me they don't ensure anything substantive about fishery management or population health, but instead are yet another marketing tool for big business.
Agreed... merely marketing tools.
lol, it was pretty sustainable this past year with no commercial opening, but I digress. How out to lunch are these people? 28.7 million sockeye went missing between 2005 when they left the river and 2009 when they were supposed to come back. Where did those go man? Where? The Horsefly was pathetic this year. In May we were looking forward to walking across the river on their backs, but by July we were hoping to see a dozen! 1% survival rate in the 2005 year class...yeah, we can mke a sustainable fishery out of that! Hoooo boy.
Yeah, the MSC is something else.
The announcement a few weeks back by US Commerce Secretary Locke on a "fishery disaster" on the Alaskan portion of the Yukon River. Seems the Yukon Chinook run has been devastated.
Funny thing is the Yukon chinook fishery scored some of the highest marks in the MSC initial assessment and the re-assessment. I guess they like to certify non-fisheries. Added to the story, the other nearby MSC ecocertified fishery? The Bering Sea pollock fishery - just out front of the Yukon River. The biggest fishery in the entire USA.
Chinook by-catch (i.e. tossed overboard as illegal species) in the pollock fishery. More than 60,000 per year. That's more than the Yukon River fishery has caught over the last few years on an annual basis.
Other salmon bycatch in the pollock fishery - over 700,000 of other species.
Gee, good thing these are ecocertified, ecolabelled. The BC sockeye fishery ecolabelling by MSC is an absolute sham. Will probably be announced this week or next (mid-Feb 2010).
Number of endangered salmon from Oregon and California streams caught in the MSC certified Pacific hake fishery - tens of thousands. Can we afford it?
check out www.salmonguy.org for some more stories on the MSC sham.