Over protests from environmentalists and the resignation of a prominent panel member, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has finalised certification of the Fraser River sockey salmon in Canada.
Fraser River is the longest river in British Columbia, rising in the Rocky Mountains to reach the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver.
When the 15-day public consultation period – after a nine-year certification process – was announced last January, environmentalists called certification, which they regarded as only a formality, “corporate eco-fraud”.
In recent years Fraser River sockeye returns collapsed from an expected 10 million fish to around a million, a collapse the federal Canadian prime minister has ordered an inquiry into. That investigation will start later this autumn. Commercial fishery of the Fraser River sockey has been closed for three years.
Immediately after the announcement, Otto Langer, a Richmond, BC, biologist who has been a member of the MSC stakeholder council for almost ten years, drafted a letter of resignation.
“I’ve been on it long enough, and I feel a lot of my comments over the years have been ignored, and I think the last straw is the certification of the Fraser River sockeye,” he told the Richmond News.
“If you can’t have a fishery because there’s no fish, how can it be a sustainable fishery? It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” he added.
One may note that the certification application was handed in and the investigation started nine years ago – long before crisis loomed.
“Since they started the (certification process), we’ve had a couple of major collapses in the fishery, yet we’re told it’s now sustainable and you can eat Fraser River sockeye and not feel guilty”, Langer pointed out.
Although following through with the cetrification, the final MSC report includes 17 recommendations for improving the status of the fishery, including annual audits of the stock, and MSC warned that the certification can be revoked “if actions are not completed”.
Langer also expressed fears that the MSC certification will undermine the government investigation that will open soon.
“When they predict 11 million fish and 10 per cent turn up, and then we announce a very expensive, two-year long inquiry, and then in the midst of all this, suddenly Fraser River sockeye are determined to be a sustainable fishery, this must leave Commissioner Cohen really out in the cold,” Langer said
His criticism echoes that from many recent cases where claims have been made that the process of applicants paying commercial firms to do the assessments makes the MSC eco-label less than ecologically relevant. Over the ten years MSC has been operating, no objection from outside groups during the certification process has ever led to a rejection, and only one fishery overall — for lobsters, in British waters — has been turned down after an assessment has been paid for.