The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is reviewing how its eco-label is awarded to commercial fisheries, and it’s opening the door to public input. While this might seem like distant policy, it could have serious implications for some of the fish we care most about.

Take the certified hake fishery, for example. It’s often responsible for the accidental capture of species recreational anglers value and protect, including bass, pollack, spurdog, and even porbeagle sharks. Many of these are outside legal seasons or size limits, or are protected altogether, yet they’re still caught, and often discarded dead by a fishery given the highest seal of sustainability accreditation. 

The MSC is now consulting on how to handle cases where species are caught alongside target catch and can’t be easily separated, what they call “inseparable species”. It’s a chance for us to challenge whether fisheries that routinely kill vulnerable or protected species should be able to brand themselves as ‘sustainable’.

This is our opportunity to speak up, not because MSC has specifically singled out these fisheries, but because they should. If we don’t, who will?