The Marine Stewardship Council Programme - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 94

2007 the MSC opened a Tokyo office and appointed a Japanese director to respond
to the burgeoning demand for information and support.

4.5.5 Africa

The only fishery on the continent of Africa to undergo full assessment against the
MSC standard is the South Africa hake fishery, which was certified in 2004. The
fishery has been successful at marketing its produce, especially frozen fillets, to
domestic and international markets. It is hoped that more fisheries in Africa will
participate in the MSC programme soon, and several African fisheries are preparing
to take part in a pilot project that explores how the MSC programme can be made
more accessible to small-scale and data-deficient fisheries (see below).

Together, the fisheries engaged in the MSC programme (those certified and in
assessment) represent 4 million tonnes of MSC-certified seafood annually. By key
species groups, the MSC has achieved a considerable visibility. For example, 32%
of the global prime whitefish catch and 42% of the global wild salmon catch are
now either certified or under assessment. Importantly, there is engagement from
both small- and large-scale fisheries in the programme from both the developed and
developing world (Plates 4.3 and 4.4).

4.6 The ecological case

There is a growing ecological case that suggests that MSC certification can encour-
age and deliver tangible improvements in the marine environment. A notable 'suc-
cess story' relates to the South Georgia Patagonian toothfish (marketed as 'Chilean
sea bass') fishery, which was certified as meeting the MSC standard in 2004. Whilst
this species has suffered from overfishing in large parts of the Southern Ocean (with
high levels of illegal fishing), the discrete South Georgia fishery that was certified
implemented significant improvements in its management regime to enable it to
achieve certification. These included the requirement for independent observers on
each boat, closing the fishing grounds for half of the year and requiring lines to
be set at night to reduce bird bycatch (Agnew et al . 2006). Wandering albatross
bycatch was reduced from up to 6000 birds a year to generally less than 20 birds per
year (see Chapter 11), prompting BirdLife International (MSC 2006b) to endorse
the fishery's management practices (Agnew et al . 2006).
Whilst not all these changes can be attributed to MSC certification, the pro-
gramme is designed to reward and encourage this sort of investment in best practice
and therefore encourage other fisheries to make similar investments. Ongoing eval-
uation of the environmental benefits of the MSC programme (Agnew et al. 2006)
is considering how trend data and key metrics can be developed and built into the
fishery assessment process as a matter of routine monitoring and evaluation. The