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March 29, 2021Sustainable fishing does exist and helps protect our oceans.
The Seaspiracy film on Netflix raises a wide range of issues relating to our oceans, including questioning the credibility of the sustainable seafood movement and in particular, our organisation, the Marine Stewardship Council. While we agree more attention needs to be given to the crisis of overfishing, we do want to set the record straight on some of the misleading claims in the film: There is no such thing as sustainable fishing
This is wrong. One of the amazing things about our oceans is that fish stocks can recover and replenish if they are managed carefully for the long-term. Examples of where this has happened and stocks have come back from the brink include the Patagonian toothfish in the Southern Oceans or the recovery of Namibian hake, after years of overfishing by foreign fleets, or the increase in some of our major tuna stocks globally. And what is even more amazing, is that if we take care of our fish stocks – they take care of us. Research shows that fish stocks that are well-managed and sustainable, are also more productive in the long-term, meaning there is more seafood for our growing global population, which is set to reach 10 billion by 2050.
