BC NGOs head to Seattle for final step in their objection to the MSC certification of southeast Alaska salmon fisheries

This week, Raincoast Conservation Foundation with our partners SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and Watershed Watch Salmon Society, head to Seattle with our lawyer, Ian Moore of Nogla Law Group, to defend BC’s wild salmon and Southern Resident killer whales.  

Our team will appear at hearings in Seattle hosted by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Our job here is to persuade a U.K.-based adjudicator that salmon fisheries in southeast Alaska, which kill millions of returning Canadian salmon each year, should not be certified as “sustainable” because they don’t meet the MSC’s standards. 

Sitting across from us will be representatives of Alaska’s fishing industry—a $15 billion US consortium that catches a staggering volume of fish from the North Pacific, including salmon from BC and other parts of the west coast.

Our concerns with Alaskan certification

The hearings are occurring because our organizations filed a formal challenge with MSC against the re-certification of the ‘Southeast Unit of Assessment’ in Alaska’s massive salmon fishery.  The southeast fishery is problematic because many salmon caught here are not salmon from Alaska; they migrate through Alaska on their way to BC and lower U.S states. The catch of non-Alaskan salmon removes at-risk BC stocks, and food for people and wildlife. For example, more than 40% of the catches on summer and fall runs of Fraser sockeye occur in Alaska. These runs have endangered fish that often don’t meet their escapements goals and can’t sustain fisheries. Thus the impacts are felt on First Nations food security, commercial fisheries, lost recreational opportunities, and not having enough spawning salmon to feed waiting wildlife.

While the concern for interception of migrating salmon isn’t unique to Alaska, some Alaskan fisheries focus solely on these migrating fish. Upwards of 90 percent of Alaska’s troll catch are Chinook using the Alaskan shelf only as a route home. They are fish destined for rivers in BC and the lower US states. The troll can harvest more than 150,000 migrating Chinook salmon. Among other impacts, this harvest deprives hungry Southern Resident killer whales of a food source on their feeding grounds in the Salish Sea, Washington coast and southern BC.

Vancouver-based Ocean Wise, a consumer advisory body for sustainable seafood, has already removed southeast Alaska from its list of recommended salmon, but MSC will not address the issues that Ocean Wise recognized. The problem is that MSC is the most influential seafood ecolabel in the world. 

MSC certification gives seafood producers the right to use MSC’s famous blue checkmark logo, giving them easier access to high-value markets. In this case,  the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation represents the Alaskan seafood industry. If they lost their MSC certification for southeast Alaska, it would likely impact the state’s seafood industry. Last year, the southeast Alaska fishery generated $117,066,718 US. Certification allows Alaska to sell these fish to markets not otherwise available to them, such as the European Union. 

Sustainability certifications are intended to improve fishery transparency, prevent overharvest, and reduce bycatch. Yet, that is not what is happening in southeast Alaska, as millions of non-Alaskan salmon are caught with these initiatives in place and the harsh realities of this harvest for BC salmon, wildlife, First Nations and other fishers.  Last year, southeast Alaska’s commercial fishing industry sold more than one hundred million dollars worth of salmon. 

Our goal is to hold Alaska -and the MSC- to a higher standard.

Across the table

The Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation hired MRAG Americas, a certification assessment body based in Florida, to assess their compliance with MSC standards.  This week, we plan to show the adjudicator how the evidence used by MRAG to support certifying the fishery as sustainable is insufficient, out of date, and in the case of the Alaska troll, represents a fishery at odds with curtailing harvest to feed endangered whales. We argue these fisheries are not properly monitored, have inadequate data collection on bycatch, and provide inadequate data to evaluate the full impacts of their catch on non Alaskan salmon.

Despite ongoing concerns about Alaska’s fishing practices over many years, neither MRAG nor the Marine Stewardship Council has imposed conditions on the fishery to fix these problems. 

Our solutions for addressing the issues in the net and troll fisheries, include proper monitoring and reporting of bycatch, including genetic stock identification, and importantly, moving fisheries that capture significant amounts of non-Alaskan salmon off of international migration routes.  

Doing so would at least signal harvest fairness of Canadian concerns regarding the ability of First Nations to harvest food, hardship for commercial fishers, and impacted recreational opportunities.  It would also reduce harvest impacts on threatened and endangered salmon populations, and endangered killer whales.

Raincoast, Skeena Wild, and Watershed Watch began our challenge of Alaskan recertification in early 2023. In 2024, an independent adjudicator ruled we have a case. While the adjudication process is underway, you can follow the document filings here. And you can read about our initial  filing to the Alaskan salmon “sustainable” certification and how the independent adjudicator accepted the objection from Canadian NGOs here.  

The hearing runs September 17 and 18 in Seattle and will be presided over by a UK based adjudicator. 

How to help

Want to help?  You can tell the Marine Stewardship Council that Southeast Alaskan interception fisheries are not sustainable by using the Alaska’s dirty secret letter-writing tool. Care about steelhead? You can also ask Canadian politicians to stand up for Skeena steelhead here.  

You can donate to our efforts to protect BC wild salmon and endangered killer whales here.

You can help

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