“Sustainable” Label for Antarctic Krill Fishery Misleading, says Pew Environment Group
24.06.2010 - Water & Oceans, Flora & Fauna, Antarctic
The Pew Environment Group recently criticized the Marine Stewardship Council’s certification of Antarctic krill fisheries. The certification, they say, gives the false impression that the entire fishery for Antarctic krill is sustainable when in reality it is not.
Although seafood sporting the MSC label means it was supposedly caught in a sustainable manner with a minimal impact on the local marine ecosystem, the “sustainable” label might be misleading. Krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans the fisheries are after, are a critical food source for penguins, seals and many other species that feed in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Therefore, says the Pew Environment Group, the new certification could pose a serious threat to the food chain that depends on krill to survive.
In fact, with the first certification awarded to Aker Biomarine, an integrated biotechnology company, the MSC might have set a dangerous precedent and created the false impression that all fisheries are “sustainable”. Other fisheries, however, with possibly more vessels, have not yet approached the MSC for its sustainability label. Although a few ships are acting responsibly, a vast majority do not, and krill could still be at risk of being overfished. So far, krill populations are insufficiently documented, which poses a difficulty in establishing quotas for krill fishing. The overlap between the fisheries and krill predators, on the other hand, is well-documented.
