WWF criticizes MSC Certification of Spiny Dogfish

Helmut Nickel, Shark Year Magazine,

‘Consumers should avoid MSC dogfish’ says WWF Germany

We have already reported about the MSC certification of the British Columbia Spiny Dogfish Fishery ( see here ).

In the year 1996, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was founded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Unilever, one of the world’s biggest buyers of frozen fish. The MSC became fully independent in 1999.

The WWF has announced that they still support the work of the ‘Marine Stewardship Council’ to certify sustainable marine fisheries around the world (see here), but apparently this support does not include the trade of MSC labeled dogfish products from Canada.

The following statement has been released on the official German website of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF.de) :

Presumably starting in the end of 2011, dogfish products with the MSC label will be available on the German market. They come from a small,  ecologically sustainable hook and line fishery in Canada (Northeast Pacific) which has been certified in the mid of September 2011. The local stock of the dogfish ‘Squalus suckleyi’ is classified as stable. It is closely related to the here well-known dogfish ‘Squalus acanthias’ which has a critical population trend in many areas. The WWF Germany recommends not to buy shark products. According to the WWF, there is a risk that the MSC certification will lead to an overall growing demand for shark-products, which could increase the catch and trade of dogfish from threatened stocks. [ … ]

Source: WWF Deutschland.