Alaskans: MSC recertification of Amendment 80 bottom trawling is greenwashing
JUNEAU, ALASKA—The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) quietly announced just before the holidays that it had recertified Bering Sea Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska flatfish as “sustainable” — claiming that this decision "received no objections and therefore holds.” This fishery includes the “Amendment 80” bottom trawlers, which fish under the Bering Sea Aleutian Island Fishery Management Plan, as well as other bottom trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska.
“There were no objections because no one, particularly in Alaska, even knew this was happening,” said Jackie Arnaciar Boyer of SalmonState. “The MSC doesn’t reach out to potentially affected communities or groups for review or comment. The MSC certification process includes extremely long and highly technical and complicated reports that are impossible for a layperson to fully understand. Finally, the MSC public participation window is short, and if you miss the window, you can’t participate later in the process.”
In addition to short and poorly advertised comment periods, the MSC certification process is paid for by the applicant fishery. Some have criticized the process as “pay to play.”
For years, Tribes, Alaska Native peoples, sport fishermen, and commercial fishermen of species like halibut, which are bycaught by the Amendment 80 bottom trawl fleet, have been drawing attention to trawling’s devastating impact on Alaskan seafood species like halibut, sablefish, crab, and herring — as well as to the long-term damage bottom trawling does to important ocean floor habitats and ecosystems.
“No amount of manipulated science or adjusted numbers can hide the fact that trawl bycatch of king salmon and halibut is unsustainable. Decades of annual declines show we are moving steadily closer to the collapse of these stocks across Alaska. These prized species are being driven to the brink at the expense of every other user group that depends on them. It is long past time for Alaska and its fisheries councils to stop managing for political profit using profit-based science and start using common-sense, science-based management,” said Scott Van Valin, owner/ operator of El Capitan Lodge.
“At best, MSC’s certification of the Amendment 80 fleet raises serious questions about how sustainability is defined. At worst, it enables greenwashing by giving industrial trawling a pass while ecosystems and coastal communities pay the price,” said Karen Gillis, Executive Director of the Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association. “MSC claims its certification reflects environmental responsibility, yet its process makes it nearly impossible for impacted communities to raise concerns. When industrial trawl fleets receive sustainability labels while small-scale fishermen and subsistence users bear the consequences, the system is failing the very people and ecosystems it claims to protect.”
“Calling a fishery sustainable when its bycatch and habitat impacts are bankrupting the future of our ocean and fishing communities undermines the credibility of the MSC label, " said Linda Behnken, Executive Director of Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association. “Alaskans are calling for an end to bottom trawling. MSC needs to listen to the public and rethink its process.”
“Not only is the MSC’s sustainability certification wrong, but it endangers our Alaska Native subsistence harvesters, our food security, and our ways of life,” said Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission Director Kevin Whitworth. “Hundred-plus-foot bottom-trawlers in the Amendment 80 fleet are operating in the same waters off the Kuskokwim Bay as our subsistence hunters and fishers, who will travel over 10 miles offshore in small open skiffs to harvest food for their families. Additionally, the Amendment 80 fleet is responsible for vast amounts of seafloor habitat destruction and bycatch, which imperils the integrity and biodiversity of our ecosystems—of our communities’ food stores. We have grave concerns about how this “sustainability” certification brushes these threats to our region under the rug, all for the profit of these industrial fisheries.”
The MSC’s standards require protection of ecosystems and associated species, but on average each year, trawlers in Alaska bycatch 141 million pounds of ocean life, from king salmon, to herring, to orcas.
MSC’s Fisheries Standard requires that associated species be protected, that ecosystems remain healthy, and that fisheries be effectively managed. On all these counts, Amendment 80 boats fail:
● Ecosystem impacts: Industrial bottom trawling fundamentally alters marine ecosystems by disturbing seafloor habitat and removing large volumes of fish at once. Chronic bycatch of species like halibut and sablefish compounds these impacts, reducing future abundance and disrupting food webs that Alaska’s marine life — and fishing economies — depend on.
● Management gaps: The current management and certification framework treats bycatch as an acceptable side effect rather than a failure to be avoided. Sustainability certifications that allow ongoing halibut and sablefish waste, rely on complex accounting mechanisms, and limit meaningful public participation mask real ecological risk instead of confronting it.
● Community harm: When halibut and sablefish are killed as bycatch in industrial trawl fisheries, the losses are felt directly by Alaska communities. Subsistence users, small-boat fishermen, and coastal economies lose access to food, income, and cultural practices — while the costs of waste are shifted away from the fleets that cause it.
True sustainability requires an ecosystem approach to management, enforceable bycatch caps, protection for ocean floor habitat, stronger monitoring, and real accountability to the Alaskans who depend on bycaught species for food security, culture, and livelihood. Until then, MSC recertification of pollock is a lie that endangers both domestic food security and Alaska’s incredibly productive ocean ecosystems.