December 19, 2013 — The Marine Stewardship Council, a non-profit organization, made it official Thursday and certified the scallop fishing industry in the United States as sustainable.
The certification will allow the 14 member companies of the American Scallop Association to be able to display, for a fee, the blue MSC label on scallops from this fishery and to continue to sell to global customers who require proof of sustainability, according to an association news release.
"This is an American fisheries success story," New Bedford fishing industry attorney John Whiteside said in the release. "This certification is further validation for the efforts of an industry which worked together to progress from the brink of oblivion to prosperity."
Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, chairman of the Department of Fisheries Oceanography at the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology and who served as the industry's lead consultant through the three-year review process, said, also in the release, that "The industry deserves this. It's a well-managed fishery. It has come back to sustainable levels. The sort of cooperation offered by the scallop industry doesn't come along every day."
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times