March 6, 2019 — Canada’s snow crab fishery is looking ahead at another year without its Marine Stewardship Council certification, but the real risk may be at the hands of the ecolabel.
Last March, the MSC scrambled to suspend its certification of Eastern Canada’s snow crab fishery after a high rate of right whale entanglements and deaths traced back to the fishery in 2017.
What happened next was a little surprising — the lack of a label didn’t have much effect on prices. Despite a buoyant market, Canada’s fixed-gear fleets as well as federal and provincial managers set about on an international mission to work with their neighbors to the south who have long been fighting the good fight to reduce right whale interactions.
Maine’s lobster fishery has been at the forefront of gear innovations to coexist with right whale migratory and feeding patterns. Ten years ago, the fleet made an expensive conversion to sinking groundline instead of using floating rope between pots on a trawl. But the population of an estimated 411 right whales has been expanding its territory into Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence, where regulations haven’t been as robust.
Read the full story at National Fisherman