Friend of the Sea is a project for the certification and promotion of seafood from sustainable fisheries

Sustainable fisheries

Sustainability in fisheries combines theoretical disciplines, such as the population dynamics of fisheries, with practical strategies, such as avoiding overfishing through techniques such as individual fishing quotas, curtailing destructive and illegal fishing practices by lobbying for appropriate...

 and sustainable aquaculture

Aquaculture

Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the...

. It is the only certification scheme which, with the same logo, certifies both wild and farmed seafood. Friend of the Sea started as a project of the Earth Island Institute

Earth Island Institute

The Earth Island Institute was founded in 1982 by environmentalist David Brower. It organizes and encourages activism around environmental issues and provides public education. Funding comes from individual members and supporting organizations...

, the NGO which operates the successful International Dolphin-Safe project. Some of the main world retailers participate, such as Carrefour

Carrefour

Carrefour S.A. is an international hypermarket chain headquartered in Levallois-Perret, France. It is one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world...

 Italy, Coop Italia, Eroski

Eroski

Eroski is a Spanish supermarket chain with nearly 1,000 outlets spread across Spain .It is run as a worker-consumer hybrid co-operative within the Mondragón Corporation group....

, Manor

Manor (Switzerland)

Manor AG is a Swiss department store chain with its headquarter in Basel. With an estimated market share of 59%, Manor is Switzerland’s biggest department-store chain. The Manor Group extends to the 70 Manor stores employing some 11,300 personnel, the Athleticum sports goods chain and Switzerland’s...

 and Finiper. Some important producers also have their products certified.

Compliance and criteria

Friend of the Sea’s criteria compliance is verified by independent accredited certification bodies. Essential criteria for fisheries are:

• the product should not originate from overexploited
  Overfishing
  Overfishing occurs when fishing activities reduce fish stocks below an acceptable level. This can occur in any body of water from a pond to the oceans....
  
   (nor depleted, data deficient
  Data Deficient
  Data Deficient is a category applied by the IUCN, other agencies, and individuals to a species when the available information is not sufficient for a proper assessment of conservation status to be made...
  
   or recovering) stocks
• the fishing method should not impact the seabed
• the fishing method should be selective (below the world average for discards
  Discards
  Discards are the portion of a catch of fish which is not retained on board during commercial fishing operations and is returned, often dead or dying, to the sea...
  
  , which in 2005 was about 8%).
• the fishery should respect all legal requirements.

Article 30 of the FAO Guidelines for Ecolabelling of Marine Fisheries Products
requires that ‘The “stock under consideration” is not overfished, and is maintained at a level which promotes the objective of optimal utilization and maintains its availability for present and future generations, taking into account that longer term changes in productivity can occur due to natural variability and/or impacts other than fishing. In the event that biomass drops well below such target levels, management measures (Code of Conduct Article 7.6) should allow for restoration within reasonable time frames of the stocks to such levels.’ The Friend of the Sea sustainable seafood certification scheme is currently compliant with this article.

External links

• Friend of the Sea main website