The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has appointed Laura McDearis to serve as the director of its U.S. program as it marks 25 years of certifying fisheries to its standard in the country.
McDearis is taking on the role as the MSC is working through its strategic planning through 2030 and gathering information from its many stakeholders.
Though the certifying body is looking toward the future, it is also looking back on its achievements and ensuring that longstanding fisheries partners receive both the recognition and the value that they deserve, according to McDearis.
MSC got its start in the U.S. in 2000 – when Alaska’s salmon fishery achieved certification to the standard, a title it recently resecured in 2024. Since that time, the U.S. has become a major aspect of the MSC’s programming and certification, and currently, 85 percent of all U.S. fisheries are certified across 61 unique species.
“We have the most certified fisheries by volume and the most certified seafood across the globe over any other country,” McDearis told SeafoodSource.
That achievement was not secured in a vacuum and took the work of diverse stakeholders and fisheries – something she said the MSC will hone in on to both celebrate and maintain the many successes of its U.S. participants.
“First and foremost, we’re going to ensure that we can maintain and provide value back to our longstanding fisheries partners,” McDearis said. “We’re using this as a good moment to highlight some of our successes and the unique leadership position that the United States has played in advancing the sustainable seafood movement.”
McDearis said in the early days of MSC certification in the U.S., the program was in its infancy, and the country was fertile ground for creating what the fisheries standard has become today.
“The program has evolved significantly over the 25 years that we’ve been in the United States and the almost 30 that we’ve been around as a program,” she said.
Since the early days of the program, MSC’s standards have evolved multiple times. The MSC is working on Version 3 of its fisheries standard and has also instituted several changes to its chain of custody standard.
“The aim for our program and certification program is to reflect best global science and practice at any given point. We consider ourselves not the leading edge of innovation but as adopting things that are best global practice,” McDearis said. “That evolves over time.”
Part of that evolution has included determining how to bring in new fisheries that may have bigger obstacles to participation, McDearis said. Some fisheries globally, for example, are data-limited, and the MSC has worked to create new methods to ensure those fisheries can participate and improve their sustainability bona fides.
“We launched our data-limited risk assessment tool to allow data-limited fisheries to enter the program and not be excluded,” McDearis said.
MSC has also been trialing new offerings for the program to expand both the areas it covers and accessibility.
“I foresee that continuing into the future for us to actually achieve that one-third by 2030 rule and affect change on the water,” McDearis said.
Consumer uptake and understanding is also a key focus for the MSC and McDearis’ new role, as the sustainable seafood movement continues to gain momentum. McDearis said the U.S. presents unique challenges due to its large size – both geographically and population-wise – but the marketplace is starting to pay more attention to sustainability across many products.
“Back 25 years ago, sustainability in general, not just for seafood, was kind of a niche topic, and now it’s a mainstream idea in the U.S. both with consumers and also with business practices,” she said.
The MSC is working to engage the consumer side of the seafood market equation more, McDearis said, explaining that the certification is garnering greater awareness and building momentum in the U.S., which shows in its consumer data. The MSC has recorded some of its highest consumer demand for the certification since it started its consumer marketing program 10 years ago, and the goal for MSC is to accelerate that growth in the coming years.
An important component of that push is maintaining consistent messaging that is simple and clear, making it easy for consumers to understand what the MSC certification process means and also why eating seafood has benefits – especially in the face of criticism and documentaries which push consumers away.
“Confusing messaging about seafood is not anything new. We’ve always provided confusing messaging to consumers – whether it’s ‘don’t eat seafood,’ ‘eat this not that,’ ‘wild is better, and farmed is bad,’ it’s really hard to come together as an industry that’s so diverse to really lift up seafood as a resource and promote that with one unified goal,” McDearis said.
The MSC has been using clear taglines and marketing to counter that – like the slogan “good for you and the ocean too.”
McDearis said seafood has the benefit of being an incredibly diverse protein with lots of options that is also sustainable and healthy, and getting consumers to understand that goes a long way toward getting more people to eat it, as well as recognize the work that the MSC does.
“I think remaining consistent in our messaging to ensure that consumers know that they can choose seafood that benefits them and benefits our planet is what we rely on,” McDearis said. “Let’s just get people eating more seafood and supporting sustainable seafood.”
