Peru’s National Fisheries Society (SNP) is working to achieve Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for the country’s anchovy fisheries by 2021.
“This certification will bolster the sustainable management of resources, in a global context where consumers are increasingly demanding,” SNP President Cayetana Aljovín announced in a press release regarding the initiaitive.
Along the same lines, the organization received a study from the University of Washington that looks to make the sector more transparent when it comes to biomass measurement, as well as gauging fishing activity’s social and economic progress.
The project – dubbed “Evaluation of management strategies for anchovy fishing” – is led by UW professor and sustainable fisheries expert Ray Hilborn, and has the backing of SNP, Peru’s Sea Institute (Imarpe), and the Ministry of Production (PRODUCE).
Aljovín said that the project marks the beginning of concrete improvements to boost confidence and precision in anchovy fishery management with the aim of improving the sector’s regulatory framework.
Management strategies can help to make processes more transparent with robust and sustainable policies applied over the long-term, noted Hilborn, whose research looks to identify how to best manage fisheries to provide sustainable benefits to human society. His work involves building databases on how fisheries are managed and measured performance-wise, analysis of fisheries data sets, and biological field work.
Photo courtesy of David A. Litman/Shutterstock
