Good Catch partner organisations

Good Catch was a joint project of the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), SeaWeb’s Seafood Choices and Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. Click on the names below to find out more about each of these organisations. Click on each organisation's logo to be taken to their website.

Marine Conservation Society (MCS)

The Marine Conservation Society is the UK charity dedicated to caring for our seas, shores and wildlife. MCS campaigns for clean seas and beaches, sustainable fisheries, and protection for all marine life. The MCS aquaculture and fisheries programme promotes sustainable seafood consumption through its consumer awareness programme and by working directly with the seafood industry.

The MCS’ web resource, www.fishonline.org, provides information on the relative environmental sustainability of seafood available in the UK, along with information on fishing and farming methods.

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)

The MSC is an international non-profit organisation that was set up in 1997 to promote solutions to the problem of overfishing. The MSC runs the only widely recognised environmental certification and ecolabelling programme for wild capture fisheries. It is also the only seafood ecolabel that meets the highest international ecolabelling guidelines.

The MSC operates two standards – one for well-managed sustainable fisheries and one for traceability. In order to bear the MSC label, every link in the supply chain, from ocean to plate, has to be certified for traceability so that if you buy fish with the MSC tick, you know it can be traced back to the certified sustainable fishery that caught it. In total, around 200 fisheries are currently engaged in the MSC programme with over 60 certified and over 130 under full assessment – all of these are described on the website below. Together, the MSC certified fisheries record annual catches of close to 4 million tonnes of seafood, representing approximately 7% of the world’s wild-fish catch. Fisheries in assessment add a further 5% of the world’s wild capture fish. Worldwide, more than 3,600 seafood products, which can be traced back to the certified sustainable fisheries, bear the blue MSC ecolabel.

SeaWeb's Seafood Choices

Seafood Choices, an international programme of SeaWeb, provides leadership and creates opportunities for change across the seafood industry and ocean conservation community. Seafood Choices is about cooperation and identifying creative solutions to long-held challenges. By building relationships and stimulating dialogue, Seafood Choices is encouraging and challenging all sectors of the seafood industry along the path toward sustainability.

Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming

Sustain advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, promote equity and enrich society and culture. Sustain runs Ethical Eats, a network of restaurants and caterers interested in sustainability, and works very closely with the Sustainable Restaurant Association, a membership organisation which aims to help UK restaurants become more sustainable in all areas of their business. Sustain also coordinates the Sustainable Fish City campaign, aiming for London to become the world's first sustainable fish city, and in 2014 working with at least six other cities around the UK to launch their own sustainable fish campaigns as part of the Sustainable Food Cities initiative.