Across the world a number of organisations, usually of charitable status have established themselves as arbiters of sustainable fisheries. Some of these organisations are well constituted, have clear governance and peer review procedures and some quite are coming from different agendas. The sustainability assessment methodology they use to do this is wide ranging, and can be varied in quality with respect to regional variations, maintenance in the light of new data, and presentation of output. This review aims to compare the governance procedures and the output of range of organisations. Consider whether their output is current, scientifically robust and relevant to the fishery and rank the organisations according to a performance score.

Scope:

To review fish to eat, fish to avoid, traffic light schemes, accreditation and sustainability advice organisations in Europe and the US. Review to focus principally on organisations providing information to the consumer either in the form of branded ecolabelling (eg MSC, Friends of the Sea), or recommendation lists (eg MSC, Monteray Bay Aquarium) or information web sites (fish source) Monitoring, Delivery and Finance

The review would be financed by a consortium of international seafood bodies. The consortium would delegate the management of the review to a review panel which would be chaired by an independent senior academic. The review panel would agree the full research brief and methodology and put out to tender to a number of consultants and research organisations. The winning contractor would deliver the research and be monitored by the review panel. Results would be published in a leading journal such as Nature and be subject full peer review.