Development of a Fisheries Management Plan template for fisheries working to achieve the MSC responsible fisheries standard

Client: Marine Stewardship Council

Project Dates: January 2019 - March 2019

Project objectives:
One of the issues that limits the ability of some fisheries to successfully engage in the MSC program is the absence of fishery management plans to support sustainable management of the fishery. In these types of situations, stakeholders supporting such fisheries may benefit from availability of a management plan template designed specifically around the MSC standard.

This consultancy was for the development of a fishery management plan template and guidance for pre-MSC fisheries working to meet MSC’s fishery standard requirements. The final product (template and accompanying guide) is an MSC based, user friendly, and easily adaptable tool that stakeholders working with pre-MSC fisheries and their partners can use on a voluntary basis to develop management plans to ensure sustainable management of their fisheries and meet MSC requirements. The template and guidance forms part of the suite of MSC’s Pre-MSC Improvement Project tools.

Poseidon services provided:
Poseidon developed a pre-MSC tool to support the development of fishery management plans in fisheries working toward MSC. The tool comprises a template and accompanying guidance, whose design was based on the MSC standard, inclusive of Principles 1, 2, and 3.

The template is generic enough to be applicable across a wide range of fisheries but is particularly cognisant of constraints of small-scale and developing world fisheries with respect to the MSC standard. It is now fully adopted as ‘good practise’.