As a key element of our Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Project, SeaTurtles.org has helped drive forward a process to adopt stringent sustainable seafood protocols for the California Sustainable Seafood Initiative (CSSI).  The CSSI is a new project of California’s Ocean Protection Council (OPC) that will assess, certify and market state fisheries as sustainable. The OPC appointed us to the CSSI advisory panel.  

Our primary goal in this process is to ensure that the CSSI maintains a rigorous definition of “sustainability” to reward those California fishers that truly work to reduce their level of bycatch of protected and threatened species to near zero. Our leadership as a conservation stakeholder on the CSSI panel has already helped drive preliminary adoption of sustainable seafood protocols using a strict version of the Marine Stewardship Council model.

We are also working to compel the CSSI to test seafood for mercury toxicity, and to exclude high-mercury seafood from the program or label the seafood to warn consumers.

We are working to ensure that CSSI achieves its goal of highlighting to consumers the additional value of seafood that is equitable to the natural resources and the people of California, and rewarding the fisheries that work to achieve these goals.  Once established, this groundbreaking public-private program model could be adopted by other coastal states.

Read some of our comment and coalition letters below on the CSSI and OPC Strategic Action Plan.

OPC CSSI Coalition Letter

OPC Comment Letter May 2011

OPC Follow Up Letter June 2011

OPC CSSI Coalition Letter

TIRN OPC SAP Comments September 2011

TIRN OPS SAP Public Comments August 2011