(IntraFish) The Russian Pollock Sustainability Alliance (RPSA) announced Friday the launch of stage one of a website with English translated references, designed to help the industry and stakeholders understand how Russian fisheries are managed and how this is integrated with the management of Far East Russian pollock.
This site is designed to help buyers and industry figures understand the background to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) process for Russian pollock.
RPSA, a group formed in late May, includes the Russian Pollock Catchers Association (PCA) and several large processors and buyers, such as Findus Group, Iglo Foods Group, Gorton’s and High Liner Foods.
Although this information is publicly available on Russian and English based websites, we committed to the Alliance members, international customers and key stakeholders Russian pollock management information would be brought together in one place with as much of the Russian content as possible in English,” said German Zverev, chairman of the PCA, the client group for the MSC certification of Russian pollock.
“For the MSC certification process alone, we have translated over 2,500 pages of fisheries related material with support from the Federal Fisheries Agency,” he said.
The Russian pollock fisheries website stage one launch, is a significant sustainable fisheries development milestone for Russian pollock, since this level of referencing on how the fisheries are managed has never been available in one place before, said a press release from the PCA.
The move is designed to help to improve understanding and also counter the incorrect perception in some parts of the industry, that Russian pollock fisheries management have no systems in place, it said.
In fact they are amongst the most heavily regulated fisheries in the world and the data is publically available, but not easy to find, as it is in Russian.
Jim Cannon, CEO of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, congratulated the PCA on the move.
The SFP has long encouraged transparency in the management of fisheries and recommended this when it started to work with Russia, he said.
“On behalf of the SFP, I wish to congratulate the PCA for bringing together much of the Russian pollock fisheries information into one source so that key stakeholders and conservation groups can cross-reference this to confirm status and progress Mikael Thinghuus, CEO of Royal Greenland, and Mike Mitchell, technical and CSR director at Young’s Seafood, both also praised the move.
The PCA plan to launch a “stage two” with a new look website in early autumn, it said.