The Seafood Certification & Ratings Collaboration brings together five global programs working to coordinate on complementary tools and to increase collective impacts so that more seafood producers can move along a clear path towards both environmental sustainability and social responsibility. All members of the collaboration are either a FishChoice Sustainable Seafood Partner or Sustainable Seafood Affiliate:

• Aquaculture Stewardship Council
• Fair Trade USA
• Marine Stewardship Council
• Seafood Watch
• Sustainable Fisheries Partnership

The collaboration recognizes the need for industry, NGOs, and governments to have a clear understanding of the current status of the sustainable seafood movement and the gaps that must be addressed. With this in mind, it has developed the Sustainable Seafood: A Global Benchmark report which uses collective data from all five members to give a full picture of the sustainable seafood landscape. For the approximately 200 million metric tons of seafood produced globally, the report gives information on the following key elements:

• How much global seafood is currently rated or certified by members — 25% is certified or green-rated and 9% is yellow or red-rated
• How much seafood is in a public fishery or aquaculture improvement project — 3% is engaged in an improvement project
• How much seafood needs to improve or its status is unknown — 63% is not engaged with members' ratings or certifications programs at this time, highlighting where the collaboration should prioritize its work

In addition, the report gives detailed breakdowns for both wild and farmed seafood. It also delves into growing market demand for sustainable seafood, social responsibility in production, and the sustainability statuses for specific sectors (including tuna, farmed salmon, and small pelagics) in the global seafood industry. The collaboration group aims to keep seafood industry and stakeholders up-to-date by making this report into a series meant to help track the progress of fisheries and aquaculture towards sustainability.

Those interested in reading the full report can do so here. For more information on the work the Certification and Ratings Collaboration is doing, you can visit their projects page.

Pink salmon is the smallest wild Pacific salmon and its flesh is pale pink. This salmon is mild-flavored, softer than most salmon, has a small flake and contains a relatively low amount of oil. Look for pink salmon with firm meat that has minimal scale loss and no vertical bars of watermarks that indicate the fish has neared fresh water. Pink salmon is graded 2-4, 4-6, 6-9, and 9 up. Pink salmon is mostly sold frozen or canned and is increasingly sold in value-added products like salmon burgers and marinated steaks. A very small quantity is sold fresh, headed and gutted from July through August as is high quality whole pink salmon caught by trollers and frozen at sea. Processors who do both freezing and canning tend to only freeze the highest quality pink salmon so some buyers suggest purchasing from them. Buyers suggest learning about specific salmon species’ runs in order to find the best quality salmon since there are natural variations among them.

Key sustainability sourcing notes for pink salmon based on landings data from 2016-2017 and based on the most recent MSC certifications as of June, 2019:

• ~50% of global landings of pink salmon are MSC-certified (100% of Alaska and Canada, ~25% of Russian landings)
• <1%  of global pink salmon meets a Seafood Watch "Good Alternative (yellow)" rating (from Puget Sound, Washington)
• ~50% of global pink salmon is unrated  
• Landings from the two-year period of 2016-2017 increased ~3% compared to the two-year period of 2014-2015 and decreased ~20% from the two-year period 2012-2013