MSC certification of Australian orange roughy trawl fishery

Orange roughy lives for more than 150 years, is caught with deep-sea trawls and is listed as 'conservation dependent' under Australian law. In January 2021 an independent adjudicator upheld an objection brought by the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) and WWF-Australia against the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) assessment of the Australian orange roughy trawl fishery. AMCS wrote that 26 of the 36 seamounts said to be protected for coral were too deep for coral. The objection was backed by 10,000 supporters, and the adjudicator found that the Australian 'conservation dependent' status was a binding rule in conflict with the MSC standard.

The fishery applied again with the same assessor, MRAG Americas. In February 2025 it was certified after a new AMCS objection was rejected; the certificate runs until February 2030. MSC announced that the independent adjudicator had cleared the fishery for certification.

In the same month, on 27 February 2025, MSC revised its objections process for a 12-month pilot. Objections may now concern procedure only, the accreditation body Assurance Services International (ASI) reviews them first, and referral to an adjudicator is reserved for 'exceptional' cases. Civil-society organisations paid the costs of the objections.

Fisheries pay the assessor for certification; MSC estimated in 2013 that a typical assessment cost between 15,000 and 120,000 dollars. MSC's own income comes mainly from logo licensing (93.2% of its 2025-26 income). A 2013 study found that 1 of 19 formal objections had been accepted; AMCS counted 2 of 46 before the 2021 ruling and IPNLF counted 2 of 25 in 2018. BLOOM calculated that 83% of MSC-certified catch in 2009-2017 came from high-impact methods such as bottom trawling and dredging.