Australia’s largest prawn fishery, the Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF), has gained MSC certification and products from this fishery will now be eligible to carry the blue ecolabel.
The MSC assessment applies to all the 52 NPF vessels that cover the fishery’s 771,000km2 of tropical waters off Australia’s northern coast from Cape Londonderry in Western Australia to Cape York in Queensland. Species caught in this fishery include: White Banana, Red legged banana, Brown tiger, Grooved tiger, Blue endeavor and Red endeavor prawns.
MSC manager of Australia and New Zealand, Patrick Caleo, said that the certification is brilliant news for seafood lovers.
"Australians have an insatiable appetite for prawns particularly during summer and Christmas and now they can enjoy them sourced from a certified sustainable fishery. NFP supplies to Woolworths and Coles, so they’ll be easy to find and buy," he said.
He said that the NPF is one of only a handful of prawn fisheries worldwide to have demonstrated they meet the MSC standard.
The assessment of NPF was partly funded by Woolworths Australia and WWF US. The assessment process took over a year to complete and was conducted by independent auditors MRAG Americas.
