10th & M Seafood's Julian Brooks shows some seafood items ready for sale. Alaska's fishing industry must soon find a way to fund the sustainability certification process, as the state plans to pull its funds beginning in October. Photo/Rob Stapleton/AJOC

At issue is the next annual audit of Alaska's sustainable salmon fisheries, which must be done if Alaska's commercial salmon harvest is to continue to carry the MSC stamp of approval.

The council, which bills itself as the world's leading certification and eco-labeling program for sustainable seafood, is based in London. The organization certifies various fisheries from around the world.

What the certification is worth these days is a matter of much debate in Alaska's fisheries industry.

The cost of MSC recertification every five years, to assure Alaska's salmon fisheries are sustainable, runs about $150,000. The annual sustainability audits cost about $75,000. All costs to date have been funded through the Alaska Department of Fish and Game budget; not any specified fish taxes.

Some processors said they felt the state's commitment to sustainability was sufficient. Others said MSC certification costs are a price that must be paid, because their customers now demand it.

Jack Schultheis, sales manager for Kwik'Pak Fisheries, said MSC certification has become "one of those things that is to the point where if you don't have it, you can't sell to certain markets."

Schultheis said MSC has done a good job marketing its label, and that he has customers who will not buy the region's Yukon kings and chum salmon unless they are MSC certified.

"I don't view them as an enemy," he said. "They've done a lot of good, but we don't have a sustainability problem."

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has managed for sustainability since statehood, he added. And while certification guarantees sustainability, it does not address the quality of the product.

Schultheis said some MSC-certified salmon travels from Alaska to China for reprocessing, and comes back to the United States as a value-added product. Quality is lost in the process, he said.

"Some of it is really questionable where it came from and what fishery it was from, but it has the MSC label on it, so people think it must be fine," he said.

State officials hope the fisheries industry will start picking up the tab, although the state Department of Fish and Game would continue to cooperate as needed with the certification and audit processes.

In any event, when it comes to certification of Alaska's wild salmon fisheries, it's an all-or-nothing proposition as far as the state is concerned. Alaska's willingness to support review of the salmon fishery by the MSC has to date been expressly conditioned on treating the statewide fishery as a single unit.

"While it is true that we acquiesced to analyzing the fishery in 16 units, we accepted this as an analytic tool for the certifying body in its assessment of a very complex fishery," Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd said in a Feb. 18 letter to Brad Ack, director of the Marine Stewardship Council-Americas. "Given the department's clear and consistent requirement that any decision on certification apply uniformly across the state, the department may be willing to help to fulfill conditions coincident to certification of the state-wide fishery, but will not support independent certification of specific areas or gear types."

Lloyd noted that there are substantial costs that the department would shoulder in support of an industry client to fulfill conditions for certification.

"For example, we determined that staff interaction with the MSC and the auditor in the 2008-2009 annual surveillance summed to $97,000, though this may be less in future audits," he told Ack. "At the same time, implementing the action plan to fulfill conditions set for continuing certification may cost the department as much as $1.3 million over five years."

"It would be a shame if Alaska decides they don't need it," said Kerry Coughlin, communications director for MSC-Americas. "There are over 1,500 produce lines from Alaska that are MSC certified and over 700 of them are salmon."

"We want to help people understand the great value for the cost," said Jim Humphries, MSC's fisheries director for the Americas. "The buyers do want the MSC certification program to continue."

"The bottom line for us is to make sure everybody understands that Alaska seafood is sustainably managed," said Dave Bedford, deputy commissioner of the Fish and Game Department. "If the logo goes away because nobody picks it up when Fish and Game stops being the client in October, it has no impact on the sustainability of Alaska Seafood.com News

So far no one has stepped forward to assume that responsibility.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaska

journal.com.