Fishery Improvement Project (FIP)

A Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) is a stepwise, multi-stakeholder work plan to move a fishery toward sustainability, typically benchmarked against the Marine Stewardship Council Fisheries Standard. A FIP is not a certification and carries no logo: it is a public process with a workplan, milestones, and progress reporting tracked on FisheryProgress.org. Retailers, processors, NGOs, and fishers fund and run them to address stock status, bycatch, habitat, and management gaps that block MSC entry. The MSC’s In-Transition to MSC (ITM) program, launched in 2019, links FIP progress to eventual full assessment against the MSC standard. A FIP is the pre-certification pathway; MSC or ASC certification is the endpoint.