Well, the Netflix documentary "Seaspiracy" debuted Tuesday and its tone and message were exactly what the industry expected.

On a LinkedIn post yesterday, I described the film as a disjointed mishmash of old, oversimplified and, in many cases, debunked environmental half-truths all funneling to the overall message: don’t eat fish, go vegan.

But in my LinkedIn post, I also criticized the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for hiding from Ali Tabrizi, the film’s director, and refusing to grant him an interview.

The MSC did not defend itself or the sustainability work of the global seafood industry. Instead, it let Tabrizi smear the MSC eco-label and all it stands for.

If I were just an average viewer who knew nothing about the MSC or sustainable seafood, I would have walked away from the film thinking the MSC label is nothing more than a pay-to-play greenwash scheme, which is how the film portrayed it.

Ishbel Matheson, the MSC’s chief communications officer, defended her organization in a reply to my post.

“Just to be clear, MSC did not ‘hide’ … we declined to be interviewed," she wrote. "There’s a difference.”

But the result is the same – the MSC label, the organization, the work the group has done over the past 25 years, and the industry on which it built itself all were maligned.

Matheson went on to say, “This was then sensationalized in the film by turning up in our reception unannounced, with hidden cameras running.”

Of course it was sensationalized, using well-established “gotcha” techniques that were debunked in a scathing review in the New York Times. But maybe that could have been avoided if an interview were granted.

The MSC has one of the slickest PR machines in the world. Surely it could have come up with some counter measures for handling a low-level documentarian.

“It was a film intended to confirm the worldview of the documentary-makers, namely that the only solution is to go vegan,” Ishbel said in her LinkedIn reply to me.

“Throughout the film, interviewees who don’t fit into that narrative are made to look evasive, foolish and subjected to leading questions.”

She will get no argument from me there, but so what?

Tabrizi reached out to the MSC at least a few times judging by what was shown in the film, and everyone knew what his angle would be. So why didn’t the MSC prepare for his attack?

More than 17 percent of wild-catch fisheries are engaged with the MSC, the bulk of them representing highly-valued, highly-consumed species such as pollock, cod, salmon and shrimp. And there are nearly 19,000 MSC-labeled products are on store shelves around the world.

The NGO has stepped up to publicly defend the industry a few times in the past. In 2017, for example, it joined industry leaders in criticizing a scientific paper in the journal Marine Policy that alleged a significant percentage of Alaska salmon, crab and pollock entering the Japanese market comes from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fisheries.

The MSC exists because the commercial fishing industry exists. When it emerged on the scene in the late ‘90s, it elbowed its way into the fabric of the industry in order to build itself and its novel eco-label concept.

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The relationship between the industry and the NGO has been rocky and contentious at times, but today the two coexist in relative harmony and symbiosis.

That’s why I found it disappointing that the MSC didn’t step up and take on the "Seaspiracy" charade. I think it owed it to the fishermen, processors, wholesalers, retailers and restaurateurs who it has called on over the last 25 years to help it carry out its sustainable fishing certification mission.

The industry certainly has stepped up when asked. It’s too bad the MSC ducked and covered when its stakeholders could have used a robust response.

Any comments, complaints, retaliatory rants, please feel free to email me at john.fiorillo@intrafish.com.

Opinion

The Marine Stewardship Council hid when the industry needed a bodyguard