The Science and Research Fund provides grants of up to £50,000 to support research projects that help MSC certified fisheries maintain best practice in sustainability.
Applications are closed and will open again before the end of Sept 2025.
Eligibility
The fund is open to submissions from academic institutions, independent researchers, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) or MSC certified fisheries. All submissions must be applicable to an MSC certified fishery or fisheries.
Funding priorities
This year, the Science and Research Fund welcomes research proposals that:
- Focus on key areas that have stronger requirements under the MSC Fisheries Standard v3.1:
- Stock-wide harvest strategies
- Reduction of impacts on endangered, threatened or protected (ETP) species
- Reduction of gear loss and ghost gear impacts
- Refining assessment of impacts on habitats and ecosystems
- Application of shark finning prevention policies - Focus on improvements linked to any condition resulting from an assessment against the MSC Fisheries Standard v2.01 or v3.1.
- Will benefit multiple fisheries.
Available Funding
Up to
£50,000
Duration of funding
Up to two years
Applications close
02 December 2024
23:59 UTC
How to apply
If you are unsure who your representative is, you can email our Ocean Stewardship Fund team.
Previous grant recipients
In 2023, we awarded over £320,000 to seven Science and Research Fund projects, through the Ocean Stewardship Fund. These research projects focus on reducing bycatch in MSC certified fisheries and include:
• Reducing sawfish interactions in Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery• Statistics to predict silky shark hotspots and mitigate bycatch
• Seabird bycatch reduction in the Greenland lumpfish fishery
• Knowledge sharing to further reduce dolphin interactions in Australian and UK sardine fisheries
• Tagging silky sharks to identify post-release survival rates
• Improving data on seabird interactions in Alaskan salmon fishery
• Reducing turtle bycatch in the Réunion coastal longline swordfish fishery
