About the Cornish Sardine Management Association (CSMA)

The Cornish Sardine Management Association is a group of Cornish fishermen and processors who came together in 2004 to agree common standards between themselves for catching, processing and marketing Cornish Sardines.

All members of the Cornish Sardine management Association have signed up to a strict code of conduct. The objectives of the Association are listed below and are included in the CSMA Code of Conduct.

• Fishery specific objective: Maintain good and adaptive management procedures that utilise a precautionary approach towards the long-term sustainability of the fishery, based on the biological and population characteristics of the species.
• Environmental objective: To minimise the impact of fishing activity on the marine environment. Maintain an effective code of conduct for all CSMA members.
• Economic objective: Maintain stability to the resource in such a way as to ensure its economic sustainability and ongoing benefit to the Cornish, Plymouth community and CSMA members.

All the owners of the fourteen ring net vessels and the four local sardine processors are members of the Cornish Sardine Management Association and have signed up to the code of conduct. Between them they catch and process in Cornwall and Plymouth over 95% of the Sardine caught in the fishery.

In 2007, under the EU’s protected names scheme, the name ‘Cornish sardine’ was granted the Product of Geographical Indication (PGI) status, meaning that sardines can only carry that name if the fish are caught within six miles of the Cornish coast, landed and processed within the county of Cornwall or the port of Plymouth. A business wanting to use the PGI logo must be registered with Defra to do so.

In 2010, the Cornish Sardine Fishery was certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), meaning that north Atlantic sardines caught by CSMA members within the six mile limit off the coast of Cornwall and landed into Cornwall may carry the MSC logo. These conditions were recently expanded to include sardines from the same area being landed and processed in Plymouth. Fish processors, merchants and retail outlets may label sardines caught off the Cornish coast with the MSC logo, provided they have suitable chain of custody arrangements in place, linking the sardines back to a CSMA fishing member. The Cornish fishery was re certified by the MSC Marine Stewardship Council in March 2017.