COOS BAY — Oregon made history on Thursday.

Or rather, the shrimp industry made history.

Oregon’s commercial pink shrimp fishery is the first in the world to be certified as sustainable by the international nonprofit organization Marine Stewardship Council based in London.

“We’re really excited,” Oregon Trawl Commission Administrator Brad Pettinger said. “It’s been a long time.”

The Trawl Commission, which represents fishermen who tow nets to catch shrimp and fish, started the certification process in April 2005. The process for most products takes up to a year and a half.

The MSC program provides an international set of management and environmental standards against which any fishery can be evaluated, according to a press release from the commission. The MSC grades the fishery according to harvest management, accountability of management and enforcement systems and minimization of bycatch and adverse ecosystem impacts. Independent experts are tasked with evaluating the fisheries.

Wholesalers and retailers now can use the MSC’s logo on products. The blue-and-white logo with a fish is designed to make consumers aware that they are buying seafood from a fishery that has been responsibly managed.

And now, Oregon’s pink shrimp, the kind that is used most often for salads and local shrimp cocktails, can make that claim.

It also may give local shrimp a leg up on the competition if seafood buyers choose Oregon’s sustainable shrimp over imported shrimp. The Oregon shrimp industry — fishermen, processors and distributors — have had to compete with imports from Canada and even small, farm-raised shrimp in warm water from some Asian countries.

“A lot of people associate nets with porpoises or something, but we’re a clean fishery,” said Nick Edwards, who owns and fishes the Carter Jon out of Charleston. He’s also one of the fishermen who catches the most shrimp — a “highliner,” in industry parlance — in Oregon and the whole West Coast.

“This should be huge for the fishery,” he said.

Aside from the notoriety, it could mean higher prices to fishermen who have been beleaguered by very little changes in price over the last 20 years. Processors, too, have had to stick to low wholesale prices in order to compete with imports from Eastern Canada, primarily.

Key to deeming the fishery sustainable were facts such as:

n the season is closed part of the year to avoid the shrimp’s reproductive season;

n bycatch-reduction devices are permanently installed on the nets so unwanted fish can escape unharmed;

n the state and the industry have worked together to achieve ongoing fishery monitoring over the last 30 years or so, with programs that include mandatory logbooks, biological sampling and population dynamics modeling; and

n the state’s permitting process that requires fishermen have both a license to operate a vessel and also a pink shrimp harvesting permit.

The certification also mandates the industry perform a study of seafloor impacts from trawling. The pink shrimp fishery already is considered semi-pelagic, meaning they maintain a lighter contact with the ocean floor than traditional trawls.

Other West Coast fisheries undergoing MSC assessments include Oregon Dungeness crab, California Chinook salmon, the Pacific hake mid-water trawl fishery, and California Dungeness crab.

About 45 fishermen deliver approximately 20 million pounds of pink shrimp per year. The main ports that process shrimp are Charleston, Astoria and Newport.

Pettinger said he’s not sure when Oregon’s sustainable shrimp will start showing up in stores with the MSC label, but he said he’s excited about it.

Edwards is, too.

“It’s nothing but a positive thing for the industry,” he said.