April 15, 2019 — There was a time when many in the seafood industry openly disliked the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And not long ago, the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program didn’t think very highly of much commercially-produced seafood, such as the equivalent of the industry’s bread and butter – farmed salmon. As recently as 2013, Seafood Watch advised its millions of sustainability-conscious adherents to avoid farmed salmon altogether.
But a month ago, at the 2019 Seafood Expo North America event, Jennifer Kemmerly, Monterey Bay Aquarium’s director of global fisheries and aquaculture, stood on stage at a special assembly hosted by the Chilean Salmon Marketing Council and declared that previous era of combativeness to be over.
“There is no ‘us-versus-them’ mentality anymore,” she said. “There’s no time or room for that. The only way to get the job done is to work together.”