Saving Seafood

2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit wrap-up: Attendees recognize Thailand’s Labor Rights Promotion Network; event organizers look to what’s next

June 14, 2019 — “This is a celebration – not a competition,” said Diversified Communication’s Ned Daly of the Seafood Collaboration Project, which seeks to improve networking and collaboration in seafood and provide a platform for under-represented voices.

On 13 June, the final day of the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit – taking place in Bangkok, Thailand – eight organizations participating in the Seafood Collaboration Project shared their stories with attendees to wrap up the event. Among the participating organizations were Mexico’s Impacto Colectivo para la Pesca y Acuacultura en México, Stella Maris of Thailand, the International Transport Workers Federation of Thailand, the Labor Rights Promotion Network of Thailand, Sailors for the Sea – Japan, Teng Hoi of Hong Kong, Sustainable Fisheries Trade of Peru, and the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative (ASIC) of Southeast Asia.

Following presentations from each of the organizations, summit attendees were asked to vote for one to receive a USD 10,000 (EUR 8,871) prize – not in the spirit of contest, but rather to further recognize the amazing, collective work already underway around the world in the name of seafood sustainability, Daly explained.

“We are here to celebrate the people, organizations, partnerships, and collaborations that are driving improvements in ocean resources and seafood supply chains,” he said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Turning up the volume on worker voice: A Thai Union case study

June 13, 2019 — Last month, Apple announced it would be phasing out its digital music marketplace iTunes – a decision that surprised Darian McBain, the global director of sustainable development for Thai Union Group, one of the world’s most prominent seafood suppliers.

Reading an article about the twilight of iTunes as she arrived in Bangkok, Thailand for the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit (SWSS19) – taking place 10 to 14 June – an analogy formed for McBain between the evolution of music portability and the evolution of worker voice in the technologies and programs trialed by Thai Union in recent years.

McBain, presenting at SWSS19, referenced Thai Union’s work with Mars Petcare, Inmarsat, Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, and others in 2016 and 2017, when the parties launched a digital traceability pilot program that involved outfitting Thai fishing vessels with One Fleet terminals to encourage real-time connectivity between land and sea. As fast as vinyl records evolved into tapes, CDs, and MP3s, so too did the scope of the pilot and Thai Union’s thought-process surrounding it, McBain recalled.

Thai Union and its partners were training workers to use “Fish Talk” chat applications developed by Xsense in response to new regulation from the Thai government, which required Thai vessel owners operating outside of national waters to provide a satellite communication system and device onboard for workers at sea. That’s when the evolution began, McBain said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New report combines data of five leading sustainability NGOs for first time

June 13, 2019 — A new report released during the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, (SWSS19) has united data from five of the leading seafood sustainability NGOs, giving a comprehensive look at the sustainability of the world’s oceans.

“Sustainable Seafood: A Global Benchmark” has brought together the data and expertise of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Fair Trade USA, Marine Stewardship Council, Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program, and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. Together, the collective data has formed a report looking at the sustainability of different seafood sectors, and the priorities that should be focused on moving forward.

The report is thanks to the Seafood Certification and Ratings Collaboration, which launched in 2015.

“Through the collaboration, we aim to increase our impact by coordinating our tools and leveraging our extensive data on the sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture,” the report said.

The report, and the compiling of the data of the various NGOs, has been a goal of the collaboration and regular updated analysis are planned in the future.

“This first edition is intended as a benchmark, illustrating the current level of performance and identifying the improvements needed going forward,” the report said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fair Trade founder heralds the rise of the conscious consumer

June 12, 2019 — The age of the conscious consumer has arrived, much to the delight of Fair Trade USA founder and CEO Paul Rice.

The keynote speaker at this year’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit – taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, from 10 to 14 June – Rice shared some promising news about modern consumer behavior with conference attendees, all of whom have a vested interest in the sustainable seafood movement.

“Consumers are changing the world,” he said. “Their purchasing decisions are both luring more companies into the sustainability space and rewarding those companies that do.”

Shoppers are increasingly opening up their minds and wallets to seafood that appeals to their growing sustainability sensibilities, Rice explained, referencing an impressive leap in sales experienced by one of the certifier’s seafood partners after the supplier introduced Fair Trade scallops to its portfolio.

“One of the companies that we work with in our sustainability program had scallop sales of 3 percent year-over-year growth – they introduced Fair Trade scallops and their sales growth on the scallop line jumped to 38 percent,” Rice said. “Now that’s an extraordinary and probably unusual sales bump as a result of adding the Fair Trade label, but it illustrates the point, which is regardless of what certification it is or what sustainability attribute we add to products, consumers are hungry to reward companies that are doing the right thing and are looking for products that speak to their values.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SeaWeb Seafood Summit conference program puts focus on social and human rights challenges

April 26, 2019 — Representatives from Walmart, Anova Food, Thai Union, and North Atlantic/Bali Seafood International will be featured speakers at the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which will have a major focus on social and human rights challenges in seafood supply chains.

The summit, taking place 10 to 14 June in Bangkok, Thailand, will involve many of the leading voices in the seafood sustainability movement in Asia and globally. Companies taking part in the event will discuss ways they’ve created stronger relationships with supply chain partners and workers, reduced their exposure to risk, and produced a better product to sell through the adoption of sustainability measures in their respective businesses.

The conference’s keynote speaker will be Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice, an advocate of “impact sourcing” as a core strategy for both poverty alleviation and sustainable business. Rice is the author of “The Human Face of Sustainability: Empowering Fishers, Farmers, and Workers.” Rice will also serve on a panel with Richard Welford, the founder and chairman of CSR Asia, Walmart Senior Buying Manager Trevyr Lester, and Sarah Hogan, the program officer for the Packard Foundation’s Global Seafood Markets strategy, to discuss successful examples from seafood and other industries of sustainable supply chains. The panelists will share their experiences in using market forces to drive positive impacts on workers, communities, resources, and corporate profits, according to Diversified Communications, which operates the summit. (Editor’s note: Diversified Communications also operates SeafoodSource).

Another featured panel at the summit will investigate the economics of sustainable seafood in Asia, sustainability trends in other Asian markets, and how sustainable practices might come to be better recognized in Asian markets in the future. The panel will include Janice Lao, director of group corporate responsibility and sustainability at The Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels Limited; Rabobank’s Umesh Madhavan; Nobukazu Furuya with AEON TopValu Thailand; Wakao Hanaoka from Seafood Legacy; and Julie Qiu, the marketing director for Australis Aquaculture.

A separate plenary session will look into illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Asia, and will include Environmental Justice Foundation Co-Founder Steve Trent and Adisorn Promthep, the Director-General of Thaland’s Department of Fisheries. Trent and Promthep will discuss transparency initiatives and how they can be applied in the real-world, studying examples from Thailand and Indonesia.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Financing aquaculture: The cash is there, but information is lacking

July 18, 2018 — Finance can “drive change on the water,” according to Neil Sims at Kampachi Worldwide Holdings. But for aquaculture projects, it’s still hard to come by.

Speaking at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Barcelona, Spain in June, Sims told the story of his company. He said it took 10 years to raise enough funds to initiate his marine aquaculture project in Hawaii. There was a temptation to put one pen out while he raised the rest of the cash.

“But that would be throwing money down the rat hole,” he said. “In mariculture you need scale, you need to have the cash together.”

There’s plenty of money waiting to invest in aquaculture, according to Trip O’Shea, vice president at New York, U.S.A.-based investment house Encourage Capital. But first the sector needs to offer would-be investors data and models to profitability.

“There are several pillars of sustainable development but where is financial sustainability on the list? Otherwise how do we get it off the ground?” he said. “We need a set of principles for aquaculture investment, so that investors can quickly understand what to benchmark to. Right now there are so many metrics quoted. We have to compare apples to apples.”

O’Shea cited feed conversion ratios as an example.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hundreds of seafood stakeholders heading to Spain to tackle top sustainability issues

June 11, 2018 — Barcelona, Spain will play host to more than 100 speakers and even more attendees from across the sustainable seafood movement for this year’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit, occurring from 18 to 21 June at the Hotel Arts.

Over the course of up to five days, summit speakers and registered attendees – including global representatives from the seafood industry, the conservation community, retail/foodservice, academia, government and the media – will convene to learn, network, and problem solve, said Diversified Communications, which produces the summit in partnership with SeaWeb.

“This year, we’ve expanded interactive formats across more sessions,” said Brenna Hensley, event director for Diversified Communications. “This forum vastly benefits from wide participation and input from diverse stakeholders.”

The educational sessions planned for the summit are formatted as “engagement-driven panels or workshops,” explained Diversified, and aim to unpack and troubleshoot challenging and emerging issues within the seafood sustainability oceanscape.

The event will feature several plenary and panel discussions, including the opening session set to take place on Tuesday, 19 June at 11:15 a.m.: “Is Spain Really as Important as the Global Seafood Sustainability Movement Believes?” During this kickoff plenary, “panelists will examine the key factors that explain and drive the success of the global seafood sustainability movement through the lens of global consumer appetite for mature (whitefish, small shrimps, salmon, cold water crabs) and non-mature (octopus and squid) markets,” Diversified said in a press release.

Such discussions will continue to heat up on Wednesday, 20 June, when the plenary “Building Socially Responsible Seafood Supply Chains Through Worker Voice,” is scheduled to take place. The session will involve a “dynamic, multi-stakeholder “ perspective on the concept of worker voice, covering why worker voice is important and how to incorporate it into seafood supply chains.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit packs a sustainable, newsy punch

June 19, 2017 — The 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which took place 5 to 7 June in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., brought together more than 580 global representatives of the seafood industry, the conservation community, academia, government, and the media for in-depth discussions, presentations and networking around the issue of sustainable seafood.

Here’s a review of the news that was made at this year’s summit:

A major topic of discussion at the conference was pre-competitive collaboration, with several panels and keynotes approaching the issues from different angles. In the pre-conference on Sunday, 4 June, attendees heard from Nira Desai, the director of strategy and learning for the World Cocoa, a key player in the development of CocoaAction, a sustainability movement in the cocoa industry:

Cocoa industry offers seafood a crash course in pre-competitive collaboration

Pre-competitive collaboration will also play a key role in the future of global aquaculture, according to experts at the conference:

Success of “blue revolution” will depend heavily on pre-competitive collaboration, seafood experts say

In other big news for aquaculture, on Monday, 5 June, Seafood Watch upgraded farmed salmon certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council to its “Good Alternative” rating, marked “a watershed moment for the sustainability credentials of farmed salmon”:

Seafood Watch upgrades ASC-certified farmed salmon to “Good Alternative”

Later on Monday, 5 June, the 2017 Seafood Champion Awards were handed out at a ceremony in Chihuly Gardens in Seattle. SeafoodSource profiled each of this year’s winners:

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Global Ghost Gear Initiative launches practical guidance at international conference for the seafood industry to reduce marine litter

June 9, 2017 — The following was released by the Global Ghost Gear Initiative:

The Best Practice Framework (BPF) for the Management of Fishing Gear, developed by the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), was formally launched today (June 6) at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, one of the most significant seafood industry events globally.

The framework is the first in the world to recommend practical solutions and approaches to combat ghost fishing across the entire seafood supply chain, from gear manufacturers to port operators to seafood companies.

More than 40 organisations from across the seafood industry, NGOs, and fishing communities have responded during an ongoing 10-week consultation process and helped shape the final document. Six webinars were also held with stakeholder groups in different regions, including Europe and North America.

“Advancements to fishing gear design, sourcing decisions, and fishing policies can significantly reduce the impact of ghost gear on marine ecosystems, livelihoods, and wildlife,” said Lynn Kavanagh, Campaign Manager for Oceans and Wildlife at World Animal Protection, the GGGI’s founding participant. “The framework recommends practical, detailed approaches to combat ghost gear, each with an accompanying case study on how changes have been achieved in practice. These include net recycling programs, derelict gear removal initiatives, and fishing management policy adjustments, among others.”

“The Best Practice Framework fills a vital need for the seafood industry,” said Jonathan Curto, Sustainability Coordinator at TriMarine, a GGGI participant. “Reducing ghost gear is important to all of us, and the practical guidance and case studies the BPF provides will help companies to implement positive changes and processes across the seafood supply chain. The GGGI looks forward to working with stakeholders to implement the recommended best practices to sustainably manage fishing gear.”

Dave Parker, Marine Biologist and Head of CSR at Young’s Seafood, a GGGI participant, said: “As the UK’s number one fish and seafood business, we believe that a fish-loving nation is a happier nation, now and for generations to come. We recognise that the Best Practice Framework will not only help other suppliers and retailers to increase their productivity, but will ensure a better environment for all marine users and wildlife. This is why we have helped resource the GGGI, and we hope this announcement will encourage others to make a commitment to its continuing success.”

Ally Dingwall, Aquaculture and Fisheries Manager at Sainsbury’s, a GGGI participant, added, “Our customers have showed us that they care about the sustainability of their food, which is why we are building the principles of the Best Practice Framework into our sourcing policies. As a founding member and active participant of the GGGI, we are fully supportive of the launch of the BPF and urge other stakeholders from across the industry to make use of this important toolkit.”

Ghost gear refers to fishing equipment which has been abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded that is now causing harm to fisheries and ocean ecosystems. Each year, an estimated 640,000 tons of such fishing gear is lost or abandoned in the world’s oceans, estuaries, and bays. Whether intentionally discarded or accidentally lost, this gear persists for hundreds of years and entangles marine wildlife, adds to ocean waste, and causes significant financial loss for fishers and marine communities.

A survey during the consultation period showed that 28% of respondents said ghost gear is a significant sustainability issue for their business, while 37% said ghost gear is a moderately or highly significant issue for them.

The Framework can be found on the GGGI website. Industry feedback is still welcome by visiting http://www.ghostgear.org/best-practice-consultation

About the Global Ghost Gear Initiative 

Founded in 2015 by World Animal Protection, the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI) is a cross-sectoral alliance committed to driving solutions to the problem of lost and abandoned fishing gear (ghost gear) worldwide. The GGGI aims to improve the health of marine ecosystems, protect marine animals, and safeguard human health and livelihoods. Members include TriMarine, Sainsbury’s, Young’s Seafood, Northern Prawn Fisheries, and the International Pole and Line Foundation.  For more information, visit http://www.ghostgear.org

Success of Alaska Pollock Fishery is focus of SeaWeb Seafood Summit Panel

SEATTLE (Saving Seafood) — June 7, 2017 — The success of the industrial pollock fishery in the Eastern Bering Sea, which generally harvests in excess of one million metric tons each year, was the focus of a panel at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit on Tuesday. The panel, “Moving Beyond Fishery Certification: Using Collaboration, Technology and Innovation to Further Improve Sustainability” was moderated by Tim Fitzgerald of the Environmental Defense Fund. Panelists were Allen Kimball of Trident Seafoods, Richard Draves of American Seafoods, and Karl Bratvold of Starbound LLC. Trident Seafoods is a large, vertically integrated company, which processes Alaska pollock at shoreside facilities. Vessels owned by Starbound and American Seafoods harvest and process Alaska pollock at sea.

Panelists discussed the development of the Alaska pollock fishery: from before extended jurisdiction through the period of transition to a fully domestic fishery, to the years before rationalization when catcher-processors and catcher vessels competed in an Olympic-style race for fish, to the advent of an effective and efficient enterprise with the establishment of catch shares under the American Fisheries Act (AFA). Under the AFA, quota share is permanently allocated between the at sea and shoreside processing sectors, and among cooperatives (groups of fishing companies) within each sector. AFA provisions encourage cooperation and collaboration within and between sectors and cooperatives, which has brought about many improvements.

Examples of successful collaboration and cooperation include avoidance of salmon bycatch, which is facilitated by comprehensive observer coverage, daily electronic communication of catch and bycatch information that is shared across the fishery, and binding agreements that require vessels to relocate to avoid bycatch or suffer substantive financial penalties. Similarly, collaboration on development of selective gear, development of gear with reduced drag, and other shared innovations have been effective in reducing bycatch and greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing operating efficiency. All of the panelists highlighted their commitment to science-based management, their support for federal government science, and the extent to which they collectively fund scientific research. They also spoke about the importance and value associated with Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification.

Additionally, the panelists emphasized the extent to which rationalization through catch shares has improved the harvesting and processing processes, as well as increased safety and operational efficiency.

This session told the story of Alaska pollock and illustrated the benefits of a well crafted and well implemented catch share program, as well as MSC certification. Other fisheries can learn from this experience, but it’s important to note that this is not a “one size fits all” solution that is immediately applicable in all types and scales of fisheries.