BOSTON (AP) — Seafood sustainability has become a maze of certifications, ratings and labels that leaves consumers trying to decode a system built by institutions, companies and watchdogs while the burden of choice lands on ordinary shoppers. What once centered on avoiding overfishing and destructive fishing methods now reaches into labor abuses, indigenous fishing rights, carbon footprint and even whether fishing boats offer free, high-speed Wi-Fi.
Who Carries the Burden
Robert Jones, global director of aquatic foods for The Nature Conservancy, said the system is so tangled that even experts struggle to sort it out. “I’m an expert and I still sometimes struggle to look through some of the systems to figure out which product in the store actually matches which rating, and which label is different,” he said. That confusion is not an accident of complexity alone; it is what happens when consumers are asked to navigate a marketplace crowded with competing standards while the industry keeps the power to define the terms.
For several decades, the most recognizable expression of seafood sustainability was Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which used green, yellow and red cards to encourage or discourage consumption of specific species. Jennifer Kemmerly, vice president of global ocean conservation for Monterey Bay, said, “Twenty-five years ago, that was the right focus,” and said overseas fisheries, which supply much of the seafood consumed in the U.S., might be immune to American regulations but would respond if enough consumers demanded sustainable choices.
Barton Seaver, a seafood sustainability expert with National Geographic, said the traffic-light ratings created a guilty-until-proven-innocent aura that still lingers. He said, “The entire category had to be exonerated,” and added, “Yes, (the information) was more easily digestible, but the end result was fear, trepidation and a general lack of participation.” He said that rather than trying to determine whether farmed or wild salmon is better, many people simply choose chicken.
What the System Now Demands
Seafood Watch eventually fell silent, partly because of pandemic pressures. By then, the definition of sustainable had broadened dramatically. Safeguarding endangered stocks still matters, but other issues now include treatment of workers, regenerative practices and local versus corporate ownership of the fleet. Seaver said sustainability should also be measured against alternatives, and that across five metrics — greenhouse gas, land-use alteration, feed conversion, freshwater and antibiotics — seafood comes out on top in the animal-protein conversation. He said, “If you want the sustainable option for dinner, the yellow-list or even red-list seafood might be the better environmental option than chicken or beef.”
The article said the equation is too complex for most consumers, and that newer sustainability issues are not intuitive, including the role of on-ship Wi-Fi as a way for workers to report labor abuses while at sea for months at a time. It said the monoculture-like beef, pork and poultry industries align more easily on methods and messaging, while seafood is inherently complex because it includes thousands of species, regions and regulations.
Andrew Zimmern, whose documentary “Hope in the Water” highlighted efforts to make seafood more sustainable, said, “The biggest loser here is the American consumer.” That line lands cleanly: the people buying dinner are the ones expected to absorb the confusion, while the institutions and brands keep refining the rules.
Kemmerly said the complexity is a sign of success. She said, “These big companies who 25 years ago made a sustainability commitment thinking it was just the environmental piece are now also on the hook -- no pun intended -- for reporting on environmental, social and governance issues.” The language of responsibility expands, but the machinery remains the same: corporations, nonprofits and certification systems sorting out what counts as acceptable.
Who Gets to Set the Rules
Zimmern wants all the players — from fishermen and wholesalers to watchdog groups — to agree on regularly updated standards so the industry, not the consumer, carries the burden of making good choices. The article said the Alaska seafood industry benefits from a sustainability halo because regulations mandating good practices are written into the state constitution. Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, said, “We’ve always said, if you choose Alaska, it’s the easy choice from a sustainability standpoint. There’s not a single one of our fisheries that isn’t sustainably managed,” and, “We’ve tried to simplify that for them.”
Seaver said the best way to support the industry is to let chefs and consumers focus on what tastes good. Seafood Watch is in the midst of a relaunch that will focus on educating chefs about making sustainable choices. The article said the consensus for befuddled seafood shoppers is to buy American, local when possible, and that while the U.S. seafood industry is not perfect, it is highly regulated and works with retailers who insist on sustainability standards. Woodrow said, “When you go to Whole Foods, you trust that they’ve done the job for you. And that’s the case for a lot of large grocery chains these days,” and, “Consumers should feel confident when they go to the freezer case or the fresh case that that fish is going to be coming from a responsible fishery.”
The result is a system where the burden of trust is pushed downward onto shoppers, while the industry, retailers and watchdog groups continue to define the terms of participation. The labels may change, the language may widen, and the standards may get updated, but the ordinary buyer is still left standing in front of the freezer case, trying to decipher a hierarchy of authority that speaks in green, yellow and red.