MESM 2009 Group Project Proposal: Tracing seafood sources: a pressing technical challenge for the seafood industry

Problem statement: Tools to help consumers identify sustainable seafood, such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch® Pocket Guides, are growing in popularity and recognition. However, there is often little accountability by seafood providers to ensure that products are accurately labeled, and it is often difficult or impossible to trace a piece of seafood’s transport through the chain of supply to identify where, how and by whom it was captured or grown. For instance, the percentage of Chilean Sea Bass available in US markets with illegal origins is thought to be 50% and growing. The rampant black market for illegally caught fish and challenges of monitoring are also clearly a problem for fisheries management worldwide. Without accountability and traceability, the current pressure from governments to follow regulations and from market-based approaches to improve the sustainability of seafood provide limited incentive for reform and innovation in the fishing and aquaculture industries. To be effective, demand-side efforts to spur fisheries sustainability will require seafood tracing systems, yet these systems do not currently exist for the vast majority of seafood sold.