3 posts tagged with "Seafood Supply Chain"

Over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of consumer-facing, market-based initiatives for marine conservation—most notably in seafood eco-labels and sustainability certifications. Yet, despite the growing recognition of these initiatives by consumers and retailers in North America and Europe and the (subsequent) acceptance of their role in seafood distribution by fisheries and fish marketing industries around the world, seafood certification programs have thus far made little progress in Japan. Here, the evolution of the three seafood eco-label and certification programs in Japan is examined and insights into the ongoing challenges they face in terms of the domestic supply chain network, consumer preference and their social-cultural attitude toward sustainability are provided. Despite an initial lack of success, seafood certification programs in Japan can be useful in enhancing consumer awareness for fisheries resource conservation and identifying Japanese domestic small-scale fisheries that are already engaged in sustainable fishing practices. A possible pathway for developing an eco-certification program suitable for the Japanese seafood market is provided through integration of environmental and cultural sustainability under the existing certification framework.

Climate change is projected to redistribute fisheries resources, resulting in tropical regions suffering decreases in seafood production. While sustainably managing marine ecosystems contributes to building climate resilience, these solutions require transformation of ocean governance. Recent studies and international initiatives suggest that conserving high seas biodiversity and fish stocks will have ecological and economic benefits; however, implications for seafood security under climate change have not been examined. Here, we apply global-scale mechanistic species distribution models to 30 major straddling fish stocks to show that transforming high seas fisheries governance could increase resilience to climate change impacts. By closing the high seas to fishing or cooperatively managing its fisheries, we project that catches in exclusive economic zones (EEZs) would likely increase by around 10% by 2050 relative to 2000 under climate change (representative concentration pathway 4.5 and 8.5), compensating for the expected losses (around −6%) from ‘business-as-usual’. Specifically, high seas closure increases the resilience of fish stocks, as indicated by a mean species abundance index, by 30% in EEZs. We suggest that improving high seas fisheries governance would increase the resilience of coastal countries to climate change.

Highlights

• Ocean physics and chemistry is being affected significantly by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, impacting key  marine and coastal organisms, ecosystems and the services they provide us, including seafood.
• These impacts will occur across all latitudes, including in the waters of British Columbia and Canada. This will have direct impacts on the fish species that are consumed by residents of B.C.
• The supply of B.C.’s “staple seafood” species such as Pacific salmon (e.g., sockeye and chum), Pacific halibut, groundfish species (e.g. sablefish), Pacific hake, crabs and prawns will be affected. This study predicts that by 2050:
  • We could see a 21-per-cent decline in sockeye, a 10-per-cent decline in chum, and a 15-per-cent decline in sablefish stocks.
  • Prices of iconic West Coast species such as sockeye, chum and sablefish are projected to increase by up to $1.33, $0.77 and $0.64 per pound for sockeye, chum and sablefish, respectively, under climate change  scenario alone.
  • Climate change will add pressure on already skyrocketing prices, contributing to an increase of more than 70 per cent in the price per pound in 2015 dollars of B.C.’s iconic species such as sockeye and chum salmon.
• For the 10 staple seafood species of British Columbia, the net change in price attributable to climate change could cost British Columbians up to $110 million a year in 2015 dollars.
• To begin to solve the problem, federal and provincial governments and private actors (businesses, NGOs and individuals) need to work together to make rapid reductions in CO2 emissions and eventually atmospheric CO2 drawdown, and instate other measures to protect ocean health.
• Without action, there will be massive and mostly irreversible impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems and the fish they provide.