Challenge 3: Transparency and Traceability from Sea to Shore: Ending Overfishing

THE PROBLEM
Overfishing remains the largest direct threat to marine ecosystems. With 80% of all global fisheries at or beyond full exploitation, managing the massive quantity of fishing—including illegal as well as legal overfishing—remains an immediate challenge. Current fishing fleets are estimated to be 250% larger than what is sustainable, and this system is plagued with insufficient resources to effectively stem the tide. Moreover, the supply chain for seafood products involves a complex web of middlemen that mask the origins of fish, making enforcement of sustainability standards difficult. Challenges for overfishing include monitoring fishing activity at the source, creating more efficient tracking and enforcement mechanisms, increasing barriers to entry for unsustainable fish products into global markets, and influencing demand structures associated with seafood products.

THE CHALLENGE
Transform the monitoring and enforcement of fisheries management through innovations and systems that prevent overfishing, ensure true end-to- end traceability, and produce actionable data on the health and quality of fisheries for communities to act more sustainably. The challenge would seek innovations in four areas:

1. Suitable technologies and innovations that would allow for better measurement & management of small-scale, artisanal fishing, and inshore fleets for sustainability of both communities and ecosystems, including ways to empower these groups as enforcers of fishing regulations and accelerate better data collection. 2. Technologies that improve the monitoring and management of industrial fishing. 3. Innovations for 100% end-to-end traceability, reducing mislabeling, and enhancing monitoring of seafood products from sea to store. 4. Traceability tied to novel financial mechanisms that incentivize fishers to behave sustainably by connecting well-regulated markets to the fishers themselves.

PROBLEM STATEMENT
An estimated 80% of global fish stocks are fully exploited or overexploited. Fisheries have provided increasingly lower yields over the past few decades. Some industrial fishing fleets have begun to deplete stocks of fish species not previously consumed in an effort to keep up with the demand for seafood, or use trawling practices that are devastating to marine ecosystems. Though overfishing is generally driven by unsustainable practices even when not explicitly banned, illegal or unregulated fishing can drive overfishing even when local communities are attempting to manage their fish stocks. Coupled with the fact that territories and barriers in the oceans are often muddled in political controversy or are difficult to delineate physically, there can be no enforcement of protected areas without serious investments of financial and human resources.

Once the seafood products enter the global market at packaging and processing plants, tracking the source becomes more complicated for management officials, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. The seafood supply chain is comprised of a worldwide network of hundreds of thousands of producers (fishers and fish farmers), thousands of processors, and tens of thousands of wholesalers and brokers that buy and sell over 800 commercially important species of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. A single fish may circle the globe and be touched by 20 different entities before making its way to the consumer. However, key identifying information—the species name, where and when it was caught and with what type of gear, and where it was processed—rarely accompanies a fish on its journey from the ocean to the plate.

Although illegal behavior may grab headlines, in many of the most critical habitats there are few laws to enforce. Unreported and unregulated behavior has at least as large an impact on fish stocks as does overtly illegal activity. Developing countries account for 50% of the seafood entering international trade, yet represent only 7% of the Marine Stewardship Council certified fisheries. Progress toward ensuring sustainable management and end-to-end traceability requires finding new solutions for fisheries in developing countries that are designed for local constraints of cost, environment, suitability, and education levels. In addition to these tools, it is critical to help build local governance and management capabilities.

Further, local demand is often overlooked as a driver of overfishing trends. Fisheries in the developing world are critical to local nutritional needs. Seafood contributes at least 15% of the average animal protein consumption for 2.9 billion people and as much as 50% for some small island and West African states. For many of those who live in poverty (under $1.25 per day), seafood is a major source of omega-3 fatty acids that are essential for brain development and provides important micronutrients. The services of well-managed fisheries sustain coastal communities that rely on subsistence fishing for food. Unfortunately, these developing world fisheries are often some of the most threatened. They are also places where innovations specifically designed for the constraints faced by these communities could help mitigate overfishing.

Overfishing as a phenomenon of human behavior has broad implications. The ocean as a whole is difficult to manage and protect as territorial lines are often disputed and surveillance of key fishing areas is minimal at best, facilitating the myriad unsustainable behaviors that result in overfishing. Fishing is an economic driver as much as a source of food with over 2.1 million estimated motorized fishing vessels, 90% of which are small vessels less than 12 meters long. Because fish stocks are often hard to quantify and visualize and fisherman struggle to maintain economic security, the tragedy of the commons is a frequent occurrence where fish stocks are depleted rapidly in the pursuit of individual yields.

EMERGING SOLUTIONS
Traceability has been a focus area for the application of innovation and technology. However, it has largely focused on the highest value fish in the highest margin markets in Europe and North America. Efforts to scale the solutions to more markets and fisheries are needed to ensure that traceability becomes more than a high-end consumer concern.

Management of Artisanal Fisheries: Pelagic Data Systems has developed low-cost, rugged sensors that can monitor fleet locations, activity, storage temperature, and catch methods that can help artisanal fisheries sell to premium markets and meet certification standards. The system is $200 for two years of service, and has been deployed in Indonesia and Honduras. The system harnesses cell phone networks once the users return to land, and it is solar powered.

Management and Enforcement of Industrial Fishing & GeoFencing: SoarOcean and Conservation Drones are harnessing low-cost drone technology to improve conservation monitoring and enforcement for marine systems. WWF and navama developed a new vessel- tracking tool called Map My Track, and a data-sharing platform, TransparentSea. org, which offers fisheries worldwide the possibility to register and make their fishing activities transparent. With their registration, fisheries agree to share satellite AIS 24/7 data, vessel monitoring systems (VMS) data or other location-based data for their vessels with independent experts from WWF, navama, other NGOs, governments, and science.

Reference:

Ending Hide and Seek at Sea, Science (March 11, 2016)

Traceability from Sea to Store: Numerous data and inventory management tools have been developed. These include Fish Trax, an electronic fishery information platform that revolutionizes the way fisheries information is collected, analyzed, and shared; ThisFish, a web- based traceability tool that collects catch, processing, and handling information from harvesters and processors; and SeaTrace, which gives consumers and retail buyers on-demand access to detailed information about the seafood they are purchasing through a QR code that, when scanned with a mobile app, shows information about the fisher (including images), when and where the fish was caught, as well as nutritional information. Finally, TraceAll Global has developed web-based supplier management tools for supermarkets and restaurant chains that enable creation of an audit trail of the ingredients, sources, and production conditions of the inventory they are purchasing as well as smartphone-based systems to enable fishers in remote areas to document their catch, trade with processors, and fish legally and sustainably.

The European Union invested €3.9M into the FishPopTrace research program to develop traceability approaches using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to determine species identity and population of origin for major commercial fish species. The Fish Barcode of Life Initiative (FISH-BOL) is a global effort to coordinate the assembly of a standardized reference sequence library for all fish species. Advanced sequencing techniques, including nanopore technology, will soon permit portable, field-based, whole genome sequencing. This will allow for on-the- dock identification of the population and origin of a fish, including whether or not that population is sustainably managed.