Recipe video featuring Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Chef Matt Beaudin.
Post your clam, mussel, oyster or scallop photos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter by Sunday night, Oct. 13, as part of Bivalve Week during the National Seafood Month Photo Challenge. #SeafoodMonthChallenge.
Fish are the last wild
animals caught for food on a commercial scale. Ocean scientists agree:
Commercial fishing and accelerating development of coastal aquaculture pose the
gravest imminent threat to wildlife and ecosystems in Earth’s largest habitat –
the ocean.
It’s an issue of international concern, and one that the Monterey Bay Aquarium – through its Seafood Watch program – has addressed for the past 20 years. Now the impact of that work has been recognized by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, with its 2019 William G. Conway International Conservation Award. Wildlife conservation is the highest priority of the association, and it annually recognizes exceptional efforts by AZA members toward habitat preservation, species restoration, and support of biodiversity in the wild.
It is challenging to
manage fisheries sustainably, because many species are highly migratory, are
caught in international waters, or are subject to varying levels of management
and protection, on the high seas and in national waters. Aquaculture standards
also vary widely – or have yet to be developed.
In the late 1990s, when
seafood sustainability was just emerging as an ocean conservation issue,
Monterey Bay Aquarium launched its Seafood
Watch program with a modest goal: raise awareness among North American
consumers about the connection between individual buying decisions and the
health of ocean wildlife and ecosystems. It embraced ecosystem-based
sustainability principles, and grounded its work in rigorous science. By
pioneering a simple green-yellow-red consumer pocket guide, the program quickly
gained traction.
Twenty years later,
Seafood Watch is global
in scope and influence. It engages multinational businesses, NGOs and
governments in key seafood producing regions – transforming global fisheries
and aquaculture in ways that measurably preserve the health of productive
marine ecosystems and protect vulnerable wildlife
The heart of Seafood
Watch’s work is a rigorous, scientific review process of major seafood items
available in the North American market, which is a key player in the seafood
industry importing nearly $20 billion in seafood annually. Seafood Watch
researchers assess nearly 2,200 seafood items, representing 85 percent of
seafood by volume in the U.S. and Canadian market, and 33 percent of the global
market; and update those assessments continually every couple of years. More
than 50 NGOs worldwide, and more than 25,000 business locations rely – directly
or indirectly – on Seafood Watch science to inform their seafood purchasing
decisions.
We’re honored that AZA
recognized the growing scope and global impact of work that’s making a
difference for the future of the ocean. Thank you!
Learn more about our work to improve global fisheries & aquaculture.
Photos by Monterey Bay Aquarium and Beth Redmond-Jones
Beginning in 2002, aquariums,
science museums and other mission-aligned organizations signed on as Seafood
Watch Conservation Partners, promoting sustainable seafood to their guests and
communities.
It’s important work. But what about the seafood that these organizations serve in their own restaurants or to the animals in their care? If you think it takes a lot of seafood to feed your average human—think about what it takes to feed a voracious sea otter, playful penguin or even a shark.
“Zoos and aquariums buy a lot of seafood for animals under human care,” says Karin Stratton, Seafood Watch Partnership Program Manager. “Sea otters, penguins and other marine mammals require a huge volume.”
A 70-pound sea otter, for instance, can consume up to 20 pounds of shrimp, clams, mussels and crabs each day. This means that zoos and aquariums have important decisions to make regarding animal diet sustainability.
The Seafood Watch Conservation Partnership provides easy-to-use
tools to help source sustainable seafood. Ideally partners will upgrade their
selections to green Best Choices during the three-year partnership duration
(items that are well managed and caught or farmed in ways that
cause little harm to habitats or other wildlife).
Our newly revised Partner Program adds these important, inward-facing requirements. “We’re asking our partners to walk the talk,” says Karin. “Most zoos, aquariums and science museums have a cafe, restaurant, food service or catering operation. Many also care for animals. By choosing sustainably, they can affect change in the marketplace. It’s a matter of supply and demand.”
“We’re going from just promoting, to promoting and procuring,” says Karin. “We want our partners to be able to say during their daily public programs, ‘Our penguins eat sustainable seafood and you can, too!’”
Partners in Action
Trent Barnhart has been with the Santa Barbara Zoo in California for the past 14 years and has spent the last nine as their Animal Nutritionist. “Our collection averages about 600 individual animals and includes 146 species,” he says. “My job entails choosing food items, creating a diet and sourcing everything.” Not surprisingly, this includes a lot of seafood. “We purchase about seven tons of seafood per year,” says Trent. “The majority of that is for our penguins. We attempt to do it all with sustainable purchasing. It involves a lot of decision making. I’m always trying to ensure that the fisheries that supply the anchovies for our penguins, for instance, use the best sustainable practices.
“We have a mandate that the fish be a green Best Choice or sometimes a yellow Good Alternative,” says Trent. “We never use red Avoid seafood on the grounds of the Zoo, in our animal kitchen or in our two restaurants.”
Noah Chesnin is Associate Director of the New
York Seascape Program, based at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium. The aquarium recently opened a new exhibit called “Ocean Wonders:
Sharks!” The building includes a Real-Cost Cafe, modeled after the one at the
Monterey Bay Aquarium, that teaches visitors how to order sustainable seafood in local
restaurants.
“We worked collaboratively with the Monterey
Bay Aquarium to create New York’s version,” says Noah. “Now our visitors can
learn about sustainable seafood and role play, tallying the real costs of their
choices to the marine environment.”
“We also have an annual gala where we invite
chefs from around New York City to prepare sustainable seafood dishes,” says Noah. “For
that, we rely on Seafood Watch recommendations.”
But that’s not all. The New York Aquarium also serves sustainable seafood in its newly opened Oceanside Grill at the Coney Island Boardwalk. It’s an opportunity to convey an important message in a scenic location—with a New York twist.
“People come for a day to enjoy the beach,”
says Noah. “They have an opportunity to eat a sustainable fish taco on the
boardwalk during the summer. We source Seafood Watch green and yellow items
from another Monterey Bay Aquarium partner, the local Greenpoint Fish &
Lobster Company.”
“The Oceanside Grill is one more place where we can interface with people and talk about sustainability,” says Noah. “It’s really exciting to see how we can walk the talk by serving sustainable seafood while providing education. We work hard to get the word out. And we welcome the opportunity to improve our practices, with the help of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program.”
How to Become a Partner
Interested in having your organization become a Conservation Partner? We welcome your participation! Partnership requirements include promoting the Seafood Watch consumer guides or app, leading two outreach activities or events, link back to seafoodwatch.org and complete an end-of-year survey detailing your activities. In addition, partners need to do one of the following:
New partners receive a welcome kit with videos and other resources. There is no cost for partnership.
“We
make it easy,” says Karin. “We want to set up the Conservation Partner for
success. This results in three wins: The partner wins, Seafood Watch wins, and
most important, the entire relationship is a win for our ocean.”
Learn more and apply to be a Seafood Watch Conservation Partner.
Photo Credit: Top three photos by Monterey Bay Aquarium;Trent Barnhart, River Otter and Penguin feeding by Santa Barbara Zoo; Real Cost Cafe photo by Jeff Morey © Wildlife Conservation Society; Bottom two Oceanside Grill photos by Julie Larsen Maher © Wildlife Conservation Society
Nearly 200 prominent chefs from around the world, including Chef Alex Atala (Brazil), Chef Michael Cimarusti (USA) and Chef Annabel Langbein (New Zealand), have pledged to keep Bluefin Tuna off their menus until there is effective international action to better manage the fishery. Global demand for Pacific bluefin tuna has driven the population down to a CRITICAL LEVEL–AT JUST 2.6 PERCENT of its historic abundance.
“The world has an obligation, right now, to take action to allow them to recover. We owe it to future generations. - Chef Atala.
If you are a chef and wish to sign the pledge, please send us an email at seafoodwatch@mbayaq.org.
Seafood Watch recommends Avoiding bluefin tuna.
Seafood Watch is part of a larger sustainable seafood movement that began in the mid-1990s as a small ripple of voices. Twenty years later it’s swelled into a wave of change. This milestone marks an opportune time to look back at the impact we’ve all accomplished together and the challenges that still lie ahead of us.
Then and Now
We have a lot to celebrate. Back then, regulations designed to protect the oceans weren’t working fast enough – and fisheries that fed millions of people and supported thousands of jobs were headed towards collapse.
Since then, the combined efforts of seafood industry and conservation leaders has helped change the industry and make it radically different than 20 years ago:
Signs of Progress
Here at Seafood Watch, we’re proud of the progress we’ve seen firsthand. Consider these statistics for example:
Challenges Ahead
The complexity of the issues facing us, however, means there is still a lot of work to be done. Seafood Watch is committed to helping address these challenges:
Next month, Seafood Watch staff will gather with others in the sustainable seafood movement at the Seafood Summit. All in attendance will reflect on the shared accomplishments of the last 20 years while also looking to what lies on the horizon.
The work may seem daunting, but our shared history reminds us the we’ve been here before. Together, we can continue to advance our shared goal of a healthy ocean, benefiting both wildlife and society.
Some of our Conservation Partners cleverly reuse outdated Seafood Watch pocket guides for animal enrichments.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium started Seafood Watch in 1999. It’s only fitting that we initiated the Conservation Partners program in 2011 to assist and enrich the important work of our colleagues at other zoos and aquariums.
Conservation Partners include zoos, aquariums, science museums and other organizations that promote Seafood Watch and sustainable seafood in their communities. “Seafood Watch can’t be everywhere, but Conservation Partners are” says Karin Stratton, Seafood Watch Partnership Program Manager. Thanks to Karin and her colleagues, more than 200 Conservation Partners now span the globe, representing 10 countries across four continents.
It’s a good deal for everyone. Conservation Partners get free Seafood Watch guides, signage, countertop displays, and respected information that benefits their credibility. In return, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Seafood Watch brands get worldwide exposure. “Everybody’s happy, and the entire process builds on itself,” says Karin.
The biggest beneficiary, of course, is a healthy ocean.
Karin has ocean in her blood. Ten days after getting a degree in Environmental Studies and Biology from Colby College in Maine, she moved to San Diego. Karin started out as an educator and animal keeper at Safari Park. She then took a job in “penguin outreach” at the New England Aquarium in Boston, driving a van with a live African penguin as her passenger, visiting schools and businesses to promote the aquarium and ocean issues.
“But I really missed California,” she says. “The whole time, I had my eyes on the Monterey Bay Aquarium.” In 2001 she got her chance, and was hired to work as a Visitor Presentations Specialist. She held a variety of guest-interfacing positions before moving to the Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program in 2011.
Those years of interacting with Aquarium guests still inform her work today. “I’m always looking for opportunities to talk about sustainable seafood and healthy oceans,” she says, “whether it’s with guests or our Conservation Partners.”
Conservation Partners appreciate the fact that Karin and her team strive to make their lives easier. “Conservation Partners are part of the program because they see the benefits that Seafood Watch provides, in terms of free tools, webinars, and contributing to the global seafood movement,” says Karin. “We provide an off-the-shelf program, which is particularly important for organizations that might not have the budget to do it on their own.”
Seafood Watch staff also make themselves available for onsite presentations, and can customize the promotional material for specific locations and events. “The key is to have a consistent message,” says Karin. “We might help with a customized panel for an exhibit, or assist with a wine tasting event which also includes sustainable seafood bites. We are happy to meet partners where they are.”
“And everyday we get new requests. It’s exciting to have people come to us and say we want to include your messaging in what we’re doing. It sends chills up my spine—I’ve been in zoos and aquariums for 25 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
One example is The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. “We have a unique opportunity when it comes to educating the public,” says Adam Ratner, Guest Experience Manager. “We’re basically a hospital; we take care of animals that are sick and hurt, and we can highlight how ocean issues affect them.” Those animals include elephant seals, harbor seals, and California sea lions. “People see how malnutrition, damage due to gillnetting, and ocean trash can connect to something tangible like a starving pup or an animal with netting around its neck.” Adam also noted that visitors on self-guided tours learn that “patients” are fed sustainable seafood. “It’s been fantastic for the Marine Mammal Center to be part of the Seafood Watch Conservation Partner program,” says Adam. “We get people thinking about the big issues that affect oceans and our animals. The program also allows us to have a united front with other organizations, with consistent, empowering messages about how people can take action in their own lives.”
The Kansas City Zoo, though squarely situated in the middle of the country, has also become a champion of sustainable seafood through its partnership with Seafood Watch. “In 2012 we were building a penguin exhibit, and we needed a strong conservation call to action,” says Nick Philipp, Teen Programs and Guest Experience Supervisor. “Now Seafood Watch and sustainable seafood is featured four times a day at penguin feedings, and three times each day at sea lion shows.” But that’s not all: the Zoo conducts an annual Sustainable Seafood Soiree, and has teamed up with other Seafood Watch partners locally, such as Jax Fish House. “It’s awesome to work with Seafood Watch,” says Nick. “They’ve been helpful in every way possible, supporting our annual seafood event, and even sending give-aways for guests. Last year, two Seafood Watch staff traveled here and did outreach with our education department, and gave talks at the soiree. They’re always positive and helpful.”
Interested in having your organization become a Conservation Partner and spreading the word about Seafood Watch? New partners receive a welcome kit that includes Seafood Watch guides, access to videos, fishing and farming fact cards, countertop displays, signage, and animal-themed panels. There is no cost for partnership and Conservation Partners in return are asked to communicate about Seafood Watch by distributing consumer guides, promoting the app and generating awareness about sustainable seafood via two or more outreach activities each year.
“We make it easy,” says Karin. “We want to set up the Conservation Partner for success. This results in three wins: The partner wins, Seafood Watch wins, and most important, the entire relationship is a win for our oceans.”
Learn more and apply to be a Seafood Watch Conservation Partner.
Woohoo! We are excited to welcome our 200th Conservation Partner: Long Island Aquarium in New York. Differing from the restaurants and retailers that make up our Business Partners, Conservation Partners are zoos, aquariums, science museums and other organizations that share the importance of choosing sustainable seafood with their audiences using Seafood Watch information and materials.
Art for ocean conservation! Ren Films created this striking image to promote sustainable seafood and are also issuing a #JellyfishSoup challenge, asking you to use Seafood Watch to purchase only sustainable seafood for 30 days. Watch the video to see how they made this photograph and find out more about the challenge.
Thanks to them for raising awareness about sustainable seafood and helping to protect our ocean.
(Source: vimeo.com)
Seafood Watch Business Engagement Manager Simone Jones, a native of Brazil, talks about our ongoing work to help colleagues there build the sustainable seafood movement in the world’s fifth most populous nation and the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Today, Seafood Watch releases its first recommendation for Brazilian snapper. This is thanks to the hard work of seafood analysts we trained to produce recommendations for species that are important to Brazil’s market. While our recommendation is “Avoid”, it highlights areas needing improvement. It’s an important milestone for our work in the country. We’re also excited for many other developments on the horizon.
In parallel with the training and activation of seafood analysts, over the past three years I’ve been working closely with Unimonte University – home to a robust sustainability program – to expand and coordinate the sustainable seafood movement in Brazil on behalf of Seafood Watch. I traveled there in early April with members of our science team, where for the second year we sponsored the university’s Seminar on Fisheries and Aquaculture: Seeking Sustainable Solutions.
The inaugural workshop that Seafood Watch facilitated in 2015 with seafood sustainability stakeholders culminated in the joint decision to create the Brazilian Alliance for Sustainable Seafood (BASS). Attendees represented the largest ocean conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in Brazil, celebrity chefs, large retailers, food service companies, industry, government, independent scientists, aquariums and the country’s prominent universities. We then worked with Unimonte to coordinate formation of the Alliance by helping the members articulate a mission, vision and definition of seafood sustainability.
With BASS going swimmingly, we shifted the focus of this year’s convening toward determining areas where all parties can collaborate and develop joint projects. They’re now identifying the most viable options, and we hope to begin finding funds to launch the projects in the next few months.
Seafood Watch’s ongoing work with Unimonte University has brought seafood sustainability issues to consumers, promoted collaboration among a broad range of groups, and has facilitated the birth of the Brazilian Alliance. The accomplishments of the sustainable seafood movement in Brazil are already impressive. Many people in all sectors of Brazilian society are seeking to do the right thing for our oceans. There is still much to be done, but I’m glad we are part of creating change that will affect the future of the ocean!
A fishy question: Hear Seafood Watch Blue Ribbon Task Force chefs reveal their inner fish. What fish are you?