FishChoice

This Earth Day, the conversation around ocean health is increasingly focused on action, and accountability. For fisheries around the world, sustainability isn’t a fixed endpoint. It’s an ongoing process of improvement, requiring clear goals, measurable progress, and transparency along the way. FishChoice and FisheryProgress exist to support that process. By making fishery improvement project data accessible and standardized, we help businesses, NGOs, and other stakeholders track progress, identify gaps, and make more informed sourcing and investment decisions. Because advancing sustainable seafood (and marine conservation overall), depends not just on commitments, but on credible, visible progress. #EarthDay #SeafoodSustainability #MarineConservation

At the Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global in Barcelona, the Argentina Offshore Red Shrimp Fishery Improve Project is celebrating a huge milestone: achieving Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. This milestone builds on the certification of the fishery’s onshore operations in March 2025, representing a major step toward fully sustainable management of one of Argentina’s most important fishery resources. Congratulations to the FIP for its success, and you can learn more in the article below. https://lnkd.in/eG2vHxBu

The gap between sustainability commitments and real-world outcomes isn’t just about effort or intent, it’s about systems, writes FishChoice Director of Strategic Engagement Jamie Padilla in a new blog from Seafood Ninja, Inc. She argues that companies don’t fail because they don’t care; they struggle because the systems required to deliver on commitments are complex, fragmented, and often missing. Seafood LAB is as a space designed to build and test those systems in practice, a mechanism for closing the gap — turning sustainability from a set of commitments into something that actually runs in the background of day-to-day business. Read the full blog below, and if you're in Barcelona this week, be sure to check out Jamie's sessions on Seafood LAB. https://lnkd.in/eTRhdZ7k

Boston's SENA may be long over but with the Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global gearing up in Barcelona this month, conversations from chilly NE U.S. will be picked up again in sunny eastern Spain. Notable among those is Seafood LAB: a concept inspired by work in other sectors that explores whether a shared platform could help make engagement in responsible labor practices more visible across seafood supply chains. In Boston, FishChoice and Verité brought together retailers, suppliers, and partners from across the seafood supply chain to dig into the new concept, and we're looking forward to exploring it more in Barcelona soon. Learn more about Seafood LAB here: https://lnkd.in/ezxyu65P

We’re still reflecting on our takeaways from #SENA2026 in Boston, and one thing is clear: fishery improvement project data remains a central topic. From better search functionality to aggregated reports and APIs, it's clear that a growing number of NGOs and businesses want access to FIP data in formats that make it easy to tailor and fit within new or internal systems that support seafood sourcing more broadly. We're excited to find new ways to share our data that support the seafood industry's engagement in FIPs and our ability to continue providing transparent and credible information on FisheryProgress.

“At SENA this year there was a lot of talk about the future of FIPs,” said FishChoice CEO Richard Boot. “Findings presented by California Environmental Associates clearly showed that FIPs are a good tool that moves fisheries toward improvements. FIPs are great for convening the right stakeholders, gathering better data and creating the pathways toward a more sustainable future. But, there is a need for more engagement from industry; more participation in improvements to fisheries management. And a need for more funding, longer timelines, and accountability from industry to help push these improvements forward.”

Join our Social Responsibility Program Manager Melissa Luna in this April webinar to learn more about how businesses can use human rights and social responsibility data to better inform their sourcing decisions and due diligence efforts.

Next week at Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, many conversations will focus on labor and human rights in seafood supply chains. That’s an important and overdue shift for the sector. Workers’ experiences must remain at the center of this conversation, and the urgency around addressing exploitation and unsafe working conditions cannot let up. We’re also encouraged by the ways this conversation continues to evolve across the industry. Over the past several years, seafood companies have made meaningful commitments and launched a wide range of initiatives—worker voice programs, responsible recruitment pilots, NGO partnerships, and pre-competitive collaborations aimed at strengthening labor practices. These efforts matter. But many remain fragmented or difficult to scale across global supply chains. So one question we’re bringing to Boston is this: what would it take to move responsible sourcing on labor and human rights from commitments and pilots to systems that operate across entire supply chains? At FishChoice, we’re particularly interested in the mechanisms that help translate commitments into day-to-day practice—especially in the parts of the sector where systems are still developing and improvement is possible but not yet fully realized. Addressing labor risks in seafood requires recognizing the different ways those risks appear across supply chains. Serious abuses must be addressed with urgency. But many labor challenges also stem from gaps in systems—unclear recruitment practices, inconsistent contracts, weak grievance mechanisms, or limited oversight in remote and complex supply chains. Strengthening these systems rarely happens overnight. In many cases, progress comes from identifying risks earlier, improving how labor is managed, and creating clearer incentives for better practices over time—while making that progress more visible and recognized across the supply chain. This is where structured continuous improvement approaches can play an important role: helping companies surface risks, strengthen labor management systems, and demonstrate credible progress as those systems improve. At SENA, our team will be exploring whether new kinds of shared infrastructure could help support that kind of progress at scale. One idea we’ll be discussing is Seafood LAB—a concept inspired by work in other sectors that explores whether a shared platform could help make engagement in responsible labor practices more visible across seafood supply chains. We’re excited for these conversations, and you can learn more about Seafood LAB here: https://lnkd.in/ezxyu65P

We're looking forward to connecting with colleagues and partners at Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America. Staff from FishChoice will be there to discuss new partnerships with FisheryProgress, the future of social responsibility in improvement programs, and how FisheryProgress is solidifying itself as a vital tool for the seafood industry. We’re excited to talk about how upcoming projects and updates with FisheryProgress can help drive meaningful progress across global fisheries. If you’ll be attending, we’d love to connect!

Though scattered across the globe, fishery improvement projects (FIPs) can connect through the FIP Community of Practice (CoP) to learn from each other and put that learning into action. Community members connect online through social platforms, but the most impact comes from the in-person workshops, where FIP practitioners discuss and share challenges, best practices, and lessons learned. Learn more about the CoP and its invaluable work in our latest blog from FisheryProgress below. https://lnkd.in/es-NUtgM