Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP)
Global
What is it?
Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) is a US-registered nonprofit that operates globally to rebuild depleted fish stocks and reduce the environmental and social impacts of fishing and fish farming. The organization works by engaging fishery stakeholders and seafood businesses throughout the supply chain to promote the sustainable production of seafood.
- Endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) species, other bycatch:
- Impacts on seabed habitat; and,
- Overall ecosystem impacts of the fishery.
- Regulatory Framework: The regulatory system addresses risks to and from aquaculture through a zonal approach to siting, licensing, and production management;
- Organized Producers Following a Code of Good Practice: The presence of an active producer organization representative of the whole industry and establishment of a Code of Good Practice;
- Water Quality Management: The impact of aquaculture on the quality of public water resources is managed;
- Disease Risk and Impact Reduction: Industry is protected from catastrophic losses through best practice disease management on farm and at the zone level; and,
- Marine Feed Ingredient Management: The fishmeal and oil in aquaculture feed are sourced from well-managed or improving fisheries.
- As a risk indicator of the overall use of marine ingredients in feed within an industry in a specific geography (Score 5 – Marine Feed Ingredient Management).
- Aquaculture trimmings used in compound aquaculture feed present an opportunity to reduce waste and contribute toward the circular economy. However, they pose their own set of potential impacts.
- Category A: Very well-managed fisheries
- Category B1: Reasonably managed fisheries with stock in good condition
- Category B2: Reasonably managed fisheries
- Category DD: Fisheries with high uncertainty in terms of their stock status or management
- Category C: Poorly managed fisheries
- Their effectiveness (ranked from low to high)
- Their ease of implementation (ranked from moderate to easy)
- Their cost (from low to high)
- These indicators also identify which methods should never be used.
- Additional information on these solutions is also provided.
- The guidelines outline the steps involved in creating an AIP through to demonstrating any subsequent improvements.
- The AIP Directory – provides a public platform for regular reporting on AIP progress.
- Discus and agree on ways to improve the sustainability of marine ingredient materials;
- Increase availability of sustainable marine ingredients;
- Work in a pre-competitive manner to drive environmental and social improvements in fisheries;
- Maintain a global overview of the state of the resources and industry; and,
- Present industry advances with regard to sustainability and communicate these through the value chain.
- West African Fisheries;
- South and Southeast Asia Marine Ingredients workstream; and,
- Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) workstream.
What is it?
FishSource wild capture is a publicly available online resource on the sustainability status of fisheries and fish stocks. FishSource wild capture consolidates and summarizes the main scientific and technical information needed by seafood buyers to gauge the sustainability of the fisheries they are sourcing from and take actions to help improve them.
How to use it?
FishSource wild capture profiles and scores provide users with simplified indicators of how fisheries are performing according to globally accepted measures of sustainability.
The management quality scores reflect the precaution of the management strategy, how closely managers follow scientific advice, and how strong fishers’ compliance with management measures. The stock health scores evaluate the current health of the resource and its future health: its overfished and overfishing potential respectively.
Scores on environmental impacts of the fishery are currently being rolled out, and evaluate impacts to:
The scores are each calculated on a scale from zero to ten with information obtained from reliable, publicly available sources of information.
What is it?
FishSource Aquaculture is a publicly available online resource on the current management status of individual aquaculture industries and their adoption of a zonal approach to aquaculture.
This aims to ensure that the industry is operating within the assimilative carry capacity of the water body and reduces cumulative risks from pollution and disease. If a zonal approach is being effectively implemented, it should, by nature of the management approach, minimize the potential impacts of an industry and improve its sustainability.
How to use it?
FishSource aquaculture scores provide users with simplified indicators of how aquaculture industries are adopting a zonal approach to management. In FishSource, the following principles are evaluated in aquaculture as a score out of ten:
The first two principle scores reflect the state of governance, while the last three communicate the status of management for key natural resources that the industry is dependent on.
These assessments can be used in two ways:
Therefore, the FishSource aquaculture profiles can be used to identify the risks involved in using this circular ingredient against the five principles outlined above.
What is it?
The Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP) was launched in 2015 by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership as a reporting framework for seafood companies including retailers, suppliers, fish feed manufacturers, and more, to voluntarily disclose their wild-caught and seafood sourcing alongside information on the environmental performance of each source.
The project started with the support and participation of three UK retailers and two aquaculture feed producers, Biomar and Skretting.
The ODP has continued to expand in scope, number, and geographic coverage of disclosures; in 2019 the first disclosures containing farmed seafood sources were published, and by 2020 more than 20 companies from across Europe, North America, and Australia had participated in the project. Participation is expected to continue growing over the next few years through active promotion to industry in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Disclosure now includes aquaculture sources.
How to use it?
Lists of seafood sources from participating companies are translated into a public map and an accompanying table (ODP profiles). This comprises a list of their seafood sources (both fisheries and farmed fish) with information on the environmental performance of these sources, including third-party certification or involvement in improvement projects, selected sustainability rankings, and brief environmental notes.
Profiles are available for a range of seafood supply chain companies, including feed producers such as BioMar Norway, Cargill, and Skretting Global.
More details on what’s included in the ODP profiles are available here.
What is it?
Reports providing annual sustainability assessments of the main Pacific and Atlantic fishery stocks used for reduction purposes.
How to use it?
Reports provide a summary of the SFP management and stock status scores provided by FishSource. These are then used to determine an overall sustainability category (A, B1, B2, DD, C) where:
These can be used to determine if source fisheries providing marine feed ingredients are in danger of overexploitation and potentially reduced catch per unit effort.
Footnote
A reduction fishery is one that uses, or ‘reduces’, its catch to produce fish meal or fish oil rather than for direct human consumption – MSC 2019
What is it?
The first-ever tool highlighting voluntary, industry-led adoption of best practices to reduce bycatch and innovations to protect ocean wildlife.
This SFP tool aims to connect seafood retailers and businesses that want to financially support projects to reduce ocean wildlife bycatch with organizations capable of implementing in-the-water solutions.
How to use it?
The tool identifies bycatch species associated with target fishery species. The tool then expands upon this by providing solutions in the form of recommendations on which fishing gears should be used and what best practices should be followed to reduce and eliminate this risk.
Meanwhile, the gear type can also be consulted to identify potential risks and solutions. For example, avoiding hotspots and the backdown method.
The site can be navigated via an ocean area map, or by bycatch taxa, gear type, and solutions and also includes details and links to funding opportunities to make improvements.
Footnote
Bycatch –the capture of non-target species in fishing, such as sharks, marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds.
What is it?
The interactive Solve My Bycatch Problem tool allows users to find solutions that directly address the bycatch of non-target species such as sharks, sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals in wild capture fisheries.
The tool evaluates various bycatch solutions, based on their relevance to specific species, effectiveness, ease of implementation, and cost.
How to use it?
Users select the target species group and gear type and are then presented with a range of potential technical and management solutions that support the decision-making and risk-reduction process.
Additional indicators present users with information on:
What is an AIP?
An Aquaculture Improvement Project (AIP) is a multi-stakeholder effort to address environmental challenges in aquaculture production. These projects utilize the power of the private sector to incentivize positive changes toward sustainability and seek to make these changes endure through policy change.
To be successful, AIPs should operate at scales greater than farm level to drive necessary change; they should be focused on the adoption and implementation of policies that enshrine sustainable aquaculture and improved performance at farm and zonal scales.
While far less developed formally than their FIP cousins, AIPs share many of the same attributes.
What are the tools?
What is it?
SFP is a leader and innovator in launching and evaluating fishery improvement projects (FIPs), which bring together retailers, processors, producers, and fishers to demand and leverage better management of marine resources, by identifying environmental issues and implementing priority actions to address the root causes of fishery depletion.
SFP has been a strong proponent of industry leadership in fishery improvement efforts. Today, more than half of the world’s FIPs are industry-led.
A FIP Toolkit is available here.
SFP’s FIP Evaluation program and tool defines and assesses fishery improvement projects (FIPs) against six stages of achievement, including the development of the FIP structure (Stages 1 and 2), implementation (Stage 3), improvements (Stages 4 and 5), and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification (Stage 6).
Their FIP Progress Ratings system is the first and only methodology that applies time benchmarks to quickly understand the rate at which a fishery is improving and assign a related letter grade. Each FIP receives a rating, ranging from an “A” grade of Exceptional Progress to an “E” grade of Negligible Progress.
SFP’s FIP progress ratings are the lead metric on FisheryProgress.org, the online platform where FIPs are publicly reported and reviewed.
Ratings for all public FIPs that SFP is aware of are maintained and displayed in the FIPs section for all FishSource profiles linked to fishery improvement projects.
Their FIP progress ratings are also widely used by the seafood industry and factor into their decision-making. For example, some companies will only buy seafood from a FIP with a “C” grade or higher. In turn, this influences and drives further improvements in specific fisheries.
What is it?
Supply Chain Roundtables (SRs) serves as a forum for processors, importers, and others who buy directly from specific fishery sectors to work together in a pre-competitive environment to promote improvements throughout the supply chain.
SFP serves as the convener and facilitator of multiple SRs for specific sectors bringing together knowledge, expertise, and resources to guide SRs on a path to drive significant and measurable change to fisheries sustainability.
What is the Global Marine Ingredients Supply Chain Roundtable?
Formed by SFP and IFFO (The Marine Ingredients Organization), the GRMI is a sector-wide, multi-stakeholder initiative working to drive environmental and social improvements in key fisheries used in the production of feed and other products such as pet food, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and other products globally.
It brings together three previous supply chain roundtables overseen by SFP- the Asian Reduction Fisheries SR, the Latin American Reduction Fisheries SR, and the European Sustainable Fishmeal SR
The reach of the new roundtable now extends to the entire marine ingredients supply chain and aims to:
The GRMI acts collectively on a list of priority topics related to the sustainability of marine ingredients.
Current Active Workstreams: