Increase Utilization

Work to develop and implement programs and initiatives intended to increase the consumption of seafood from responsible fisheries.

  • Encourage the consumption of responsibly caught seafood
    • The Center could conduct outreach and education of the benefits of responsibly caught seafood to fishery ecosystems. Many current sources of information primarily focus on the stock health of individual species and ecosystem effects of fishing methods, rather than the full spectrum of a fisheries management scheme, including the existence and level of compliance with responsible management measures.  The same species caught by different nations often have different levels of compliance with these practices, so educating consumers to choose responsible fisheries as their source of seafood could increase market demand for seafood harvested responsibly.
  • Reduction of regulatory discards
    • Encourage management bodies to reduce their use of management measures that mandate discarding of dead fish caught. The Center could also support management changes to implement a gradual and viable shift to a full retention model, such as that being implemented by member nations of the European Union.
  • Increase human consumption or other utilization of economic discards
    • Encourage management bodies to adopt regulations that allow for the retention of otherwise discarded fish for use as food donations and for scientific research purposes.
    • Foster the development of markets – even minimal markets – for economic discards. Species currently discarded dead for economic reasons can often be used for purposes other than human consumption, but current markets for these uses are limited.  The Center could research practical solutions to market development for these species, transforming a needless waste of harvest into harvests that are economically viable.