Sea Pact

The Challenge:  Billions of people across the globe enjoy fish and seafood. Yet our ocean resources are limited. Collectively, we are taking more from our waters than can be replaced. This has serious impacts. Populations of marine species have more than halved in the last 50 years, and 90 percent of global fish stocks are overfished or fished to their ecological limit. As the global population and the demand for seafood grows, it will only become more difficult for communities around the world to have access to seafood.

What Can Be Done:  Sustainable seafood appears to be a rising trend among chain restaurants, retailers, distributors and wholesalers who each see significant growth in the percentage of their seafood that will be sustainable in the coming years.  Increasingly, these sectors are more open to dialogue and are interested in obtaining information that can help them make informed and responsible choices for themselves, their customers and the ocean.  Some within this supply chain are uniquely positioned to affect change, both below and above them.  These distributors and importers sit firmly at the center of the industry and, by working collectively, are poised to make positive change across the whole seafood industry.

How Sea Pact is meeting the challenge: Sea Pact is an innovative alliance of eleven leading North American seafood businesses, who have joined together and are using their collective power to lead and drive improvement throughout the global seafood supply chain.  This innovative model of pre-competitive collaboration, focuses on the long-term viability of a product over the scarcity of sales of that product. Essentially, without assured supply of seafood to sell there will be no consumers to compete for. This cost-competitive strategy is an effective way to ensure needed access to seafood supplies while being responsible stewards of the resource. Together, these businesses can create an economy of scale, learn from each other, and create concrete positive outcomes. Sea Pact strives to advance environmentally sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices and provide the building blocks for a long term and sustainable seafood industry.