Increasing transparency and traceability in the seafood supply chain through Electronic Monitoring in longline industrial fishing
Seafood is among the most valuable food commodities in the world, yet many commercially important fish species are at risk from overfishing and illegal fishing due to poor management and weak governance.
One of the problems is that fishing quotas are often not informed by science, and most fishing activity occurs without sufficient oversight by countries and the vessels for which they are responsible.
The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew) is working to address this and meet the demand for more transparency and stronger international fisheries management by securing an enduring system of rules and consequences that will strengthen fisheries governance, while supporting healthy, resilient marine ecosystems and fisheries over the long term. This will include the use of electronic monitoring (EM) as a valuable management tool.
Over the next two years, The Becht Foundation’s grant will be supporting Pew to strengthen, accelerate and expand these efforts in three critical areas:
- activating market pressure to increase demand for transparency and traceability in the seafood supply chain
- mobilizing Asia-Pacific regional support for management reforms;
- improving fisheries EM technology through development of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
