rethink sustainability
How tech is being used to keep fisheries in line
Every year, 38 million tons of bycatch – marine life caught unintentionally in fishing nets – is discarded. By some estimates this is as much as 50% of the total annual marine haul, and includes more than half a million dolphins, whales and sea turtles. Regulations designed to minimise bycatch are hard to enforce – much of it is simply thrown back overboard. Overfishing is also a major problem, either in breach of poorly enforced regulations, or in areas where no regulations exist.
Within the seafood industry, fraud is prevalent – supermarket products are regularly mislabelled, giving a false impression as to the geographical origin, or even the type, of fish. Convoluted supply chains, spanning multiple countries and involving hundreds of transactions, enable destructive fishing to be passed off as sustainable, and make fishing one of the most opaque industries in the world. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warns that “illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing remains one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems.”
Now, though, in the battle to protect fish stocks and ensure the very viability of the commercial fishing industry, new technologies are cleaning up seafood’s murky supply chains.
Read also: Five ways to save our oceans
Fish on the blockchain
Pick up an Austral Fisheries toothfish loin in the supermarket, scan the barcode on the back of the packet, and you’ll be able to follow every step in the fish’s journey, from deep ocean to shop shelf. Where and when the fish was snared; which vessel lugged it on board; the date it was unloaded in Mauritius; any Marine Stewardship Council or climate certifications. Even the name of the boat’s skipper.
“We haven’t quite got the names of the skipper’s children yet, but that would be possible if we wanted to,” jokes David Carter, Austral Fisheries CEO.
The tech that enables such a detailed telling of the fish’s story is blockchain. Once caught, each fish is tagged and given a unique blockchain-based identification number linked to GPS coordinates of where the vessel was at the time of catch. Digital, tamper-proof, and updated in real-time, blockchain provides information that a physical label never could.
Austral Fisheries started using blockchain labelling as part of a pilot with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2018. Today, the digital ledger covers its toothfish operations and a growing chunk of its shrimp catch. The ambition is to boost transparency and accountability, and drive sustainable practices by harnessing consumer choice.
Read also: Shellfish: the kidneys of the sea
Watching from the cloud
Global Fishing Watch also uses digital technology to bring new transparency to the industry. Since 2016, they have employed satellite tech, cloud computing and machine learning to monitor the activity of fishing vessels at sea. The environmental NGO now provides an open-source, free-to-access global fishing map showing the recent activities of tens of thousands of fishing vessels. By embracing transparency, it’s hoped that governments will have a more cost-effective way to monitor fishing activities, allowing skippers to demonstrate compliance remotely and limiting the need for on-board or on-shore observers.
Similarly, non-profit OceanMind uses a wide mix of sources to gather information on global fishing activity. Their cutting-edge AI, developed in partnership with Microsoft, then compares this dataset against a complex global web of regulations, and delivers reports of suspected breaches to intelligence agencies. The company says it has seen demonstrable improvements in fisheries compliance in the UK and Thailand as a result.
Yet many of the world’s fisheries still lurk under the radar. Part of the difficulty is that small-scale operations account for half of the global seafood catch and 90 per cent of industry workers – and most do not use traceability tech.
“There’s this conundrum,” says Blake Lee-Harwood, chief programs officer at Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. “You get the greatest traceability in those fisheries that are already the most sustainable. Heavily capitalised, industrial fisheries, with an extraordinary amount of management and data and control. Whereas the really awful fisheries tend to have really poor data and really poor traceability.”
To address these small-scale breaches, SFP has built digital platforms to enhance monitoring, including a pilot programme called SkipperWatch, which will empower local fishermen to report illegal fishing on mobile apps. The non-profit is also pushing for electronic observation of all fishing boats, large and small.
Read also: How can we feed the planet sustainably?
Precision fishing
UK-based SafetyNet Technologies is focussing on physical rather than digital technology, having spent the past decade upgrading the humble fishing net. The impetus, founder Dan Carter says, was the fact that “fishing nets had been out there for thousands of years but we still catch the wrong stuff.”
LED lighting clipped to fishing gear illuminates the net in a colour that attracts or repels certain species. “The first step is the physiological one: what can the fish actually see?” explains Carter. “Step two is the behavioural one. Say you have two species that can both see the same light – what’s their response to that?” Placing the right colour light on a net could signal a warning to a turtle, but be invisible to a fish, thus massively reducing bycatch. The company is working on a raft of other technology to enable this kind of precision fishing.
So far, its Pisce net lights have made their way all over the world, from Scotland to Latin America. Carter cites a trial on a shrimp fishery in Oregon as a particular success – there, the nets drove a 90 per cent bycatch reduction. “That was then speedily introduced into local regulations to make it mandatory use in Oregon and Washington. We’re working to see if we can expand it to shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The process is rarely so smooth, however. The initial obstacle, Carter says, is persuading fisheries to come on board: the expense, hassle, and risk to business put many off. Each new fishery requires a trial – one underway on a scallop vessel in the US will cost USD 1.1 million.
Without strong near-term commercial incentives – whether via grants or well-enforced regulations – it can be hard to convince skippers and other parts of the supply chain to get on board with these sustainability innovations. Much of the sector’s funding to date has been philanthropic, and today’s tech pioneers say that more investment and better collaboration is vital to enable the traceability industry to grow.
Longer-term, though, fishing may have little choice. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation more than a third of marine fisheries are being overfished – meaning that populations are being depleted faster than they can recover. Today, more and more fishing boats are chasing fewer and fewer fish – one study found that since 1950 the number of boats has doubled, even as fish stocks have declined. In a warming world, with beleaguered fish stocks now facing the added threat of climate change, sustainable technology innovations may soon become essential if the fishing industry is to survive.
Important information
This document is issued by Bank Lombard Odier & Co Ltd or an entity of the Group (hereinafter “Lombard Odier”). It is not intended for distribution, publication, or use in any jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or use would be unlawful, nor is it aimed at any person or entity to whom it would be unlawful to address such a document. This document was not prepared by the Financial Research Department of Lombard Odier.
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