Who, what, where, how?
Sustainability in fishing is difficult to explain. It is one of those areas where the more you know, the harder it is to be confident that you actually know anything correctly! There is always a level of expert or scientific knowledge that goes way beyond the knowledge any layperson can have.
Fisheries are highly complex. The way to answer that complexity is to decide a pathway or approach – and then keep evaluating and updating it. In simple terms, our approach is to ask and answer the questions: “who, what, where, how?”
Who is fishing? Big industrial boats, small artisan boats? Is there competition between the two? Are they locally managed and owned or long-distance water fleets from far away? What, how and where? What is the species? What are its habits and habitat? How is it fished, and where because maybe in one place a method is perfectly harmless and in another it isn’t? If there are problems, what are they and are they places where that problem is mitigated?
Basically we need to know our fishery and know our fishers. This means the way we need to think about our supply chain is not as an invisible market transaction, a commodity exchange centred on price, but as a partnership with a free flow of information. Because of the transparency and traceability ask which are increasingly been made in seafood, the flow of information side of things is now generally regarded as important but the idea of working in partnership and knowing your supply chain isn’t.
As one goes into the detail of the “who, what, where and how” a pathway develops to make the most sustainable or responsible decision possible.