We have our own representatives working directly with the factories and fisheries. Because of our reputation, we strive to work closely and form long term business relationships with our suppliers. It is a matter of trust with our suppliers. Q: Global seafood supply chains are often complex and opaque and importers face challenges in monitoring every step of the process, how is your engagement with the sustainability movement helping shield your supply chain from environmental, legal, and social risks?Ī: That is a good question. Success stories are more significant when all actors are being involved and tangible change is taking place. Unfortunately, the successive Covid19 lockdowns made it difficult to rollout, but we are in the process of field testing in the next few months. For example, we are working on a traceability app for Tuna and Swordfish fisheries, which has been very helpful in capturing and illustrating many issues hindering the development of the projects. To get things done right it takes time and the convergence of many actors, but we are always trying to find innovative solutions to issues like data collection and traceability and we can already see many success stories. If you take the time to talk to them, you will see how much they care about the sustainability of the ecosystem, and raising their awareness is one of the most important parts of a FIP.įIPs can be expensive, take a long time, and require cooperation with the local governments, so things don’t happen overnight as WWF knows very well. You may hear some people from the sustainability movement repeating that fishers just want to catch everything, and they don’t care about protecting the stocks or the environment, and that is absolutely false. Also, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Fishery Improvement Projects are the fishers, the families, the communities that depend on these resources for their livelihoods. Why are FIPs important to your company? How do you think FIPs are helping preserve precious ecosystems and protecting the livelihoods of fishing communities? Do you have any success story you care to share with us?Ī: A FIP is a minimum requirement for many of our customers, so market demand makes FIPs essential for our work. Q: You have been one of the most active Fishery Improvement Project participants in partnership with WWF helping to transform some key fisheries on the path to better management practices. We also have a policy of initiating new projects, so practically every year we try to push forward one or two new ones. To maintain that reputation, we constantly seek to source seafood responsibly and to help fisheries and aquaculture improvement projects improve their management practices. Sustainability is key for the Sea Delight brand because through this experience we became recognized as industry leaders in improving fisheries. As a company we have a policy of trying to be pro-active, so we obtained as much information as we could and got involved right away with WWF-Indonesia on some projects. Our primary concern then was related to major issues with seafood like food safety, quality, and sourcing from reliable suppliers. We started learning more about sustainability and actively work on achieving it. It was around 2009, more than a decade ago, when we started this journey. We are an importer and distributor of frozen seafood, primarily Tuna but also a range of other products, and we were first motivated by the growing interest from our customers in seafood sustainability. We believe in changing business models to help protect our planet’s most valuable natural resource, our ocean.
Q: As a leading family-owned supplier of seafood to the US market, what does seafood sustainability mean for your brand and what motivated you to join this movement?Ī: Sea Delight focuses on environmentally sound, sustainably sourced seafood. The company is also supporting fisheries on their journey toward sustainability by sourcing products from over a dozen Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs), including Peru and Ecuador mahi-mahi and Vietnam Handline Tuna FIPs. As part of that, Sea Delight continues to assess its seafood purchases again some of the most robust certifications like the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). In 2009, Sea Delight made a commitment to sustainability and created a public company-wide policy. Stephen Reiss Fisher, Sustainability Director at Sea Delightįrom his port city of Nha Trang in Vietnam on the South China Sea, we interviewed Stephen Reiss Fisher, Sustainability Director at Sea Delight on the value of joining the sustainability movement, supporting fisheries in transition, and what trends he is seeing from his work at the heart of global seafood supply chain.
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