Impact

Efforts to build productive and sustainable food systems have largely focused on land-based crops and agriculture, while overlooking the diversity of blue foods—fish, shellfish, and other aquatic foods from marine and freshwater systems—that are vital to nutrition, livelihoods, and economies. The Center for Ocean Solutions aims to ensure policymakers have the evidence base they need to integrate blue foods into the policies and practices shaping the future of food, public health, and climate action.

• A global evidence base for action: The 2021 Blue Food Assessment provided a scientific foundation for understanding the potential benefits, risks, and trade-offs of including blue foods in food system policymaking. It also illuminated investment priorities for improving environmental, nutritional, and livelihood outcomes.
• From assessment to national strategy: At the invitation of Indonesia’s Ministry of Planning, the Center for Ocean Solutions supported the government in integrating blue foods into its national development strategy, preparing a national-level blue food assessment, and bringing blue foods into its national school meals program.
• Connecting local to global: The Blue Food Futures Program accelerates collaborative research, translates scientific findings into policy recommendations, and expands the pipeline of early-career leaders through a global network that has grown to 75 members across 22 countries. Through sustained policy engagement with the Aquatic Blue Food Coalition, the program also disseminates national guidelines and country-level analyses on how blue foods can help nations strengthen their climate strategies.

Illegal fishing and labor abuse remain widespread in the seafood sector, undermining the sustainability of fisheries and harming the businesses, communities, and countries that depend on healthy oceans. These harms are often hardest to detect on the high seas, where working conditions are difficult to verify. In addition, seafood’s many handoffs along the supply chain can obscure where it was originally caught and whether it was legally harvested. The ambition is to identify potential indicators of illegal activity so governments and companies can take steps to strengthen compliance, due diligence, and accountability. The Center for Ocean Solutions and an international team of collaborators help address these challenges through global risk analyses, creating the evidence base for industry action, and co-designing tools to support workers in specific fisheries.

• A global risk analysis: The Center led a global study identifying where illegal fishing and labor abuses were most likely to occur across fishing fleets and ports. Findings highlighted key risk signals, including a vessel’s flag state and gear type, and higher-risk practices like transshipment, or the exchange of crew and supplies between two vessels at sea.
• Looking deeper into supply chains: The Center is a scientific partner on a collaboration that helps the world’s largest seafood companies advance evidence-informed practices for more responsible supply chains. Member commitments include addressing illegal fishing and modern slavery at sea, reducing impacts on endangered species, and curbing antibiotics in aquaculture.
• Focused interventions: Since 2021, the Center has been part of an international team that developed IKAN, a mobile app to improve transparency and accountability in contracts and wage payments for tuna fishery workers. Developed with stakeholders in Indonesia and Taiwan, IKAN helps fishery workers know their rights, understand their contracts, verify whether they have been paid, and connect to grievance channels to seek remedies.