Value chains and market access for aquaculture products

Abstract Aquaculture contributes significantly to global food security, poverty alleviation, and international fish trade. Aquaculture products have become some of the most globalized food commodities, attracting the interest of diverse stakeholders that scrutinize industry developments, through the lenses of the global value chain (GVC) approach to analyze and understand the dynamics and roles at value chain nodes of key players, economic costs and benefits, value addition and value creation and to develop policy options and suitable market instruments for the promotion of sustainable aquaculture. Key characteristics of the aquaculture GVC are that most of the production takes place in developing countries, involving mostly small‐scale operators, while 60 to 70% of the demand (in value) occurs in Europe, North America, and Japan. As a consequence, the institutional and operational capacity of the producing countries is challenged to comply with increasingly demanding regulations and standards for consumer protection, social, and environmental requirements in order to participate actively in the aquaculture GVC. This article reviews the current status and the issues facing aquaculture value chains. It focuses on the challenges and perspectives for aquaculture value chain development, their main drivers, implications, and opportunities for the future of the aquaculture GVC

Emerging monitoring technologies to reduce illegal fishing activities at sea and prevent entry of fraudulent fish into markets

National and global priorities are increasingly focused on the concurrent marine fisheries challenges of food security, illegal fishing, and declining fisheries resources. Molecular genetics and electronic monitoring technologies can advance solutions to these challenges, particularly in fisheries surveillance and seafood traceability, and a growing number of studies continues to validate the utility of these tools. What is needed next is guidance to support their wider, more conventional adoption and implementation, either complementary to or in the absence of government policies. Here, we synthesize discussion held during the Borchard Foundation Colloquium held in July 2022 in Missillac, France on modernizing global fisheries with emerging technologies. Our aim is to provide perspectives to scientists, resource managers, and policy makers of emerging monitoring technologies, summarize the utility of these technologies in fisheries, and conclude with how the objective to modernize global marine fisheries is a prime opportunity to engage fresh talent in a new era of fisheries innovation

Towards global traceability for sustainable cephalopod seafood

46 pages, 5 tables, 7 figuresCephalopods are harvested in increasingly large quantities but understanding how to control and manage their stocks, and tracking the routes of the consumption that exploits them, lag behind what has been developed for exploiting finfish. This review attempts to redress the imbalance by considering the status of the major cephalopod stock species and the traceability of cephalopod seafood along the trade value chain. It begins with a general overview of the most important exploited cephalopods, their stock status and their market. Four major cephalopod resources are identified: the three squid species Todarodes pacificus, Dosidicus gigas and Illex argentinus; and one species of octopus, Octopus vulgaris. The techniques and problems of stock assessment (to assess sustainability) are reviewed briefly and the problems and possible solutions for assessing benthic stock such as those of octopuses are considered. An example of a stock well managed in the long term is presented to illustrate the value of careful monitoring and management: the squid Doryteuthis gahi available in Falkland Islands waters. Issues surrounding identification, mislabelling and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing are then reviewed, followed by a discussion of approaches and techniques of traceability as applied to cephalopods. Finally, some of the mobile apps currently available and in development for tracking seafood are compared. This review concludes with observations on the necessity for the strengthening and international coordination of legislation, and more rigorous standards for seafood labelling and for taxonomic curation of DNA sequences available in public databases for use in seafood identificationThis work was supported in part by US National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant 2137582 to Demian A Willette. Paul W. Shaw received financial support from the Aberystwyth University Impact Leave Fund; and Warwick HH Sauer support via the GCRF funded project, One Ocean HubPeer reviewe