Sustainable seafood campaigns such as Seafood Watch (USA, 1999), Ocean Wise (Canada, 2005), and the WWF Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (South Africa, 2004) have been around for decades – the latter having just celebrated its 20^th anniversary. But how successful have these been?

Many of these campaigns have raised awareness about the importance of choosing sustainable seafood, overfishing, endangered species, and the environmental impacts of fishing practices. However, their effectiveness varies based on factors such as the target audience, reach, message clarity, and the simplicity of decision-making tools that prompt action. 

While creating awareness is a crucial first step, it doesn't always lead to action, or to structural changes in the supply chain. This is known in behavioural science as the awareness-action gap, which depends on the audience's existing attitudes, behaviours, and willingness to change. Overcoming this gap is one of the biggest challenges in transforming the seafood system, as changing behaviours takes time.

Amid all of this, sustainable seafood campaigns compete for people’s attention, with numerous other environmental demands – such as reducing one’s plastic use, conserving water and eating less red meat. And all this while juggling daily tasks like picking up the kids, preparing dinner, feeding kids and cats, making that Zoom meeting, and writing that important op-ed.

Hence, sustainable seafood campaigns need to do more than raise awareness; they must influence beliefs and attitudes, challenge habits, and clearly show how informed choices can positively impact our lives and the health of our oceans.

Consumer behaviours insights conducted by WWF-SASSI over its 20 years show that the main qualifiers that consumers use when buying seafood are price, taste, type and accessibility.  While long-standing dietary habits and preferences make it difficult to switch to sustainable seafood options, consumers are also resistant to paying higher prices for sustainable alternatives and price sensitivity remains a significant barrier limiting the overall impact on sustainable seafood awareness campaigns. 

Systemic change

What is crystal clear is that awareness campaigns must be grounded in the understanding that the end goal is structural systemic change that results in improved fish stocks and healthy marine ecosystems. These campaigns are most effective when integrated with broader sustainable fisheries’ frameworks and marine protected areas strategies, which include certification schemes (such as the Marine Stewardship Council), fisheries improvement projects, retailer/supplier commitment, marine spatial planning etc.

In essence the awareness component of WWF-SASSI cannot be a stand-alone initiative. 

A key strategy over the past two decades has been partnering with retailers, suppliers and restaurants, working with them to embed the procurement and promotion of sustainable seafood products into their business operations.

Five years after its inception, WWF-SASSI launched a Retailer/Supplier Participation Scheme (RSPS) which has major retailers, two seafood chains and one supplier committed to sourcing seafood that is green-listed, certified, or obtained from credible fisheries improvement projects. The RSPS complements the consumer awareness programme, reflecting a comprehensive market-based approach.

While members of the RSPS maintain consumers are not as picky about their seafood choices as we’d like to think they are, WWF-SASSI consumer research indicates that sustainability is important.

What we do agree on is that the RSPS has been instrumental in highlighting supply chain, reputational, and market risks associated with unsustainable practices and irresponsible sourcing. This has led to various operational improvements, such as enhanced data management, better communication between sustainability teams and buyers, less greenwashing, improved supplier systems, and, in some cases, improved labeling and traceability.

RSPS members also agree that WWF-SASSI has indeed increased awareness among seafood consumers on the impacts of overfishing on marine ecosystems and and that tools, such as the traffic light system (green = best buy, orange = think twice and red = don’t buy) has enabled consumers to make better decisions.

The question remains: Would these changes have occurred without WWF-SASSI's influence? The evidence suggests that WWF-SASSI has been pivotal in driving these advancements.

Despite these efforts, it is evident that market-based approaches alone are insufficient to enforce sustainable and responsible fishing practices across the fishing industry.

Regulatory compliance remains the prerogative of the government and respective departments which need to play an active role along with non-regulatory approaches (such as markets-based approach) to effectively manage our oceans.  However, over the years there has been a decline in enforcement with limited updating of management policy and regulations, which is a barrier to systems change. 

Consumer shifts

Implementing sustainable seafood campaigns aimed at driving systemic transformation in developing countries, like South Africa, presents its own unique opportunities and challenges.

 A challenge and an opportunity have been a shift in the target audience that consumes seafood along with the increasing demand for seafood in the post-Apartheid era. Many younger, black South Africans with disposable income are eating more aspirational seafood, particularly sushi and poke. This is supported by the presence of fresh sushi in all major retailers geographically across the country.

For WWF-SASSI, this has meant pivoting its messaging, reach and types of behavioural nudges so that it appeals to this new target audience, while not losing its established audiences. 

Post 1994 also brought with it the concerns of the historically fragmented small-scale fishing community who felt they were being excluded and further marginalised because many of their target species are red-listed by WWF-SASSI. 

Essentially, like all voluntary seafood rating schemes and certifications, WWF-SASSI is an ecological rating system and only recently has the human dimension been considered in the rating of a species. As a result, many small-scale fishers that rely on fishing for their livelihoods, perceive transitioning to only catching and selling sustainable species as a threat to income and RSPS members’ commitment of not selling red further limits their access to market.

There is an opportunity here to engage small-scale fishers about how assessments are done and how indigenous knowledge can be used to include a human dimension into what is primarily an ecological assessment, but this in itself presents other challenges.

Global geopolitics

The broader context of globalisation has also had an impact. Seafood is one of the most traded commodities and in South Africa, 50% of everything that is caught is exported due to international markets providing better economic returns for sustainable products and better quality seafood.  Conversely, cheaper unsustainable seafood species are being imported to meet local demand.

For example, recent global geopolitical upheavals have significantly affected the South African seafood market operating in a weak economy. For instance, the Russian/Ukrainian conflict has resulted in European Union sanctions on Russian seafood exports.

Hence, the South African seafood market has been flooded with unrated Russian pollock, Russian sardine and other species. These cheaper imports help service the local market and address supply chain uncertainty but come coupled with poor infrastructure, unrated status and the lack of traceable systems that hinder the effectiveness of sustainable seafood campaigns and long-term supply chain transformation. 

These perspectives highlight the complex interplay between awareness campaigns, market forces, regulatory frameworks, and environmental sustainability in the seafood industry.

Continued success hinges on continued advocacy that underscores the necessity for a multifaceted approach, integrating market-based approaches and lobbying for effective regulatory enforcement to achieve long-term structural change. In short, the quintessential message 20 years later is that the road to seafood sustainability is a journey and not a race.