Three SBC member companies – Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd (AFL), Sanford Ltd and Terra Moana Ltd – recently presented perspectives on natural capital and ecosystem services at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in New Orleans.

The Summit is the world’s premier sustainable seafood conference and the NZ team participated in a panel discussion and exploratory workshop as well as networking with international sustainable seafood experts.

Katherine Short (Terra Moana) introduced the context, including the current gaps in the sustainable seafood arena and how ecosystem service and natural capital approaches might address those. Allyn Glaysher (AFL) talked about AFL’s sustainability journey and described their review of their paua operations using the Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) tool, which is the first application of ESR to commercial seafood operations globally. Nia Evans (Sanford Ltd) talked about how the Global Reporting Initiative framework enables Sanford to consider their material risks and dependencies on natural capital and ecosystem services.

Terra Moana Ltd and Future of Fish co-hosted a workshop that explored a natural capital and ecosystem services approach to blocks and breakthroughs to fostering sustainable seafood globally.  Three working groups then developed conceptual pitches for why a company might choose to use natural capital and ecosystem services. AFL, Sanford Ltd, Terra Moana Ltd and Future of Fish are working through options for progressing this work internationally and in New Zealand.

Nia Evans said, “Attending the largest global sustainable seafood conference was an experience – participation raised it to another level. Four key issues stood out for me as priorities for international markets: human rights; food security; traceability and transparency; and Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing. A large emphasis was put on the youth of tomorrow and connecting people with the ocean. When an American at the conference commented, ‘The two largest fishing companies in New Zealand and the Government are all talking at the bar,’ this gave me a sense of pride and realisation that we may feel small in New Zealand but we are way ahead in trying to collaborate to produce premium seafood.”

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