The Seafood Certification & Ratings Collaboration unites five global programs working together to coordinate our tools and increase our impact so that more seafood producers move along a clear path toward environmental sustainability and social responsibility.

Collaboration members are global seafood certification or ratings programs focused on environmental sustainability and/or social responsibility. The Collaboration’s work is directed by a Steering Committee that includes one individual representative from each program.

Challenges We Aim To Address

The certification and ratings landscape can seem confusing and seafood business and governments need help understanding the value of these tools and how they complement each other. Fisheries and aquaculture producers - particularly in the developing world - need more support to move along the path toward environmental sustainability and social responsibility. And the sustainable seafood movement as a whole needs a shared understanding of the global seafood landscape - its status and trends, what's working and what's not, and where the gaps are - in order to accelerate our collective impact.

Our Purpose

The purpose of the Seafood Certification & Ratings Collaboration is to:

• Coordinate our complementary tools for measuring and improving fishery and aquaculture performance. We are drawing upon our existing standards to create tools to help fisheries and aquaculture define a clear path for improvement as well as working to increase the efficiency of our internal systems for data, auditing, and traceability.
• Communicate clearly with seafood producers and buyers about our tools and the pathway to sustainability. This includes coordinating our outreach to industry in key markets such as the United States, Mexico, and Japan.
• Analyze and track the global landscape of sustainable seafood. We are consolidating our programs’ data on our coverage and impact and published an initial report in early 2019.
• Collaborate to fill gaps and scale impact. We are exploring how we align our efforts to support producers to improve their performance, as well as strengthen national policies that govern fisheries and aquaculture management.

Our Vision

Through our work, we envision:

• Fisheries and aquaculture move along a clear and measurable path delivering continuous improvement toward environmental sustainability and social responsibility.
• Businesses that buy and sell seafood and consumers make decisions based on clear information and support fisheries and aquaculture operations to improve.
• Policymakers make better-informed decisions to manage fisheries and aquaculture production.