Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Foundation

Programs: See schedule o for program service accomplishments. Sustainable fisheries partnership foundation (sfp) comprises approximately 60 staff and contractors working to engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming, with major projects in asia, europe, and north and south america. Sfp convenes, educates, and advises supply chain stakeholders including major retailers, restaurant chains, seafood brand owners, buyers, producers (fishers), ngos, and fisheries management and scientific institutions to improve fisheries practices and policies. Some of sfp's oldest partners include mcdonald's, walmart, and high liner foods. Today, sfp has established partnerships with approximately 40 of the world's top companies engaged in the seafood trade. A full list of sfp's partners can be found on our web site at www. Sustainablefish. Org. In june 2017, sfp launched the target 75 initiative (t75) at the seaweb seafood summit, with strong support from sfp's partners. This initiative is dedicated to ensuring that 75 percent (by volume) of seafood from a range of strategic seafood sectors comes from fisheries and fish farms that are either sustainably managed or clearly improving by the end of 2020. The target 75 initiative is now the primary strategic objective of sfp's work and is designed to challenge and galvanize the seafood industry to undertake improvement actions. Efforts to reach the 75 percent goal by 2020 are largely focused on our three platforms for fishery and aquaculture improvement: supply chain roundtables (srs), fishery improvement projects (fips), and aquaculture improvement projects (aips). All of the srs have identified those fisheries and aquaculture regions that are key to delivering the target 75 objectives and have prioritized catalyzing fips and aips accordingly. The prioritized sectors that require the most attention are tuna, farmed shrimp, fishmeal/oil, snapper/grouper, crab, octopus, and squid. Sectors that already meet the t75 requirements (or are close) receive less attention, e. G. , wild whitefish and cold-water small shrimp. A main component of sfp's strategy includes improving access to information used to guide responsible seafood sourcing. Sfp implements this strategy in a number of ways, including by catalyzing and advising industry-led fishery improvement projects (fips) and aquaculture improvement projects (aips). A fip or aip is a collaboration among relevant stakeholders to influence policies and management practices and improve the sustainability of fishing and fish farming operations. Once established, a fip functions as a continuous improvement vehicle that aligns the interests of the supply chain. It sets and implements its own improvement objective (using public workplans and measurable milestones) and is designed to be led by industry and to outlive the initial involvement of ngos such as sfp, functioning as long as necessary to achieve sustainability goals. Worldwide, sfp is currently advising improvement in more than 90 fips and aips. Sfp also organizes fish buyers into supply chain roundtables (srs) that oversee the creation of fips and aips in their areas and monitor progress. An sr is a forum for processors, importers, and others that buy directly from a specific seafood sector to work together in a pre-competitive environment to achieve improvements in fisheries or aquaculture. Currently, sfp works with approximately 20 supply chain roundtables. In 2016, sfp began emphasizing industry-driven efforts over sfp initiating fips, aips, and similar projects on its own. Sfp plans and holds many sr meetings to coincide with the major annual seafood industry trade shows in boston and brussels. This gives sr participants a chance to meet in person to discuss progress and related issues, plus it gives sfp the chance to be on hand face-to-face with the participants to answer questions, provide updated data connected to a particular project, and offer additional information. Sfp engages and educates the seafood supply chain by sponsoring annual fisheries forums that provide opportunities for our partners and other stakeholders to meet, learn, share information and lessons learned, and decide strategies for achieving sustainable fisheries. In april 2017, sfp held its americas forum in san jose, costa rica. The americas fisheries and aquaculture forum was attended by 75 participants representing 12 different latin american countries, and 65 percent of attendees were from industry. In addition to the forum, a sustainability 101 training was held for walmart-central america and their suppliers, and a field trip to the coast to visit local industry was attended by several of the us buyer attendees. In may 2017, the european fisheries and aquaculture forum was held in vigo, one of spain's largest and busiest port cities in the country's galicia region. Sixty percent of participants were from industry, 80 percent of attendees were attending the forum for the first time, and 65 percent were from spain. Finally, in november 2017, sfp held its first indonesia fisheries and aquaculture forum, which was attended by 181 participants, 91 percent of whom were from indonesia; 44 percent of participants were from industry (processing companies, retailers, buyers, business associations), 23 percent from the government, and 21 percent from ngos. The agenda integrated government and industry participation and sharing, and included fip and aip showcases, as well as sessions/panels on sustainability, fips, and sfp's target 75 initiative. Another important information tool sfp uses to inform improvement in fisheries is its fishsource program-an online information resource that records the status of fish stocks and fisheries. Sfp created fishsource (www. Fishsource. Com) so that fisheries experts around the world can share their public scientific and technical information and provide major seafood buyers with up-to-date, impartial, actionable information on the status of fisheries and the improvements that are needed to become sustainable. Fishsource currently provides public information on 3,466 wild capture fisheries (with another 204 under development). Since fishsource aquaculture launched in 2018, 40 public profiles have been published and another 9 are under development. Examples of sfp's progress toward globally sustainable fisheries in 2017 include: 1) increasing participation in supply chain roundtables: of 20 srs in 2017, nine increased their number of participants. Further, five srs have gained sufficient support and representation that they are not actively seeking additional participants. As of march 2018, there were 151 distinct companies participating in srs. 2) increasing sr engagement and scope: in 2017, participants from 10 srs engaged in seeking overarching fishery/fip improvements at the national or regional level (with national or regional management bodies). One national-level sr has formed in mexico, focusing on national policy and engaging mexican suppliers in an advocacy group. 3) continuing fip catalyzation: in 2017, eight fips were initiated or reactivated in fisheries within the scope of srs. Among them is a fip for the largest global source of fishmeal: northern-central peruvian anchovy. Another 10 pre-fips have been initiated officially and are working to become publicly recorded and evaluated for progress.