Marine Policy 31 (2007) 308–313 The rise of seafood awareness campaigns in an era of collapsing fisheries Jennifer L. Jacquet à , Daniel Pauly The Sea Around Us Project, The Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4 Received 7 August 2006; accepted 14 September 2006 Abstract The human appetite for seafood has intensified and so has overfishing and damage to marine ecosystems. Recently, the response to the fisheries crisis has included a considerable effort directed toward raising the seafood awareness of consumers in North America and Europe. The resulting campaigns aim to affect the seafood demand and to lead to a sustainable seafood supply. Though there are indicators of some regional successes, lack of support by the Asian market and the proliferation of self-serving seafood labels are but two of the many significant limitations of these campaigns. This contribution investigates the difficulties and successes of seafood awareness campaigns, as well as the need for indicators of campaign effectiveness. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Eco-label; Fisheries; Marine ecosystems; MSC; NGO; Seafood; Social marketing 1. Introduction Atlantic halibut, now described as ‘America’s favorite whitefish,’ was considered unpalatable in the early 1800s. By the 1830s, tastes had changed and a market for halibut developed, which led to a vigorous fishery in New England and Nova Scotia [1]. In less than 20 years, inshore halibut stocks of the Western Atlantic collapsed and have not recovered since [2]. Likewise, until the 1930s, Atlantic bluefin tuna were discarded as trash fish in the waters around Denmark [3]. In 2001, a 200-kg Atlantic bluefin tuna sold for just under US$175,000 at a Tokyo auction [4]. It is mainly to feed this market that the tuna fishery has depleted the Atlantic bluefin’s spawning biomass to 20% of 1970 levels [5]. Fish fillets and fish sticks were originally made mostly from cod. After cod was depleted nearly everywhere it occurred, these fish products were replaced by haddock, then redfish, and then, lately, by Pacific pollock [6]. The market for seafood may be dynamic, but its consequences are uncomfortably static and predictable. The rising global market demand for seafood has led to an increase in industrial fishing coupled with fisheries mismanagement. The result has been overfishing, the collapse of innumer- able fish populations (e.g., [7]) and the destruction of ocean habitat (e.g., [8]). Fisheries have fully exploited more than half of the world’s fish stocks [9] and drastically altered ecosystems are left in their wake [10]. As human consumption of fish has doubled in the last 30 years [11], the world is now eating down the marine food web. Invertebrates and low-trophic level fish are replacing piscivorous species such as cod and swordfish. Rock and Jonah crab, at one time discarded as bycatch, are now marketed in spring rolls and crab congee. The change in public taste is essentially a reflection of the changes in marine ecosystems. The expansion of bottom-trawl fishing during the 1980s devastated benthic communities and further altered eco- systems. After the removal of predators and competitors, jellyfish have flourished in the Bering, South China, and Black Seas [12]. The seafood market has adapted to these changes and the world harvest of jellyfish is now well over 250,000 tonnes annually, with consumption occurring primarily in Japan [13]. Jellyfish, however, do not appeal to the palate of consumers in the West, nor do they indicate healthy marine ecosystems. Thus, pressure has built to complement ARTICLE IN PRESS bwww.elsevier.com/locate/marpol 0308-597X/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2006.09.003 à Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 604 822 2731. E-mail address: j.jacquet@fisheries.ubc.ca (J.L. Jacquet).