Momo Kochen is a technical fisheries specialist with more than 15 years of global experience working on issues present in small-scale fisheries. She is currently the managing director of Ireland-based consultancy Moceans Environmental Consultants and serves as a senior fellow on small-scale fishery interventions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Cecilia Blasco is the director of SmartFish Rescate de Valor AC, a Mexican nonprofit dedicated to strengthening smallscale fisheries and connecting them to responsible seafood markets.
Jaz Simbolon is the director of Bali, Indonesia-based NGO MDPI and is the commissioner of MDPI’s social enterprise Sahabat Laut Lestari.
Chris Kastern has served as director of growth at ABALOBI Fisheries since 2018, focusing on engaging with the small-scale fisheries sector from a technical and social enterprise perspective.
Under Kochen’s guidance, the SmallScale Fisheries Tech and Markets Intermediary Collective was established in 2024 to bring all of these organizations together to identify ways to more efficiently and effectively support small-scale fishers.
Seafood2030 spoke with panelists of “Between Net & Market: Intermediaries Navigating Traceability and Transparency in Small-Scale Fisheries,” taking place on 23 April from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in Room CC 5.3, and members of the collective about the realities of implementing traceability in small-scale fisheries.
SeafoodSource: Can you tell us about the collective you are organizing to support the work of small-scale fishers?
Kochen: We’re bringing together small-scale fishery intermediaries and organizations that work directly with small-scale fisheries at the community level, working to support responsible fisheries management and healthy, economically viable fishing communities. These intermediaries can be NGOs such as MDPI, social enterprises like ABALOBI or Smartfish, or responsible companies like BlueYou.
One of our focus areas is creating efficiencies and improving the quality of documents and guidance. There is already quite a bit of information that can be shared so we are not duplicating efforts; we can identify the best way to communicate quality handling protocols, for example. We are also looking at metrics used to report to communities, investors, or market partners.
Our second focus area is looking at financing for small-scale fishers; less than 1 percent of ocean finance is going to small-scale fishers, and there are barriers to financing, such as established fishing rights. How can we get more financing flowing to small-scale fishers through mechanisms like pooled funds to support the implementation of traceability systems or subscriptions?
How can we attract capital to small-scale fishers while providing a due diligence mechanism for investors? Those are the issues that, if addressed, could drive change at scale.
Traceability is a good example of an issue where the collective can add value for small-scale fisheries, communities, markets, and supply chains. We know traceability is possible in small-scale fisheries, and we also know that it is very different from traceability in industrial fisheries, so how do we fill knowledge gaps and share lessons that ensures traceability can adapt to small-scale fisheries? How do we fill finance gaps or create shared funds that can support healthy small-scale fisheries and their ability to deliver responsible products to market?
SeafoodSource: Kochen said that traceability is very doable in small-scale fisheries but different from industrial fisheries traceability. Is that your experience, and how are you making it work in Mexico?
Blasco: At SmartFish, we have been using different digital traceability systems since 2018 with small-scale fisheries. In our model, any product that we are supporting market access for has to have digital traceability. This is an imperative. We think that for a product to have recognition in the market, it must have a clear origin.
I also think traceability is an imperative for the entire seafood system. Trends in the market and regulation point to a world that is becoming increasingly digital and traceable. Catches are registered and will always be registered because money is changing hands. The challenge is how to digitalize that so that it’s accessible for decision-making at the producer level. A big part of our push for traceability at the cooperative level is to have digital information that can be used to make better management decisions and become more competitive in the marketplace.
That same information is crucial for all buyers along the supply chain to know both where the product is coming from and ensure food safety. If you’re a buyer, you really want to know that the product has been correctly handled and refrigerated promptly; otherwise, you’re buying a product that could spoil very quickly.
We know the change that has to happen is a move toward digital, and the challenge is covering the costs for development, first adopters, and revising the program. An advantage of digitization is that once you have a system in place, adding additional users has a much smaller cost than adding the first users.
In the case of SmartFish, we have worked with different systems. We learned about the vision of traceability from Tom Kraft at Insite Solutions. He insisted that having a good inventory control system is the goal, and traceability is a part of that. So, that has been our focus with the fisher cooperatives. At the end of the day, what you’re gaining from using digital traceability is much better inventory control, knowing what’s where, where it came from, and how much you have to sell.
SeafoodSource: Are the challenges of implementing traceability in small-scale fisheries in Indonesia amplified because of how big, dispersed, and diverse the fisheries are?
Simbolon: We have communities in Indonesia that are managing their fisheries, often tuna, responsibly and need to comply with regulations in the U.S. and the E.U. to access those markets. A big challenge in Indonesia is implementing traceability with a high degree of consistency across the spread-out island communities we work with.
At MDPI, we are also trying to make everything digitized – working with fishermen and middlemen to digitize their receipts and allowing them to print out the traceability code and put it on the tail of the fish; when the fish reaches the factory, they can take a picture and get the information from the QR code.
Cost of implementation is an issue in Indonesia, as international regulations are a driver for more traceability but a sluggish economy is not.
Luckily, MDPI has experience implementing multiple oversight programs including FairTrade and Marine Stewardship Council certification. We have been able to work on the challenges of small-scale, remote island fisheries and identify how to most efficiently create value for fishers, markets, and supply chains. On one hand, we are educating fishers and processing factories on how to implement traceability practices and how to use our Trace Tales program. At the same time, we also have to work with the supply chain and markets to ensure we are addressing the right issues, and also trying to make the entire system GDST-compliant.
So, we can make traceability work in small-scale fisheries, but it takes some work to socialize the process with fishers and processors, make the technology work for the whole supply chain, and, most importantly, deliver value to all parties.
MDPI has a very positive relationship with the Indonesian government and has found a number of great supply chain companies willing to work with small-scale fisheries. With so many small fishing communities, lots of technical and administrative issues to address, and managing different market and regulatory requirements, coordination across stakeholder groups has been essential to helping small-scale fishers deliver responsible products to buyers looking for new supplies of quality fish. I hope more companies recognize how engagement in these efforts can return real value back to the buyers.
SeafoodSource: Through your work at ABALOBI, can you share what supply chain companies can do to support small-scale fisheries?
Kastern: A great first step is simply understanding just how much of what a company currently sources originates from small-scale fishers. Identifying business value derived from small-scale fisheries in a supply chain can support improvements and open future opportunities which, in turn, can deliver more responsible and diverse products to market.
The second opportunity for supply chain companies to support small-scale fisheries would be to really look at requirements being pushed down the supply chain. Are those requirements appropriate for all fisheries? Are they aligned with other market or regulatory requirements? Is there understanding of the potential cost burden that is being created at source? Organizations like ABALOBI are improving practices and traceability of small-scale fisheries to access markets, but unaligned, unintentional, or expensive requirements mean buyers will not be able to access that supply due to the potential cost burden. Complexity and cost really make it more difficult for small-scale fishers to find that foothold that can help them access new markets, especially in more lucrative export markets.
Supporting alignment initiatives such as the GDST would be another opportunity for companies to support small-scale fishers. GDST is sometimes thought of as an industrial traceability standard, but more standardized data-collection protocols and processes make it so much easier at the fishery level for both industrial and smallscale fisheries. Having to collect multiple types of data in different formats for different buyers who each have different requirements is a nonstarter for small-scale fisheries, as the costs of implementation simply outweigh the benefits.
Supply chain companies should also understand that small-scale fisheries are very interested in traceability and can deliver verification of compliance and other market needs, but the goal for small-scale fisheries is much more holistic. It is about visibility, in some cases proof of existence, and recognition for their contribution to global seafood markets.
ABALOBI’s approach is to take a more humancentric approach. If we can make it work for small-scale fishers and understand how to create value with them, the risk and data issues can be incorporated into the process, and markets and supply chains can reap the long-term benefits. The key is knowing that traceability can work in small-scale fisheries if we recognize and accommodate how they are different from industrial fisheries.
For suppliers sourcing from industrial fisheries, traceability is primarily about managing the complexity of industrial output. For a small-scale fisher, however, traceability is a digital footprint that proves they caught the fish legally and responsibly, allowing them to bypass exploitative practices and access global markets that demand sustainability credentials they otherwise couldn’t afford to engage with.
