The two keys to building demand for sustainable seafood are greater global collaboration and consumer education, according to panelists at the 2025 Blue Food Innovation summit, which took place 8 to 9 April in London, U.K.
In a session titled “From Catch to Consumer: Building the Future Demand for Sustainable Seafood,” the panelists said consumers around the world claim to prefer sustainable seafood and are willing to pay more for it; however, in reality, they continue to be price-conscious when shopping for seafood.
That gap can be bridged by taking consumer preferences into account and educating them as much as possible, according to Nomad Foods Portfolio Director Jim Shearer.
“Frozen seafood plays a critical role, particularly when it comes to affordability, accessibility, and convenience,” he said. “Fish fingers are often a child’s first encounter with and taste of fish, and we need to work hard to keep them interested through the different age groups.”
Hilton Foods Sustainability Senior Manager Teresa Fernandez added that the problem in advertising a product’s sustainability bonafides is doing so simply and succinctly.
“How do we tell the story of seafood in general terms? Wild-caught and aquaculture have different issues, but how much does the consumer need to know?” she said. “It is important to collaborate to ensure the message matches across the supply chain.”
Victoria Braathen, the U.K. director of the Norwegian Seafood Council, agreed that this is a key issue and that it was important to avoid overwhelming the consumer. She emphasized, though, that innovative communication, modern marketing, and social media were important vectors to bridging the information gap, instead of just relying on messaging on packaging.
“We track consumer sentiment and trends on attitudes toward purchasing and buying seafood, and there are different drivers across the generations. For example, baby boomers are concerned with certification and quality, whereas the younger generation focus more on transparency from catch to shelf,” she said.
This varies by geography, however, as pointed out by Nissui Europe Managing Director Naoto Sato, who said that in Japan, many people live and eat alone, leading to a greater retail emphasis placed on cost-effective, single-portion packs and ease of preparation and cooking.
Though preferences vary, marketing makes a difference everywhere, Sato said, outlining the fact that Japanese consumers traditionally preferred wild-caught fish to farmed in their sushi but the production of year-round high-quality farmed yellowtail and marketing campaigns highlighting farmed fish’s quality has shifted attitudes over the past decade.
In the U.S., similar gains have been made when marketing in collaboration with such organizations as the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), according to Sodexo Culinary Vice President and Global Executive Chef Lloyd Mann.
“We collaborated with ASMI and an NGO in the U.S. and looked at how dishes are named and described to see if this would produce an uplift in sales,” Mann said. “We also looked at opportunities to flip protein, taking flavor as the driver, and found that by substituting Alaska pollock for the main protein in a chicken katsu, for example, sales increased.”
This type of innovation, according to Shearer, is great but needs to become more of the norm, instead of an industry exception.
