Ned Daly is SeaWeb Program Director for The Ocean Foundation. This year, SeaWeb is helping to launch the Seafood Co-Lab, an annual competition in which multi-disciplinary teams (representing business, government, academic and/or the nonprofit sectors) tackle a sustainability challenge facing the seafood industry. Winners are chosen by the seafood community and receive a financial reward as well as logistical and technical support to implement their idea.
SeafoodSource: What is the Co-Lab, and how does SeaWeb think it will boost the seafood industry’s sustainability efforts?
Daly: Broadly, the Seafood Co-Lab is a way to bring the vast seafood industry experience and sustainability expertise to bear on new challenges facing stakeholders, fisheries, and supply chains. Practically, the Co-Lab is a competition that will recognize collaborative efforts addressing sustainability challenges in seafood. The competition will have four finalists and the public will be able to vote on a winner. The winning program will receive a USD 10,000 (EUR 8,025) prize and four representatives from the program will be sent to attend the SeaWeb Seafood Summit [organized as a partnership between SeaWeb and Diversified Communications]. Our hope is the public voting process will help demonstrate to the broader seafood industry and the media what productive collaboration can look like in the seafood industry.
SeafoodSource: What was original idea behind the Co-Lab?
Daly: This will be the inaugural year for the competition. The idea for the Co-Lab came from the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions 2016 Fellows Program. The program was looking for a way to support and increase collaboration in the seafood industry. The Fellows Program had representatives from Fair Trade, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, WWF, Shedd Aquarium, and FishWise – all of whom had seen how effective collaboration can be in addressing the often-complicated challenges facing the global seafood industry. As the idea for the Co-Lab developed, the Fellows conducted a series of industry interviews to ensure the program design would deliver value to industry. The SeaWeb Seafood Summit was identified early in the development process as an ideal location to access the experience, knowledge, and expertise from leaders and early adopters in the global seafood industry. Because of SeaWeb and Diversified’s experience with the Summit Scholars program and the Seafood Champion Awards, we immediately understood the value of this opportunity – we have seen the seafood industry’s willingness to support new stakeholders and collaborate with partners or competitors to make the industry better.
SeafoodSource: How is the Co-Lab program integrated into the SeaWeb Seafood Summit – particularly this year’s summit in Barcelona?
Daly: The Summit is the perfect opportunity for new stakeholders to engage with experts in a broad set of seafood and fisheries issues and peers with experience in implementing responsible management practices, improving supply chains, and increasing the productivity of fisheries and assured supply. For a group of seafood industry stakeholders struggling to address challenges in new geographies or sectors, the collective knowledge and experience of the Summit community can be an incredible resource. The Co-Lab is the platform on which we make that connection. There are two ways we make this connection: 1) through a series of one-on-one meetings with experts at the Summit and afterwards, and 2) a “crowd-sourcing” opportunity during a workshop session in the Summit program. For the one-on-one engagement, the Co-Lab will identify a set of experts based on the winning project’s needs.
SeafoodSource: What are your hopes for the program in the future?
Daly: We’ve seen the seafood industry make incredible advancements in sustainability and responsible management over the last 20 years. Our hope is to bring this success to new challenges, geographies, and sectors through the Co-Lab program. We want the program to grow so that we are identifying a broad range of projects and challenges we can support, but the goal will always be to keep the program focused on bringing new stakeholders into the sustainable seafood community, building personal and professional relationships, and making a difference on the water and in supply chains. Collaboration has been at the heart of the industry’s success over the past 20 years, and as we face new challenges in the next 20 years, we want to make sure that collaboration continues.
