Fisheries and aquaculture must pull together and collectively ensure blue foods are part of every conversation taking place around food security and feeding a growing world population, according to Walton Family Foundation Oceans Initiative Lead Teresa Ish.
Speaking at the recent Blue Food Innovation Summit in London, Ish said the reality is that in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) terms, SDG 14 – the goal focused on the ocean, or "Life Below Water" – is the least invested in of all the U.N. goals. As such, the two sectors should closely align their efforts to establish sustainable seafood production, as well as other endeavors like climate mitigation, and ocean management and health, she said.
“For us to be able to ensure that our sectors continue to exist sustainably, it means aquaculture and capture fisheries working together – to ensure that ocean planning happens, food production is considered, and the role of blue foods are not just conversations that are happening in this room but are in every food conversation,” Ish said. “Ocean planning won't happen without us there, and it won't happen with an eye toward food production without us being there.”
To meet the food demands of a world population that’s forecast to reach 10 billion people by 2050, it’s also critical the blue food economy grow production, she said, stressing that while aquaculture harvests now exceed those of wild-capture fisheries – and that almost all the future growth is going to have to come from the farming of aquatic species – fisheries remain essential to overall food security.
Ish said that while capture fisheries are essential to food security, they also offer a different investment environment than aquaculture which requires a different approach.
“They’re definitely investable, but the goal is not to 10-times your production [like aquaculture]. The goal is to hold us steady and keep that output constant over time,” she said. “If our goals are meeting the demand of a population with 10 billion people, doing that without sustainable wild fisheries is not possible.”
Keeping that output of roughly 90 million metric tons (MT) per year is important for food security, and innovation in the space that helps sustain ocean health is key, Ish said.
While innovation is a key area for investment on the wild-catch side, it’s also important to get the basics right in terms of governance, U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Deputy Director for External Fisheries, Negotiations, and Trade Policy Colin Faulkner said.
“The global governance of fisheries is not great, as we know from many RFMOs. Getting those basics right around the global governance of stocks, around data systems, getting them talking to each other, getting them joined up, making them more transparent [are very important],” he said. “Those are very often within the gift of governments. But unfortunately, the global governance system on fisheries hasn't always operated as well as it could … We do need to evolve global fisheries governance if we're going to address [these issues],” he said.
Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) Executive Director Daniel Suddaby agreed with that assessment, adding the tuna industry is desperate for regulatory improvements.
“With tuna, which is feeding hundreds of millions of people with 3 million [metric] tons of protein, we just want some basic management in place,” he said. “It's not innovative; it's 1995 stuff.”
Suddaby said across the 23 managed tuna stocks, only four are adequately managed – which is a problem if companies want to continue being able to source the species and stocks begin to decline. The alliance was formed with the idea that companies can help drive policy and regulation to improve the fisheries to ensure their future business.
Giving the example of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), which had its 29th annual meeting on 13 - 17 April 2025 in La Réunion, Suddaby said none of the stocks have adequate harvest strategies in place, and while some have the paperwork, the RFMO’s color-coding has fish ranging from green to red ratings in terms of fishing pressure.
“We can bring our retailers’ voices to that forum and help drive like-minded states such as the U.K. in adopting better regulations. But more importantly and more powerfully, our partners can work down the supply chain to preferentially source more environmentally friendly tuna,” he said.
A lack of political will in the fisheries regulatory process is a sizeable challenge which is why the seafood industry needs to be involved, Ish said.
“That's one of the reasons why at the Walton Family Foundation, we work to ensure the people closest to the problem are the ones who are generating the solutions,” she said.
In this capacity, the foundation has seen communities asking for better management because they've seen their revenues decline, local businesses shut down, and communities decimated from the impact of overfishing. Ish said that this has in turn created a “powerful set of champions” who are asking to be for their fisheries to be managed, and recovered.
“This is again a great place where aquaculture and fisheries can go hand-in-hand, because aquaculture can support livelihoods while those fisheries recover. We've also seen interest and support from the supply chain, because it's really hard to run a seafood business if you don't have any fish. And then those commercial interests become champions of improved governance,” she said.
Across all of the issues, collaboration on every level will be key, she said.
“This work – to manage our global fisheries – cannot be done without fishermen. It cannot be done without the seafood industry. It cannot be done without governments, and it cannot be done without scientists,” Ish said. “That collaboration and the potential for success and the demonstration of fisheries that have been recovered through those partnerships is really one of the great hopes we have for fishing continuing to be an important part of coastal livelihoods, of the blue economy, and of our global food system.”
