Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly directs the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which guides North American consumers and businesses in supporting ocean-friendly fisheries and aquaculture through their purchasing decisions. She oversees outreach, business engagement and science for the organization, whose reports help shape seafood purchasing decisions for more than 17,500 retail stores and food service locations across North America.
SeafoodSource: You started at Seafood Watch in 2001 and have watched it evolve over the last 15 years. What changes have occurred during that time?
Kemmerly: Seafood Watch started in 1999 but it was 2001 when we got our first grant funding to launch a bigger program with pocket guides on sustainable seafood. When the program started it was focused on changing consumer behavior. We thought if enough consumers made enough noise at point-of-sale retail and restaurants we’d have businesses making commitments to sustainable seafood purchasing. By 2006 and 2007, major companies including Walmart and the Compass Group made very public seafood commitments, and to me that was a major tipping point for the entire movement. The pace of change at which we saw retail and foodservice commit was incredible and it forced NGOs to work together to respond to businesses’ needs. There were so many businesses coming to the table that we had to be more organized in terms of getting them the information they needed.
SeafoodSource: What kind of growth have you seen in the Seafood Watch pocket guides that inform consumers about sustainable seafood choices?
Kemmerly: The pocket guide follows a regional approach, and in the early 2000s we had 20 zoos and aquariums partnering with us to distribute them. As we expanded to different regions, we worked with the stakeholders to identify what fisheries and farms were better environmental performers and needed to be on our list. Today we have about 200 zoos, aquariums and conservation groups working with us in the U.S. alone, and more than 50 million pocket guides have been distributed. We’re creating epicenters of activity to keep the issues salient.
SeafoodSource: What would you consider your biggest challenge thus far at Seafood Watch?
Kemmerly: Keeping pace with the speed of business. When you get hundreds of businesses engaged and they’re purchasing from hundreds of suppliers, trying to get the information disseminated to all these different groups is a challenge. Limited data availability is another problem. A lot of seafood is coming from areas where there isn’t much information on sustainability. But the more the companies engage, the more these fisheries and farms know they have to ramp up their sustainability efforts so they can get market access.
SeafoodSource: What are the issues facing Seafood Watch today, and what are some of the solutions you would offer to address those issues?
Kemmerly: Seafood Watch is a market-based project, which means we’re trying to use the power of the market to make a change. At the same time we need policy to be reforming. In my opinion, it’s not one or the other. Both have to be happening. Ultimately success is when you don’t need a market-based program because policy and enforcement are in place to manage fisheries and farms well.
SeafoodSource: What are your goals at Seafood Watch in the next five years?
Kemmerly: To work with those producers at fisheries and farms that are trying to respond to this market demand. We have a lot of small scale fisheries in developing nations that are interested in making improvements but don’t have funding or capacity. So we are trying to ally with stakeholder groups in those region to figure out how all the various partners can help them make the improvements they need. It’s not fair for the North American market to throw out demands without also recognizing the tools necessary for those demands to be met. We don’t want to see things linger on the red list. We want to use a multi-stakeholder approach to drive the improvements necessary and drive those items off the red list.
SeafoodSource: To what extent are women playing an increasingly large role in the seafood industry?
Kemmerly: I’ve been involved in marine conservation since 1996 and when I’d go to council meetings on regional fisheries management or marine conservation conferences, it was extremely male-centric. The Boston Seafood Show audience was more diverse but still predominantly male and the role of women was more to showcase the project. Today, you walk into Seafood Expo North America and it’s a total shift. There are still fewer women on the floor, but their role is to inform. In the conservation community, there’s more gender equity happening at large. The seafood industry is a little slower but I still see a lot of powerful women taking on important roles. It will continue to evolve but it’s still not perfect.
SeafoodSource: Given the opportunity to address a room filled with seafood industry leaders such as yourself, what is the one nugget of wisdom you would offer them as your closing remark?
Kemmerly: I’d advise them to continue with multi-stakeholder efforts. We have to work with producers on the ground to understand their challenges. It’s easy for all of us to set standards and expectations, but when you get on the ground and look at the realities needed to make those changes, we need a strong dose of pragmatism and that intimate understanding to make it happen. We have to understand people’s challenges before barking demands.
