Post-implementation evaluation of the United States’  Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) is urgently needed as its future is uncertain, with implications for the SIMP and other potential programs. The SIMP is a traceability program aimed at reducing imports of seafood products that are of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) origin or associated with seafood fraud. The SIMP has been controversial, and a proposed expansion was tabled in late 2023. Instead, a longer and more public-facing process is underway to consider what expansion could entail and ways to enhance and strengthen the SIMP’s overall impact and effectiveness, with the goal of formulating recommendations on next steps.

ACS and colleagues recently conducted an evaluation of the policy. Published in the journal Ambio, we qualitatively examined the SIMP’s current scope and design by synthesizing publicly available trade data along with measures of IUU fishing and seafood mislabeling. We found prioritized shipments amounted to 33% of 2016 imported tonnage. The SIMP species groups had higher IUU scores and mislabeling rates relative to non-SIMP groups, but the difference was consistent with random prioritization, suggesting potential benefits from program expansion. Furthermore, two-thirds of imported volume lacked a mislabeling rate and 5% lacked species information, underlining the urgent need for improved open-access data on globalized seafood supply chains.

The production of seafood, captured from or cultivated in the ocean, will need to expand in the coming decades to meet population- and income-driven demand. Accordingly, there has been recent focus on exploring seafood from a wider food systems perspective. However, visions of what constitutes progress towards a sustainable food system diverge. A key underexplored actor, critical in seafood systems, are restaurateurs and chefs. Both are opinion leaders, who can disproportionally influence food systems and the general public. One notable example is the 1998 Give Swordfish a Break campaign that targeted chefs, urging them to temporarily stop serving swordfish. Over 700 chefs boycotted swordfish, which influenced several policy and management changes that purportedly contributed to population recovery. Peru provides another example, where celebrity chefs hold huge influence. A 2014 poll of likely voters revealed that 23% would have voted for Gastón Acurio for president—perhaps the perhaps the country’s most celebrated chef and known for promoting food sustainability and security. Because a large percentage of seafood is consumed in restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs (hereafter, collectively referred to as restaurateurs) can play a major role in influencing what seafood products the public consumes. In 2017, for example, US consumers spent ~$70 billion on seafood at food service establishments compared to ~$32 billion at home. Yet unlike consumers, there has been little research on the decisions and views of restaurateurs with respect to seafood sustainability.

ACS and colleagues recently published a study that explored Chilean restaurateurs’ contexts, decisions, and views on seafood sustainability. Published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, we used a mix methods approach to provide insights into restaurateurs supporting sustainable seafood. Menus in Chile are diverse and dominated by domestic and wild-caught sources. Restaurateurs are willing to participate in traceability programs, especially when it is for both sustainability and health safety reasons. But, they believe that seafood is an elite resource and high prices are inhibiting access. They also believe patrons care little about seafood sustainability yet are willing to pay a premium for it. This contradiction suggests a mechanism for activating values via situational factors. While demand and benefits for seafood traceability programs appear present, challenges threaten successful implementation. Complex socio-economic factors, such as affordability, elitism, and inequity, need to be integrated into traceability program design to contribute to the necessary transformation of seafood systems.

The success of conservation efforts for imperiled and endangered wildlife species relies on private landowners, yet a definitive model of landowner cooperation remains elusive. Landowner characteristics are sometimes related to program participation in conservation programs for at-risk species, but consistent patterns of participation have not emerged. A new paper by ACS and colleagues at Virginia Tech and Oregon State University explores the multiple pathways to participation in a conservation program. Published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, the research explores the multiple pathways by which demographics, rootedness, resource dependence, environmental attitudes, social influence, and program structure intersect to jointly explain participation in a federally funded cost-share program to help prevent the Lesser Prairie-Chicken from being listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

We conducted structured interviews across three ecoregions with 64 participants and 22 nonparticipants. We analyzed the data using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, an approach that identifies the multiple combinations of conditions related to engagement in the program. We found that two concepts, landowner characteristics and social influence, were most commonly associated with participation while profiles representing typical landowner tropes performed poorly. Also, a positive effect of encouragement by agency representatives suggests that agency staff play a central role in determining participation. It also suggests landowners’ decision processes may not be as deliberative as the literature on private lands conservation suggests. The results of our case study suggest new avenues for research that explicitly consider the role of heuristics in decisions to participate.

Media outlets, governments, academics, and NGOs are increasingly recognizing and documenting seafood fraud. Policies are being designed and revamped in an attempt to reduce seafood mislabeling. And, more and more groups are testing products for mislabeling. Despite the increased attention, however, we still know very little about the consequences of seafood mislabeling. Evidence for negative impacts has been largely limited to hypotheses and anecdotes.

A new paper by ACS’s Gloria Luque, Josh Donlan, and colleagues provides a system-level analysis to show that conditions exist for seafood mislabeling to lead to negative outcomes. They combined multiple data sources to characterize the mislabeling landscape for the entire US seafood supply. Doing so allowed them to estimate how much mislabeled seafood Americans are consuming every year. That statistic, known as mislabeled apparent consumption, turns out to be a lot: somewhere between 420-550 million pounds of seafood, which exceeds total seafood landings of all but three ports in the United States. That’s more than a pound of mislabeled seafood for every American.

The majority of species at risk of being listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) rely on habitat located on privately-owned land. There are lots of programs in the U.S. that seek to incentivize private landowners to manage their land to benefit at-risk species prior to any regulatory triggers, which is often referred to as prelisting conservation. Although a critical mass of participation is necessary to produce the landscape-level benefits needed for species recovery, an understanding of what motivates private landowner willingness or unwillingness to participate in prelisting conservation programs is often overlooked as a key factor in their success.

In the journal Human Dimensions of Widlife, ACS and colleagues published a study that used the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiative (LPCI) as a case study to explore the characteristics and motivations of private landowners who were willing or unwilling to enroll in a decade-long program to protect the lesser prairie-chicken. The bird’s distribution has been reduced by >90% over the past century and threats to its habitat persist. The LPCI was launched in 2010 by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to help ranchers and farmers voluntarily enhance habitat and prevent an ESA listing while also aligning with ranching and agricultural operations. Throughout the range of the lesser prairie-chicken, we surveyed ranchers and farmers that where LPCI participants with active or completed contracts and nonparticipants from across the region. Declining participation in the LPCI was a motivating factor for our case study.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is one of the most pressing issues impacting fisheries management and the conservation of marine biodiversity. In some cases, it contributes directly to species endangerment. More broadly, IUU activities directly inhibit the recovery and sustainable management of fisheries stocks and precipitate indirect impacts on biodiversity through unsustainable fishing practices. They are also often connected to labor abuses, as well as the loss of billions of dollars in economic benefits. Thus, reducing IUU fishing is a national priority for many countries and doing so is considered to be a high-benefit means of improving the state of many fisheries.

Yet, characterizing IUU fishing is challenging due to its clandestine nature and scarcity of data. Illegal catch is rarely, if ever, known. Current approaches to estimate IUU activity are often 1) challenging due to lack of data, 2) time- and resource-intensive, and 3) hard to replicate across space and time. Further, some methodologies have been criticized and challenged due to lack of transparency and potential biases. For many stakeholders, there is desire to complement existing IUU assessments with regular and repeatable information on illegal fishing that is attainable with limited time and resources.

A new paper by ACS and colleagues uses expert elicitation methodologies to estimate illegal fishing activity from enforcement officials in Chile’s national fisheries agency (Servicio Nacional de Pesca y Acuicultura, SERNAPESCA). Published in Scientific Reports, it provides a national illegal fishing baseline for Chile.

The documentation of mislabeling has raised concern over the identity, value, and safety of seafood. A study by Gloria Luque and Josh Donlan characterizes seafood fraud globally and estimates, for the first time, mislabeling rates and their uncertainty for a variety of products. By analyzing 27,000 samples that have been tested for mislabeling, the study demonstrates that for most seafood products mislabeling rates are lower than commonly reported. It also confirms that some products have high rates.

Published in Biological Conservation, the authors use statistical modeling to show that the commonly reported mislabeling rate of ~30% is an inaccurate representation of seafood fraud. Mislabeling is often being overestimated and the uncertainty of estimates, which is rarely reported, is significant. The study estimates mislabeling for 28 products for which there was sufficient data, producing an overall average rate of 8%. The authors found no differences between countries, in contrast to previous claims that European countries have lower rates due to more progressive seafood policies. At the global level, the study also failed to detect any differences between location or product form. Fish filets were just as likely to be mislabeled as sushi, irrespective if it came from a supermarket or restaurant.

The authors uncovered a number of challenges in characterizing seafood mislabeling. Over half of all products tested have been done so with just five or less samples. While we documented over 300 studies and 27,000 samples, when effort is broken down by product, sample sizes are frustratingly small: most frequently, a study samples a particular product only once—making it of little utility for estimating mislabeling rates, explains lead author Gloria Luque. More importantly, it can overestimate mislabeling. Dr. Luque uses a coin toss as an analogy, It is not uncommon to flip a coin four times and get three tails, but that does not mean the probability of getting a tail is 75%. Mislabeling rates are most often reported using the average rate of a study, which commonly tests a couple of samples from multiple products. For a variety of reasons, the study average overestimates mislabeling. Some products, however, have high rates—confirming previous research that mislabeling is a concerning issue for certain seafood. This includes Northern Red Snapper, grouper, Common Sole, and European Hake. Yet, more than half of the products included in the study have estimated rates of less than 5%. This does not mean, however, that seafood mislabeling is not having environmental or economic impacts.

Some days it seems like everyone is talking about seafood fraud. Overall, this is a positive development. Policies are being designed and revamped in attempt to reduce seafood mislabeling. And, more and more groups are testing products for mislabeling. Despite the increased attention, however, we still know very little about the causes and consequences of seafood mislabeling. Most of what we know is based on anecdotal observations and untested hypotheses.

An ACS paper in the journal Marine Policy takes a first step towards rigorously exploring the potential incentives for seafood mislabeling. It is often assumed mislabeling is primarily driven by the good ‘ole incentive of increasing profits. That is, the desire to label a lesser-value product as a higher-value one. Economic theory predicts that information asymmetry in seafood products (i.e., sellers have more information about the true quality than buyers) can motivate mislabeling. And, indeed, the mislabeling of lower-value products for more expensive ones has been documented.

What are the main results? First, useful data are scarce. Seafood mislabeling studies rarely present price data: less than 10% of studies do so. Second, current evidence suggest the causes of mislabeling appear to be diverse—it’s more complicated than often appreciated. Across all seafood products, there is no evidence for a simple mislabeling for profit driver. Overall, the difference between the price of a labeled seafood product and its substitute when it was not mislabeled is not different from zero.

In northern Chile, harvesting the brown kelp Lessonia berteroana supports thousands of small-scale fishers and plays a key role in coastal ecosystems. Our recent peer-reviewed study explores why some harvesters do not fully comply with fishing regulations — and what might be done about it. We surveyed nearly 200 kelp fishers across two regions and found that compliance varies widely depending on how the fishery is managed. Fishers operating under territorial user rights (TURFs) generally showed greater compliance than those under broader management plans, likely due to stronger community ownership and local surveillance. Interestingly, most fishers viewed kelp regulations as legitimate and important for sustainability, but weak enforcement meant that the risk of being caught breaking the rules felt low. Strengthening co-management, improving monitoring, and linking economic incentives to responsible harvesting could all help ensure Chile’s valuable kelp forests continue to thrive for both people and nature

Chile’s crab fisheries — especially those harvesting Metacarcinus edwardsii and Cancer porteri — are becoming increasingly important as global demand for crabs rises. Our peer-reviewed study takes a comprehensive look at this growing sector, tracing how crabs move from Chile’s southern coast to markets at home and abroad. We found that while most of Chile’s crabs are eaten domestically, exports — mainly to Belgium and the United States — are stable and could expand as global markets tighten. Yet the fishery faces major sustainability challenges: limited monitoring, patchy stock assessments, and signs of overexploitation for key species. Despite these concerns, local initiatives like a Fishery Improvement Project in southern Chile offer hope. Strengthening management, improving traceability, and empowering fisher communities could help ensure that Chile’s crabs continue to support both healthy oceans and coastal livelihoods