Sustainability in Seattle: Your official guide to the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit

Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. is welcoming more than 580 sustainable seafood experts from around the world this week – from 5 to 7 June – for the 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit (SWSS) to tackle some of the industry’s leading questions and topics surrounding its decades-long conservation movement. SeafoodSource, the official media source for the summit, is on hand in the Emerald City, delivering up-to-date coverage live from the conference floor. 

A keynote address, titled “Sustainable Seafood at 20: Looking Back at the Road Ahead,” will launch the three-day long premier seafood sustainability conference on Monday, followed by a plenary panel reflecting on the high points, challenges and teachable moments that have arisen since the sustainable seafood movement began in 1997. 

From there, day one’s focus will shift the spotlight over to seafood consumers in the second plenary of the conference, “Fish Talk: How do we have useful conversations about seafood?” The panel discussion will hone in on why Americans’ French fry consumption is twice that of seafood, and what seafood marketers can do to reverse that trend. Five communications and marketing experts are on deck for the day’s second plenary, including: Susan Marks, sustainability director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI); Elizabeth Powell, executive vice president at global marketing and PR firm Edelman; Scott Nichols, founder of the sustainable aquaculture consultancy Food’s Future; award-winning television producer Heidi Hanson; and National Aquarium Director of Seafood TJ Tate, who is currently developing a nationwide consumer awareness campaign on sustainable aquaculture.  

Following the keynote and subsequent plenaries, attendees will be able to participate in one of four available sessions in the afternoon, focusing on aquaculture on world fish supplies; consumer engagement with seafood brands; climate-driven changes felt by fisheries and aquaculture; and fishing vessels audits for better transparency, according to Diversified Communications, which organizes the summit alongside SeaWeb. 

A final plenary investigating how pre-competitive collaboration can drive change at scale will close out the educational programming for the day. From there, SeaWeb attendees will gather for the presentation of the finalists for the Seafood Champion Awards, which recognizes individuals and companies on the front lines of a more sustainable seafood industry. An honoree for the awards is chosen in each of four categories: leadership, innovation, vision and advocacy. Check SeafoodSource’s Twitter feed and the SeaWeb Seafood Summit landing page on our website for live coverage of the event. 

SeafoodSource plans to provide 360-degree coverage before, during and after the summit. This includes updates on our social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook using the official show #SWSS17 hashtag, as well as in our e-newsletters and on the SeafoodSouce website. Have some SWSS17 news you want to share and promote? Send it to us at [email protected].

Be sure to also follow the SeaWeb Seafood Summit on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Google+. More event details, including a complete synopsis of the conference program, can be found here: www.seafoodsummit.org.