The Top 25: Seafood Sustainability & Conservation

There’s no way around it – 2020 so far has been a year wrought with difficult news and stark changes. A global pandemic has kept most of us apart. It’s made the future harder to imagine. Nevertheless, much of the seafood industry persists in its efforts to stay the course, feeding communities in a time of great need. We hope this year’s Top 25 list similarly nourishes your news feed with something good.

From 1999 to 2018, the editorial team of SeafoodSource and its previous incarnation, SeaFood Business magazine, worked tirelessly to produce a list of the leading North American seafood suppliers based on reported sales figures. Last year, we revamped our process, bringing you a new type of compilation celebrating the Top 25 seafood product innovations that have transformed the North American industry. In 2020, we have once again reshuffled the deck.

In the pages ahead, you’ll find a list of North American seafood suppliers making strides in the realm of sustainability and conservation – and influencing others along the way. To compile this year’s list, the SeafoodSource editorial team conducted an extensive nomination and analysis process involving the consultation of a panel of outside experts renowned in the seafood sustainability community. Our esteemed panel featured FishChoice’s Richard Boot, Teresa Ish of the Walton Family Foundation, James Wright of the Global Aquaculture Advocate, Adriana Sanchez of Seafood Ninja Inc., Guy Dean of Organic Ocean, and Jerry Knecht of North Atlantic, Inc., among others.

In tandem with our panelists’ recommendations, we also accounted for leadership, industry accolades and recognition, pioneering initiatives, partnerships, and industry engagement. This resulting list is one that, we feel, catalogues best practices for driving the industry onward and upward, providing valuable insight into the inner workings of some of seafood’s most promising and prominent sustainability trailblazers. 

“The Top 25: Seafood Sustainability & Conservation” list is categorized alphabetically by supplier name, and is not ranked. Each profile gives an overview of the listed seafood supplier’s recent sustainability history and some of the unique facets informing their approach to environmental and social responsibility and conservation. Several profiles also include in-depth insights from the sustainable seafood influencers themselves, offering a glimpse into the inner workings of some of the industry’s leading policy trendsetters.    

It should be noted that there is more work to be done to ensure healthy oceans, people, and planet. Each of the suppliers listed here is by no means finished with this work. They have all struggled with their sustainability journeys at one time or another, and will most likely continue to do so as new challenges arise. But it’s a fight all seem willing to meet, something we think is apparent in the pages that follow.

SeafoodSource encourages the use of this Top 25 list as an inspirational resource that reflects the modern industry and sustainability trends illuminating seafood’s path toward its most promising and lasting future.

Have seafood sustainability and marine conservation news you'd like to share with SeafoodSource? Reach out to SeafoodSource at [email protected] or Editorial Project Manager Madelyn Kearns at [email protected].