Disparities between sustainability of country-level seafood production and consumption

Ensuring the sustainability of seafood is increasingly important for supporting food security and stable livelihoods in the face of a growing human population. A country's seafood sustainability is often defined by how it manages its fisheries stocks; however, growth in the volume and complexity of global seafood trade has created an increasing disconnect between the sustainability of a country's seafood production and their seafood consumption. Using a global seafood trade database, we demonstrate wide differences between country-specific sustainability of produced versus consumed seafood. Our findings suggest that countries most consistently considered leaders in seafood production sustainability will inevitably consume seafood held to lower sustainability standards through their participation in the global seafood trade network. This issue is exacerbated by an inability to accurately trace the origins of seafood products based on current international trade reporting practices. Our analysis suggests that improved international seafood tracing and sustainability metrics that account for both production and consumption are critical to future efforts to manage global seafood sustainability.