Sustain the Seas: A guide to sustainable seafood (website)

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By Cailey Williams 


    The demand for seafood has drastically increased globally since the 1970s. Today, consumer demand is at an all time high, and wild fish stocks cannot replenish themselves fast enough to keep up. Even though we are so dependent on the ocean and its resources, overexploitation via wild captive fisheries and aquaculture is the biggest threat to the marine ecosystem (Ocean Wise Seafood, n.d.). The commercial fishing industry has adapted harmful fishing practices that lead to population depletion, habitat destruction, and by-catch. Not only does this pose a threat to marine life (including non-commercially sought species), but this also threatens us as seafood consumers. The decrease in the availability of commercially valuable species has created room for seafood fraud, which is the mislabeling of less valuable and more readily available fish species (Oceana, 2013). If the commercial fishing industry continues to use harmful fishing practices without allowing the marine ecosystem to recover, we will no longer be able to enjoy seafood and neither will our future generations. 

    Sustainable fishing is something that I have learned and become particularly passionate about since coming to Eckerd. That being said, the knowledge I have now has been accumulated through various environmental studies courses and my own independent studies. While sustainable seafood is a more popular topic today, it is still not a subject that is well communicated to the general public. Many of the discourses around the commercial fishing industry today believe that the only way for us to save the oceans is for everyone to stop consuming fish altogether. Not only is that not true, but it is completely unrealistic with the cultural and subsistent dependency that many regions have on fish. 

For my project, I wanted to create a website that is a brief introduction to sustainable seafood and what changes we can make as consumers. This website provides enough information for the audience to understand how the commercial fishing industry is harmful to the marine ecosystem as well as resources for visitors to explore and utilize in the future. 


You can visit my website using this link: www.sustaintheseas.weebly.com


    For this campaign, I wanted to provide enough information about the seafood industry while still being visually appealing. I also did not want to provide too much information that would lead to the audience losing interest. My home page welcomes the visitor and explains how this site can be useful to them. There is also a survey at the bottom of the page in which I can receive feedback from the visitors. The next page titled “choose sustainability” describes what makes seafood sources sustainable for both wild caught and aquaculture fish. The next page titled “ocean issues” provides information about how overexploitation leads to overfishing, habitat damage, by-catch and seafood mislabeling in the markets. The “what can you do” page provides the audience with a list of small changes that can be made on the individual level in order to increase the market demand for sustainable seafood. Finally, the “resources” page provides a list of a few sustainable seafood guides that the audience can use to make better decisions when buying seafood in the future. These guides are also hyperlinked so that the audience can explore other sources of information about sustainable seafood and further their own education. At the end of the page, there is information about a local seafood distributor called Sammy’s Seafoods that has created a TRACE program which allows seafood consumers to know exactly where their purchases are coming from. Even though I wanted to include a list of sustainable distributors and restaurants, this provides one sustainable seafood distributor that sources locally and provides seafood to many locations around the Tampa Bay area. Their website is hyperlinked so visitors can explore their Trace program and the restaurants that they supply for. 


    One of the strategies that I thought would be the most effective is to relate all the information back to the audience (seafood consumers), so that the website was not just about sustaining fisheries just for the sake of the fisheries. On the homepage, I included a section called “why should I care?” that talks about how sustainability allows ourselves and future generations to continue with seafood harvests. Under “ocean issues'' I also included a section about seafood fraud to show that the negative consequences of commercial fishing affect the consumers and not just the marine ecosystem.
    My goals for this project were to have at least 25 unique visits to the website. A later goal I developed as I was building the website was to receive feedback so I know what I can do to make Sustain the Seas a more useful source. After the website was published, I shared the link www.sustaintheseas.weebly.com on my social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter) since clicktivism seems like the most effective method of communication during pandemic times. For each social media post, I said to share the link with a fellow seafood lover in hopes that the website would reach more people. As of now, I have 33 unique visits and 101 total page views. I did surpass my goal for site visitors, however I only received 10 responses to the survey. Overall, this was a great learning experience that created a new range of internet communication skills. If I were to do anything differently, I would find more ways to distribute and advertise the website. I would also find a way to make the survey more noticeable so that I can get more constructive feedback from my audience as to how I can better communicate the issue.


References (for project and blog post): 

Fisheries, N. O. A. A. (n.d.). Understanding Sustainable Seafood. NOAA. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/understanding-sustainable-seafood. 

Oceania. (2013). Oceana study reveals seafood fraud nationwide. https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/National_Seafood_Fraud_Testing_Results_Highlights_FINAL.pdf. 

Ocean Issues. Ocean Wise Seafood. (n.d.). https://seafood.ocean.org/sustainable-seafood/ocean-issues/. 

What is Sustainable Seafood? Our Guide. Oceanic Society. (2021, April 26). https://www.oceanicsociety.org/resources/what-is-sustainable-seafood-and-how-do-i-choose-it-your-top-questions-answered/.  

What is sustainable seafood: Marine Stewardship Council (n.d.). What is sustainable seafood | Marine Stewardship Council. https://www.msc.org/en-us/what-we-are-doing/our-approach/what-is-sustainable-seafood. 



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