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This article was originally posted as an op-ed on Triple Pundit as part of their ongoing Sustainable Seafood channel. Exposés of deception and abuse in food supply chains have become disturbingly routine. Whether we’re hearing about pink slime or horsemeat passed off as beef, the news is consistently unsettling: We can’t trust what we’re eating. Seafood is no exception to this pattern. More than one-third of our seafood is mislabeled in North America. And upwards of 24 million tons of seafood is caught and sold illegally every year. A just-published report from University of British Columbia…

Image credit: Jess Reeder Talking trash on the docks is nothing new. But talking how to turn “trash fish”— fish that comes up in the net that is in less demand—into treasured bounty is a different story. And the idea offers hope for creating new markets that can benefit both fishers and fish. The opportunity rests on the fact that there’s a lot of fish going to waste in the world. According to a recent Oceana report, US fisheries discard an astounding two billion pounds per…

Graphic taken from FishWise's report entitled Trafficked II: An Updated Summary of Human Rights Abuses in the Seafood Industry Sometimes, what you don’t see is what matters. Walking the floor of Seafood Expo North America, the fabulous displays of fish from around the world are pure eye candy for any seafood lover. What those colorful fillets don’t reveal, however, are the human rights abuses that currently mar the global seafood trade. Co-led by Steve Trent with the Environmental Justice Foundation and Myriah Boyle, Program Director at…

At almost every step of the seafood supply chain, the modern slams into the archaic.  Nowhere is this more apparent than on the tradeshow floor of Seafood Expo North America. Located near the historic waterfront of one of the nation’s oldest cities, the vast interior of the Boston Convention Center is transformed into a labyrinth of glistening glass cases displaying local catch and exotic curiosities; sleek booths that look more like nightclubs than seafood shops; and industrial displays of the high-tech equipment for processing,…

This week, sustainable seafood got its own channel. The triple-bottom-line online news and journalism powerhouse, Triple Pundit, launched Sustainable Seafood: the Business of a Healthier Catch as their most recent topic in which to explore the business and social wins of sustainability. The global seafood industry is an enormous, complex tangle of businesses, biology, economics, policy, and deep-rooted cultural practices—it’s not an easy ocean to navigate. But, Triple Pundit is expert at proving the business case for sustainability in complex systems, including fashion and forestry.  And if the first article in the series…

There’s a new opportunity to learn how to design to save the world: a $10K scholarship from MFA Design for Social Innovation. Just announced, the scholarship honors the three decades of innovative and inspiring work by Paul Polak to transform traditional approaches to poverty alleviation. Polak, CEO and Founder of Windhorse International, has helped design and launch extremely low-cost products that can generate income, offering millions of people a pathway out of poverty. He is an expert in how to use business as a positive disruptive force, a strategy…

Eat your hearts out Shark Tank fans. This week, twenty-one entrepreneurs will be pitching their innovative ideas in a competition that actually has to do with marine life—and after months of top-notch business coaching, odds are, these opportunities would drive even Mark Cuban and Co into a funding frenzy. Today is the last day for the two-day finale of Fish 2.0, the first-ever business plan competition for the seafood industry. Three winners will be selected to receive cash prizes, but the value of Fish 2.0 for most entrants…

Published on February 20th by Core77.com. Read the original article here. When I began my journey to understand global overfishing, I knew that it was a sprawling and complex tangle of intertwining problems touching the spheres of policy, commerce, environment and livelihood. Now, almost five years in, I see its complexity through the stories of people I've met who live in that tangle: The New England fisherman whose house was firebombed when he dared to embrace policy reform. The shark researcher who once used a tag he'd…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12 December 2012 Future of Fish selected as Finalist for the 2012 Katerva Award Katerva names Future of Fish one of the 51 "new ideas that will change our world" Future of Fish has been selected as one of five Finalists in the Food Security category for the 2012 Katerva Award, which has been described by Reuters as the Nobel Prize of Sustainability. The Award highlights the most innovative projects from around the world, seeking out groundbreaking ideas with the potential…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 3, 2012 Environmentally and Socially Conscious Seafood Distributor Lands Loan to Expand Sales of Sustainable Fish to College Campuses Nationwide (New York, NY) Future of Fish, a business incubator for ocean-stewarding entrepreneurs, announces the placement of a $250,000 working capital loan with one of its cohort members, Sea to Table, a Brooklyn-based seafood distributor that provides sustainably harvested fish to restaurants and institutions nationwide. The business will use the financing to expand its sales to university campuses across the U.S.…

CharitySub, a subscription-model fundraising organization, has selected Future of Fish as a featured nonprofit within the larger topic of sustainable seafood, the organization's cause for September. CharitySub subscribers pledge $5 a month, and each month, they vote on which of the three hand-selected featured nonprofits gets the aggregated sum of their subscription money. Each month highlights a different social or environmental issue, and the organization's intent is to act as a means for budding philanthropists to learn about important issues and meet organizations they…

Journalist Rob Walker and semiotics analyst Joshua Glenn undertook a fascinating experiment recently to see whether story changes the value of an object. They collected an assortment of 100 yard sale oddities, purchased for an average of $1.25 each, and then asked notable writers to invent fictional histories for the items. Even though the descriptions were clearly labeled as fiction, the storied objects collectively sold for nearly $8,000 on ebay. As human beings, we are wired for connection, and hence, we’re wired for story.…