Q&A

Let’s break that down.

‘Sustainability’ is a word often used by people and organisations to describe how they produce, build or plan things. Many are taking positive steps to minimise their environmental impact.

The official UN definition of sustainability is ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

That covers environmental protection, economic growth and social development.

The term ‘ecological sustainability’ is more about maintaining or restoring the integrity of ecosystems and biodiversity. The aim is to prevent degradation, encourage recovery, and build resilience to climate change. It doesn’t stop development, but resource users and the community are expected to be environmental stewards.

Ecological sustainability is the key element in the broader term of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). In Australia this is defined as ‘using, conserving and enhancing the community’s resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, can be increased.’

When SASAL assesses seafood products, the assessment criteria we use focus on maintaining ecosystem integrity and supporting the principles of ESD. In brief the principles are:

  • the conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity
  • the precautionary principle
  • intergenerational equity
  • the integration of environmental, social and economic considerations in decision making
  • the internalisation of external costs e.g. polluter pays.

Actions on these principles are now contained within the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, to which Australia is a signatory. Goal 14 Life below water applies to ‘conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas and marine resources.’

For many years the main news in Australia about the environmental impacts of fisheries had come from overseas.

The cod fishery in the North-West Atlantic collapsed in the 1990s. A few years later it was the Chilean seabass (Patagonian toothfish) fishery off Chile, Argentina and sub-Antarctic islands. Southern bluefin tuna stocks were overfished down to less than 10% of what they were before being targeted by commercial fisheries.

Along with overfishing, seabed habitats were being devastated by bottom trawling, bycatch included vast numbers of seabirds on hooked long lines, and ghost nets were catching large numbers of turtles, sharks and other marine life.

However, similar stories were also emerging in Australia. The orange roughy and gemfish fisheries in south-east Australia collapsed, and bottom trawling, bycatch and ghost nets were also taking their toll. Concerns about the ecological sustainability of Australian seafood production continue.

The following species were listed as overfished in the 2024 Fishery Status report: blue warehou (eastern and western zones), eastern gemfish, school shark, orange roughy (southern and western zones), redfish, john dory, jackass morwong (eastern zone), gulper sharks (Harrison’s dogfish and southern dogfish).

The same report listed as uncertain or undefined the status of pink ling, deepwater sharks (eastern and western zones), silver trevally, elephantfish, black marlin, smooth oreo dory (non-Cascade Plateau) and ribaldo.

Australia’s fisheries are also facing significant challenges from climate change. CSIRO reports that ocean water temperatures in south-western and south-eastern Australia are rising at more than double the global average. Fish species are moving to cooler waters and fisheries management models are struggling to deal with it. As a result, seafood sustainability assessments that focus on ecological integrity will become more important.

Australian and state governments are now more aware of the need to improve and promote the sustainability of the fisheries that they manage.

However, management targets in Australia’s commercial fisheries have been largely based on production criteria i.e. maintaining stable population (stock) levels and catches of the target species.

There has been insufficient attention given to the need for ecological targets that include measures related to bycatch, habitat, ecosystems and the relationship between predators and prey (trophic structure) when defining sustainability.

A major problem for ongoing fisheries management in Australia is the lack of good-quality and current data. Due to their relatively small size, the cost of collecting data is often beyond the resources of the commercial fisheries and the agencies that manage them. Stock assessments are rare or out of date.

Non-government organisations established seafood assessment programs because they were concerned about the impact of seafood production on the marine environment. They were also unconvinced by government and industry data about the ‘sustainability’ of commercial fisheries.

For similar reasons, we began developing our Sustainable Australian Seafood Assessment Program in 2007. It became Sustainable Australian Seafood Assessment Limited (SASAL) in 2025.

Our aim has always been to help improve the health of Australian marine and freshwater environments, and to take the guesswork out of choosing sustainable seafood.

The focus of our assessments is on regional small-scale producers using a set of assessment criteria developed exclusively for our program. These two elements set us apart from other assessment programs. However, our assessment program is one of a number that provide seafood consumers with information about sustainability.

The international Marine Stewardship Council and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council were established in 1997 and 2010 respectively. Seafood Watch in California was founded in 1999 and Ocean Wise in Vancouver in 2005. In Australia the Australian Marine Conservation Society established its seafood assessment program in 2004 (now called GoodFish) and, along with some of the international programs, has criteria-based assessment programs. These programs can vary in their methods and focus, but we encourage seafood producers and consumers to consider which is best for their needs.

The major difference is that the SASAL program uses a unique set of assessment criteria to assess the operations of smaller wild-catch fisheries and seafood farms and the seafood products they produce.

A seafood product is defined by species, location and equipment type. For example, Chris Bolton catches common coral trout in the Coral Sea using hooked hand lines.

Our assessment process also recognises that there are regional differences in how seafood products are produced and in the health of fish stocks and the environment.

We don’t assess ecological sustainability across the entire range of a species that could be targeted by multiple fisheries under different management arrangements.

For example, rather than assessing the catch of barramundi around Australia, we assessed Chris Bolton targeting barramundi in Princess Charlotte Bay, Queensland. Another example is our assessment of Merimbula Gourmet Oysters, a farm that produces Sydney rock oysters in Merimbula Lake. We did not assess all producers of Sydney rock oysters in NSW estuaries.

Although we assess seafood products as either Green, Yellow or Red, we only release details of those graded as Green and Yellow. For a seafood product assessed as ‘Red’, the assessment remains confidential between our company and the producer. As a result, we don’t have a blacklist. We want to encourage seafood producers to work with us on ways their operations can be improved to meet our sustainability criteria.

Another difference is that our assessments are relatively low cost for seafood producers when compared with some of the alternative assessment programs.

Australia’s larger fisheries have occupied most government interest for management, research and investment. Smaller coastal fisheries and seafood farms have been given far less attention. Yet they are often critical parts of the social and economic well-being of coastal communities, and support traditional, recreational and local lifestyles.

We offer small and local coastal fisheries and seafood farms low-cost but science-based, transparent, independent and collaborative assessments. Our assessments can help guide them in their efforts to improve the sustainability of their operations.

The focus on small-scale seafood producers creates a clear and transparent link between the environment where the fish is caught, the supply chain through which it passes, and the seafood consumer.

We brought together some of Australia’s leading marine and fisheries scientists in 2008 to develop the Sustainable Australian Seafood Assessment Criteria, a first for Australia.

The criteria are used to assess whether a seafood product meets a minimum standard of ecological sustainability. To do that, we assess the impact of seafood production on the structure and function of ecosystems.

The team of marine and fisheries scientists designed the program around commonly available fresh seafood products sourced from the continental shelf, inshore marine ecosystems, bays, estuaries, and coastal rivers.

Rather than beginning from scratch, the marine and fisheries scientists adapted assessment criteria from the US’s Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program in consultation with aquarium staff.

The criteria were adapted to better reflect local Australian conditions and the diversity of our marine life, and to focus on local, small-scale fishing and aquaculture operations. The adaptations of the Seafood Watch program included:

  • simplification of a complex scoring system without losing scientific rigour
  • adjusting criteria and sub-criteria to better reflect the key issues in Australian wild-catch fisheries and aquaculture
  • new decision rules to more effectively grade the products for their impacts on ecological integrity
  • development of simpler ‘empirical’ and precautionary ‘rule of thumb’ indicators and benchmarks to suit the data limitations of most Australian coastal fisheries.

Publicly available data on catch rates, fish size, species distribution and species composition are ‘empirical’ indicators used to help assess a local wild-caught seafood product. These are needed because more complex and expensive stock assessments are usually unavailable.

Precautionary ‘rule of thumb’ indicators can be set as percentage targets to maintain fish biomass, age structures and fish mortality. For example, the target for the stock or population of a species could be at greater than 50% of the population before fishing began.

Once the criteria had been developed, their practicality was road-tested in workshops with local fishers. We then began to assess seafood products from around Australia.

Key consumer interests and issues were identified by the marine and fisheries scientists as they developed the assessment criteria.

For wild-catch seafood products the issues identified were the impacts of fishing on:

  • target and bycatch species
  • ecologically dependent species
  • associated ecosystems and habitats.

For farmed seafood products the identified issues were:

  • location and site impacts
  • genetic impacts of escapes and local trophic subsidies
  • diseases and chemical contamination
  • sustainability of feed sources.

 

Australian marine waters are very different to those of major fishing nations, and this affects fisheries operations and management.

For starters, we have the third-largest ocean area, only behind France and the United States.

Secondly, we have the greatest marine biodiversity according to the 2010 Census of Marine Life (33,000 species had been catalogued and another 17,000 were awaiting classification). These included 6000 fish species and many thousands more molluscs (abalone, scallops, oysters, squid) and crustaceans (lobsters, crabs, prawns, bugs). 

Thirdly, Australia’s marine waters have nutrient levels far lower than those used by major fishing nations.

Why does this matter?

Australia’s high marine biodiversity living in waters with low nutrient levels results in populations of individual species that are relatively small, spread across large areas and particularly vulnerable to environmental threats.

In contrast, higher nutrient levels in other parts of the world’s oceans encourage larger fish populations. These can then be harvested in high volumes by the industrial fishing operations of major fishing nations.

In terms of the tonnage of wild-catch production, Australia ranked 52nd in the world in 2022.

The management of Australia’s fisheries is highly fragmented across Commonwealth, state and Northern Territory waters. This has in part responded to Australia having numerous smaller-scale fisheries using various fishing methods to target an array of species. This fragmentation, and the relatively small size of the fisheries, results in them being data poor.

Seafood farming operations produce half of Australia’s seafood and rising. However, they are not limited by the low nutrient levels of Australia’s marine waters because the farmed species are fed or filter their food from the local environment.

Once we have completed an assessment, it is sent to the Happy Fish Project, which adds it to their recommended list. The assessment is reviewed with the producer each year and re-assessed within three years for those products graded Yellow and five years for those graded Green.

Our sustainable Australian seafood assessments are seamlessly integrated with the work of the Happy Fish Project. They use the assessments and their supply-chain tracking program to help seafood consumers make sustainable choices.

Consumers can scan the Happy Fish Project’s tags on a seafood product to verify its location, sustainability credentials, provenance and freshness. The tags and the Happy Fish Project website allow consumers to track the seafood product from ocean to plate and to identify the fisher who caught it or the farmer who produced it.

Our partnership with the Happy Fish Project helps bridge the gap between scientific assessments and everyday seafood consumers. It also provides seafood producers with affordable, high-quality and targeted assessments for local, small-scale fishers. This supports their participation in the sustainable seafood market.