SNAPTRACE · Fishing in the dark: unravelling the global trade and traceability of the ‘snappers’
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-07-04 → 2018-07-03
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Fishing in the dark: unravelling the global trade and traceability of the ‘snappers’
In an era of rising seafood demand and impaired ocean health, the ongoing prevalence of illegal fishing and market fraud is of major global concern, threatening vulnerable stocks, jeopardising livelihoods and having frequent links with organised transnational crime. As seafood trade routes grow longer and more complex, there is general accord that full traceability and detailed product labelling are imperative to promote legal and sustainable seafood trade. Yet such provisions have seldom been translated into policy. Moreover, for many valuable and heavily-exploited groups of fishes, we still have a scant understanding of the drivers of their demand, the intricacies of their market provision, and the extent to which poor trade and labelling controls mask market biodiversity, hinder consumer choice and imperil species on a global scale. The SNAPTRACE project aimed to tackle these critical issues and pave the way toward more traceable, transparent and sustainable seafood markets, using one of the world’s most iconic but diverse families of fishes as a model – snappers, family Lutjanidae. To achieve this goal, we used a multidisciplinary approach and advanced molecular tools to systematically address the project’s core objectives: 1) to test the utility of international trade data analysis in supporting effective snapper traceability and exposing illicit activities, and 2) to use DNA barcoding to unravel the species diversity underpinning the global ‘snapper’ trade and the impacts arising from vague labelling and mislabelling. Our results indicate that official trade data severely lack the level of detail required to track trade flows, uncover deceitful practices and inform exploitation of snappers and related species. Moreover, we demonstrated that the lax application of the ‘snapper’ umbrella term and widespread mislabelling conceal substantial diversity in global markets, lumping taxa for sale from an array of disparately-managed fisheries and with different conservation concerns. Bringing this trade into the open should compel a revision of the current harmonised trade classification system and international seafood labelling and traceability policies that allow such extensive biodiversity to be consumed unknowingly.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Despite the precarious state of the world’s marine ecosystems, it is now widely acknowledged that ‘where there is a sea, there are pirates’. Indeed, today’s alarming rates of illegal fishing and market fraud are of the most immediate threats to global fish stocks, creating unfair competition, impeding consumer choice and ultimately undermining efforts towards sustainable management. As such, it has become increasingly clear that seafood traceability is not a luxury; it is a true necessity in a world where growing human populations are placing immense pressure on the remaining oceanic resources. In the present application, a project is proposed that will significantly enhance our understanding of the intricacies of global seafood trade and pave the way forward for more transparent, traceable and sustainable seafood markets, using one of the world’s most highly-prized, yet misunderstood, groups of fishes as a model: the snappers, family Lutjanidae. In order to achieve this ambitious overarching goal, a multidisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art molecular techniques will be employed to systematically address the project’s three key objectives: 1) to use international trade data to unravel the drivers and dynamics of global snapper supply and demand; 2) to harness the power of DNA barcoding to evaluate the species sold as ‘snapper’ on world markets, and 3) to test the ability of cutting-edge genomic methods to trace premium snapper products back to their population / stock of origin. SNAPTRACE will be the foremost study to combine these core approaches in a truly global fashion, thus meeting the long standing demand for more pronounced interdisciplinary integration to tackle the complexities associated with the seafood supply chain. In its entirety, the outcomes of this project will prove both relevant and timely, initiating an evidence-based management of snapper resources, which at the moment remains extremely difficult to implement based on current insights.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD · SalfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union