"Sea to Table"

Project overview

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and seafood fraud undermine the sustainability of U.S. and global seafood stocks and negatively impact general ecosystem health.  At the same time, IUU fishing and fraudulent seafood products distort legal markets and unfairly compete with the products of law-abiding fishers and seafood industries globally.  This issue is so significant to the health of the U.S. seafood industry that it was the subject of a Presidential Taskforce.

This project, “Sea to Table”, will create a fully compliant traceability system for seafood that is caught, farmed, or imported into the United States.  This project will build a specialized distributed ledger and engineer IoT devices developed to track and transmit location information concerning seafood in transit between the point of harvest (or, in some cases, the point of importation) and the end-user (restaurant, wholesaler, or retailer).  It will enable consumers to scan a QR code that will be able to detail its journey and establish the full chain of custody of the seafood.

By establishing a consensus-based distributed ledger for seafood traceability, it will take major steps to combat fraud that is rampant, and provide economic benefits to the seafood industry that has to compete in the marketplace with seafood caught by IUU fishing parties.  Parties are often distrustful of each other, so the immutable record that a distributed ledger traceability system can provide is key to a successful system.  In addition, IoT technologies will be leveraged to provide real-time data to enable a fully traceable and compliant system.

Implementation of traceability systems in some imported fisheries is currently scheduled to be mandated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.  Over time, it is expected that these systems will become mandated for more fisheries.  In addition, international implementation of equivalent requirements is likely to take place when full implementation of the seafood import provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act is effective in 2021.

Incubation period

We estimate that this project will take approximately one year to incubate and launch.

Incubation budget

We estimate that this project will cost approximately $200,000.00 USD to incubate and launch.

Project partners

We will seek partnerships with government and non-governmental organizations that have an interest in reducing fraud from IUU fisheries, and will also work with the seafood industry to design a system that is commercially viable.

Launch method

This project will be launched as a for-profit business once the technology has been developed.  The software and hardware engineered will be open-source to enable its use by the industry, but the commercial entity will provide “turn-key” systems, integrating the hardware and software developed, that are able to be used by those in the chain of custody of seafood (importers, fishermen, wholesalers, trucking companies, and fisheries management bodies).