Oceans Under Threat

• The latest findings from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) highlight alarming losses in marine biodiversity, primarily due to overexploitation and habitat destruction. This new research demonstrates that major companies and industry associations in the seafood sector are significantly prolonging this damage to ocean ecosystems by advocating against policy to address this issue.
• The research assessed the world’s 30 most systemically important seafood companies on the Seafood Stewardship List developed by the World Benchmarking Alliance. Out of the 30 companies assessed, only one company, Bolton Group (Italy), has lobbying positions aligned with policy aiming to achieve the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Others are either partially or fully misaligned, and in many cases are actively opposing key areas of biodiversity-related policy.
• The most highly engaged companies, Cargill (US), Mowi (Norway), Cooke (Canada), Nutreco (Netherlands) and Mitsubishi Corporation (Japan), have interests throughout the aquaculture value chain. This high level of engagement is seen across policies impacting several drivers of biodiversity loss. These include regulations on aquaculture aimed at reducing pollution from facilities, managing the risks of invasive species and disease transmission, as well as policies targeting deforestation and overexploitation, which affect the availability of fish feed.
• There are clear contradictions between the sector’s generally supportive public messaging on action to tackle biodiversity loss, and its largely oppositional engagement on specific regulations aimed at policymakers through meetings and consultations. Policies that have faced the greatest pushback are marine protected areas, restrictions on bottom trawling particularly in the US and EU, and aquaculture regulation. In other policy areas, for example fishing quotas and efforts to curb illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, there appears to be disagreement between different industry players with several examples of positive advocacy aimed at Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), but other examples of less positive engagement at the national policy level.
• Industry associations appear to be playing an active role in advocacy for the seafood sector. The analysis, of eight associations across five regions, demonstrates a large divide between a small number of positive advocacy groups (North Atlantic Pelagic Advocacy Group, SeaBOS), and the remaining seafood industry associations (including Europêche, National Fisheries Institute) that appear to have predominantly obstructive engagement on a wide range of policy areas. Despite this, companies’ disclosure on their indirect engagement is poor. None of the 30 companies have published details on their industry associations’ biodiversity policy positions, the groups’ alignment with global biodiversity goals or any action taken to reform these positions.

The results in this report are accurate as of 31st March 2025. InfluenceMap adds new evidence to company profiles on a weekly basis, so scores on the live system may vary from results in the report