Welcome Reception: 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Banyan Tree
Reconnect with old friends and meet new colleagues while enjoying cocktails and light appetizers under the hotel’s iconic Banyan tree.
Breakfast: 8:00 – 9:00 am
Ballroom B/Terrace
Breakfast with the Board
Say hello to members of the Alliance Board who will be around to answer questions and catch up during breakfast.
Welcome and Opening: 9:00 – 9:50 am
Ballroom A
Plenary Session: 10:00 – 12:00 pm
Mapping Movement-Level Challenges and Changes
Ballroom A
Where is the sustainable seafood movement failing to have the impact we want? Where are global changes creating new opportunities? And how are our organizations evolving in response? During this interactive session, we will identify movement challenges and changes, note where organizations are responding by adding, ending, or adjusting initiatives, and explore potential collaboration opportunities.
Lunch Break: 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Ballroom B/Terrace
Breakout Sessions – Round One: 1:00 – 2:15 pm
Sustainability Assurance in small scale Fisheries and Aquaculture – New and Innovative Approaches
Ballroom A
Whilst there are the traditional tools for sustainability assurance like Certification and Ratings, there is a need for new models/tools and an inclusive process especially for small scale fisheries and aquaculture. The focus of the session is to demonstrate through Ocean Wise and SFW initiatives that there are other credible tools and initiatives and hear of other experiences and input from participants/panelists at the event. The session will also look at how these initiatives can be advanced and how we address the issue of market access for these small scale fisheries and aquaculture through these new tools.
Speakers
- Cormac O’Sullivan, Senior Fellow Global Aquaculture Science Monterey Bay Aquarium
- Mike McDermid, Director Fishers and Seafood at Ocean Wise
- Guy Dean, VP Partnership and Acquisitions, Coastal Nations Fisheries
- Casey Marion, Dir. of Sustainability & Quality Management Systems, Beaver Street Fisheries
- Maisie Ganzler, Chief Strategy and Brand Officer, Bon Appetit Management Company
- Sonia Strobel, Co-founder and CEO, Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery
From Artisanal fisher to international organizations – how multi-stakeholder partnership is making waves in the fishing sector in South America
Palmieri 1
This session explores labor challenges facing the workers in South America with a focus on Peru and Ecuador. From the impact of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing to informality in artisanal fishing communities, there are several challenges facing fishing communities in South America. This panel will uncover these dynamics through the International Labor Organization’s Decent Work in Fishing project, Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental’s Por La Pesca project and US Department of Labor’s Supply Chain research in fishing.
Guidelines for Companies and the Future of Accountability and Transparency in Seafood: Part One
Palmieri 2
Your first chance to discuss the Guidelines for Companies, see the new landscape analysis of various assessment models/pre-competitive collaborations, and discuss how current guidance is used to drive accountability now – and what the future might be.
Community Lightning Round – Part One: 2:30 – 3:45 pm
Ballroom A
Day One Closing: 3:45 – 4:00 pm
Ballroom A
Networking Event: 5:30 – 7:00 pm
Banyan Tree
Sexsea Trivia: the surprising link between reproduction and sustainable seafood
An interactive, trivia-based exploration of why and how healthy fisheries depends on successful sex in the sea. Bring your curiosity and leave with a new perspective and appreciation for where our seafood comes from and why this matters for long-term management of healthy fish populations. (And perhaps gain a few fun facts sure to entertain a crowd at your next seafood event). Drinks will be served.
Speakers
DINNER: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
El San Juan Beach Club
Breakfast: 8:00 – 9:00 am
Ballroom B/Terrace
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and breakfast
Where is your organization in its diversity, equity, and inclusion journey? Let’s talk about it! Look for Laura Miller and Gabby Lout on the terrace to come and engage in a casual share session about where you’re celebrating success and where you’re feeling challenged.
Plenary Session: 9:00 – 10:20 am
A Queen Conch Farm in Every Caribbean Nation: How Puerto Rico is leading the vision for community-led conch aquaculture for restoration
Ballroom A
During this session you will learn about the five community-based queen conch aquaculture restoration partnership projects that have been established since 2019 under the leadership of FAU Harbor Branch’s Megan Davis, Ph.D., an internationally recognized authority on warm-water, queen conch aquaculture, and her partners. Essential to the success of each project are strategic partnerships with the local host communities, governments, universities, and other organizations that work in collaboration with FAU Harbor Branch to learn and implement the technology to ensure the projects’ longevity. The goal of each queen conch restoration project is to transition the learnings and technology to the community, thus embedding the sustainable aquaculture restoration practices in the hands of current and future generations.
The featured project of the session will be the Naguabo Aquaculture Center in Puerto Rico, which is a partnership with Conservación ConCiencia, who has been collaborating with fishing communities throughout Puerto Rico to develop, implement, and promote sustainable fishery practices. You will hear from the team about the Naguabo Aquaculture Center; the only queen conch hatchery that is part of an active commercial fishing association. The Naguabo Aquaculture Center is growing conch for restoration, local sustainable seafood, and is a training facility for workforce development and diversification of livelihoods for fishers. Grants from Saltonstall-Kennedy NOAA Fisheries, USDA ARS, and Puerto Rico Sea Grant support our aquaculture facility in Naguabo, Puerto Rico that has been in operation for 2 years. Come learn about this amazing project making waves right here in Puerto Rico.
Breakout Sessions – Round two: 10:30 – 11:45 am
Examples of Market Due Diligence Activities
Ballroom A
FishWise has been helping create and implement due diligence plans since 2017. What started as due diligence frameworks for traceability and combatting illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing expanded to address social responsibility and categories beyond fresh and frozen seafood. During this panel, FishWise will facilitate a discussion between industry representatives and other relevant stakeholders about implementing due diligence activities to share the process, lessons learned, and overall impact.
The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, advancing traceability through testing, tools, and dialogue
Palmieri 1
The GDST evolved from an informal dialogue platform into a permanent, fully independent, partner driven organization as of October 2022. Our standard for digital interoperable traceability in Seafood is designed to be used seamlessly from harvest to customer. Learn how our tools and tests create and confirm competency, and how the dialogue process ensures relevance to the data sets captured and shared. Learn, contribute, become involved!
Lunch Break: 11:45 aM – 12:45 pm
Ballroom B/Terrace
Workshops: 12:45 – 2:00 pm
Palmieri 1
Climate change, illegal fish harvest, and environmental degradation disproportionately affect women and the time to center their voices in addressing these challenges is now. This workshop session will be divided into two parts: First, we’ll present insights from existing initiatives to improve gender equality in the seafood sector, including early learnings from SAGE’s Gender Equality Dialogues, which co-create a space for seafood industry leaders to build actionable gender equality commitments. Then we’ll facilitate interactive activities to prompt participants to think about improving gender equality either within their seafood sourcing or internally within their organization.
Ballroom A
Restorative farming of shrimp in integrated mangrove aquaculture (IMA) not only reverses the usual negative narrative of shrimp farming and mangroves – but offers a unique opportunity for community-based, climate-smart and biodiversity-inclusive seafood harvesting by smallholder producers. In Asia, more than 400’000 ha of intertidal zones can be restored by IMA, creating 600 Mil USD income for 100’000 families, harvesting 120’000 tons of high quality, sustainable shrimp and sequestering 80 Mil tons of carbon. In this workshop, we flesh out the critical bottlenecks for IMA going at scale, such as the (1) limited awareness of markets; (2) the challenges of organizing smallholder farmers and (3) outline the potential and complexities for blue carbon financing of mangrove restoration.
Palmieri 2
Conservation International, FishWise, and ELEVATE will co-lead an interactive workshop with the following objectives:
- Socialize ELEVATE’s EiQ data platform, which utilizes risk assessment information to support data-driven decision-making within supply chains.
- Discuss the potential to build a seafood portal within the EiQ platform to collate, learn from, and disseminate aggregated data from Social Risk Assessments.
- Discuss data interoperability with other seafood data platforms.
- Discuss use cases with the larger seafood community on how EiQ and RISE could be used to support seafood buyers and their NGO partners as part of a larger human rights due diligence process.
Breakfast: 8:00 – 9:00 am
Ballroom B/Terrace
Breakout Sessions – Round three: 9:00 – 10:15 am
Guidelines for Companies and the Future of Accountability and Transparency in Seafood: Part Two
Palmieri 1
Building on Guidelines for Companies Session Part 1, join this workshop on what accountability, transparency and verification should look like moving forward. Attendance at Part One on Tuesday is recommended.
Synergizing Sustainably: Strengthening Public-Private Cooperation for Aquaculture Development
Ballroom A
A groundbreaking session where science, the private sector, civil society, and the public sector in aquaculture will share their experiences. Engaging in talks and discussions will foster collaboration and innovation to promote sustainable practices within the industry.
Speakers
- Constanza Vergara, Trade Regulatory Affairs Division Specialist, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chile
- Javiera Cornejo Kelly, Associate Professor, Faculty of Veterinary and Livestock Sciences, University of Chile
- Rolando Ibarra, Senior Fellow on Global Aquaculture Science, Monterey Bay Aquarium
- Estefania Humud, Head of ESG Management and Climate Change, Blumar Seafoods
Community Lightning Round – Part two: 10:30 – 11:30 am
Ballroom A
Plenary session – conference CLOSING: 11:30 aM – 12:00 pm
Ballroom A
Lunch Break: 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Ballroom B/Terrace
Thank you to our sponsors for their generous support of this year’s Alliance Annual Conference
