Rethinking Seafood and the Future of our Oceans

TRANSCRIPT:

Seth Larson: What if the seafood on your plate or in your pet's bowl could actually help restore the ocean? Right now, too many fish stocks are overfished putting both the fish and their ecosystems at risk, but there's a growing effort to flip that story using new tools to bring more traceability and transparency into a massive global industry.

In this episode, we're diving into how Mars, which operates the world's largest pet care business, is working with WWF to improve seafood sourcing practices and support long-term ocean health. Stay tuned to learn more.

Welcome to Nature Breaking a podcast produced by World Wildlife Fund. I'm Seth Larson. Seafood is one of the most important food systems on the planet. It supports hundreds of millions of livelihoods, fuels a global industry, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and plays a vital role in food security.

But our oceans are under growing pressure. More than a third of global fish stocks are overfished, climate change is altering marine ecosystems, and illegal fishing continues to undermine conservation and coastal communities. So how do we meet rising demand for seafood without pushing ocean ecosystems past their limits? And what role should companies play in building healthier, more resilient oceans? Today we're exploring those questions through a longstanding partnership between WWF and Mars, which began as an effort to more sustainably source seafood for Mars' pet food lines, but expanded into broader collaborative efforts aimed at supporting marine ecosystem health, addressing risks associated with illegal fishing and encouraging improved practices in parts of the seafood sector.

I will be joined by Dr. Sarah Glaser, who leads WWF's Blue Foods Program and its Oceans Futures platform; and Andrew Russell, Global Marine Sustainability Lead at Mars.

Together, they're working at the intersection of science, finance, and corporate responsibility to tackle overfishing, illegal fishing and climate risk in the seafood sector.

Before we get started, don't forget to subscribe to Nature Breaking on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And if you have ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Now here's my conversation with Sarah and Andrew.

Alright. I am joined now by Dr. Sarah Glaser and Andrew Russell. Welcome both of you to Nature Breaking.

Sarah Glaser: Thanks, Seth. It's really great to be here.

Andrew Russell: Great to be here, thanks.

Seth Larson: So Sarah, I want to start with you we're framing this conversation around seafood sustainability, and I wanted to ask if you can define what that term means and what kinds of pressures or challenges the world is facing that make certain types of seafood unsustainable.

Sarah Glaser: Thanks Seth. It's a great question and when we say sustainable seafood, we ultimately mean sustainable fisheries. So I'm going to focus on wild capture fisheries today, but a... sustainable seafood is the end goal. And ultimately, we would hope that when anyone goes to a restaurant or a grocery store, that every piece of seafood in there is just sustainable.

But to get there, there's a lot that we have to do to improve. So a sustainable fishery is a fishery for which the ecological basis of that fishery is harvested and managed in a way that future generations of humans aren't disadvantaged. So basically, are there going to be fish in the future? Right? And at WWF, we think about three different pillars of that sustainability: environmental, social and governance. I can dig into some of those, what those mean more specifically. But on the environmental side, we're talking about making sure that the fish are able to reproduce to make sure the populations stay at about the same level, year to year, reduction in habitat destruction and prevention of bycatch. Killing things that are not intended to be killed, like sea turtles and birds. Right.

Seth Larson: No, I know that's a big challenge because you think of large fishing vessels that go out and catch seafood at scale. They're casting these big nets out into the ocean and they can't necessarily always control what comes up in those nets. Right. And I know there's been a lot of work in the last few decades to refine that and make sure that we're not catching things accidentally that we don't want to. But yeah, carry on. That's a really interesting problem to solve.

Sarah Glaser: Yeah, the good news is there are things fishing boats can do. It's a question of whether the incentives are there, the financial incentives. That's one of the reasons WWF works with partners like Mars Petcare. So financial incentives, but also governance, regulatory and compliance incentives. So we can reduce bycatch in wild capture fisheries, a bunch of different ways. We can put lights on fishing net. We can put turtle excluder devices on nets. There are lots of different things that can be done. It's a question as to whether or not the fishing vessels have the right incentives aligned. But I also want to make sure we talk about the social side because it's such an important part of sustainability. And here we're talking about things like recognizing that communities have rights to fisheries and the fish in the waters next to their, you know, where they fish. That human rights are protected at all costs. That that's really prioritized in the way that fishing takes place and that fishing doesn't harm food security for local communities. So that's a really important component of fishery sustainability as well. And Andrew, I know that this is something that Mars takes really seriously as well. Do you want to expand on any of that?

Andrew Russell: I just wanted to kind of agree with you totally. The word sustainable should be taken into account -- biological sustainability, social, climate, as well as governance. Right? So we have to be able to cover all those bases to be able to have a holistic approach to a sustainable operation. And Seth mentioned, you know, wild capture fisheries do have industrial processes.

We need the protein as human beings. Pets need the protein and nutrition for their wellbeing, but it has to be done in a responsible and sustainable manner to ensure that we have this into the future and to ensure that a business like us has long-term access to supply chains and that the supply chains are resilient.

Seth Larson: That's helpful framing for us to have kind of going into the rest of this discussion. But before I get into my next question for Andrew, Sarah, I wanted to ask you one more follow up. Are there examples of fish stocks or certain fisheries where you're really worried that it might be too late to save those fish stocks for future generations? And if so, what does that mean for the companies that are sourcing from those?

Sarah Glaser: I'm an optimist. I'm a glass half full kind of person, and I don't think it's too late for anything that's not extinct already. There have, there are examples around the world of fisheries that have collapsed to historic lows that have never rebounded no matter how much we try to protect them. But we have many, many success stories of putting in place what we call rebuilding plans. These are usually 10-to-15-year plans that have really strict rules, and we see those fisheries rebound. And there are big success stories when governments, when NGOs, when scientists, and when companies all come together with an aligned goal.

But one of the fisheries I'm really concerned about from that holistic sustainability perspective we just mentioned is the global squid fishery. So it has been overlooked and understudied for decades. We have a lot of information about the things that, like salmon and tuna and a lot of other types of fish, but squid has sort of been caught on the down-low for decades. And it's only been in the last maybe 10 years or so, that we've really started to pay attention to how much squid are landed around the world, how little data we have about them. And recent studies, or recent exposes, I should say, have really shined a light on abuses at sea, labor abuses, dangerous working conditions and illegal activities in this global squid fleet.

And I think that's something we haven't grappled with. And so turning attention to that fishery before it's too late. Luckily, squid reproduce really quickly, but they also reproduce in a very strange way, and so it, there seems to be a lot of squid out there, but I think that if it comes to our attention that there aren't a lot of squid, it's going to happen like that.

Right. But then to end on a positive note, I wanted to note that when group stakeholders come together, we really can have a positive a positive effect.

I'll highlight a group that I think we'll talk about a little bit later, but the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, which brings together NGOs and really helps drive sustainability across governance and across policy, and puts in place commitments that companies can make in order to further those.

Seth Larson: Wow. Very cool. So keeping the conversation moving, Andrew, I want to turn to you now and I imagine some of our audience might still think of Mars first and foremost as a candy company, right? But seafood, as you mentioned already is a big part of your portfolio through your pet care products. I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about why Mars first became concerned about sustainability in the seafood sector and what some of the unique challenges are for sourcing seafood for pet care products versus for human consumption.

Andrew Russell: Great question, Seth. So yes, you know, Mars, is known foremost as a candy chocolate company, but in fact, we're the world's largest pet care business. So we have over a hundred thousand associates globally, and we care for about half the world's pets. So we, we are very involved in this space, although quite hidden. But everyone will know the brands Pedigree, Whiskas, that you can see at your local convenience store.

Seth Larson: My cats have enjoyed some of those products over their course of their life, for sure.

Andrew Russell: I'm glad. And of course, seafood and fish material, byproducts from fisheries, they are incredibly nutritious ingredients to go into pet food. And of course, like I mentioned earlier we can't use these materials if they don't have a long-term sustainability plan or if the supply chain isn't resilient. You know? So our, the brands, you know, Whiskers, Shiba, they all rely on healthy, sustainable stocks from which these fisheries are based.

So we started this work with WWF in around 2009, to really assess where the risks were and then to kind of see how we would, address those.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Now, and I want to just hone in on one of the words you just said there, byproduct, because I know, I buy food for my cats all the time. I know that they're not getting whole tuna filets in their cans of food. Listen, I'm saving that stuff for myself, right? So you're with pet care products, you're dealing with, like you said, byproducts of a whole fish that was maybe purchased by a fish monger that was then sold to a grocery store or a restaurant, and then you're getting that secondary product. So that must be all the more challenging for you to be able to make sure that fish, that was originally caught, that was a whole animal, was caught sustainably before it went through multiple other middle persons before it got to the, to your shelves, right?

Andrew Russell: Yeah, exactly right. We benefit from sourcing byproducts, of course, because of that lower impact. But with that, 'cause we have to source a lot of the byproducts, that of course increases the complexity of the supply chain from which we source. We've done an immense amount of work with WWF, actually look at all of these fisheries from which we source to then be able to assess the risk and kind of maintain our best practices. And we'll, we'll jump into kind of the conversation about traceability and transparency in a bit too, but that plays an enormous part in us making our operations better. Yeah, so, while byproducts are great and we try to minimize our impact on the human supply chain, it does come with certain complexities for sure.

Seth Larson: Yeah. Well that really leads nicely into my next question, which is basically, I want to get into this partnership between WWF and Mars a little more. And my sense is that our partnership started purely as kind of a scientific advisory role from the WWF side, but it's evolved into this effort to develop and finance improvements in the seafood sector as a whole because it really became clear bigger changes were needed in order for Mars to be able to meet its goals. Because, like you just said, you're operating in this ecosystem. You're a little bit dependent on the products that you're getting, so to make sure that the things you are getting are sustainable, the whole system needs to be more sustainable. So I'm interested in learning more about that evolution. But let's start with Mars and what you've been able to accomplish, Andrew. What are some of the results that you've been able to achieve in your own seafood products?

Andrew Russell: Yeah, so we did start out with WWF over 15 years ago, with a total risk assessment of our supply chain. We said to them, please, you know, please help us, you know, advise us on where we can make progress and where we need to make progress. And after that initial risk assessment, it really opened our eyes to not only where we were doing well, but also where there were certain concerns. And through, through the years, we've been able to adapt our strategy. So how we actually source fish. We've enabled our sourcing teams to have internal guidance as to what to prioritize from where and to what to look out for. You know, what are, what are the red flags within the supply chain.

Of course we've relied on third party certifications: MSC, ASC, Marin Trust. As well as fishery improvement projects. And we've really done extremely well to make sure that the majority of our seafood raw material is coming from those certifications and those fishery improvement projects.

And that's really been a huge piece of work by the entire sourcing community at Mars. And we are in a, in a pretty good space. And one of the other pieces was in 2025. So last year, we were the first pet, care business to commit to meeting the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, their standards for traceability. And it's really...

Seth Larson: Can you tell us what those standards are?

Andrew Russell: So GDST provide traceability criteria for which suppliers and ourselves need to meet to be able to have full traceability of our seafood supply chain. And that means that it goes down to the vessel level, right up to us. What's really important is this is a common standard that is available to all, you know, suppliers, manufacturers, retailers. That can be adopted. And so that a, you know, common data and common language can be used across the supply chain so that everyone benefits from that transfer of information.

Additionally we've also been able to fund fishery improvement projects directly, some of them in the key supply chains from which we source. We've made such commitments in 2025 to not source Antarctic krill. So that was something that we put forward in, I think it was June 2025, but that was put in place internally within Mars in 2024. So we ensure that none of our pet care products contain krill, which I, believe is also we're the first pet care business to actually do that publicly, which is a great step forward.

Seth Larson: That's really exciting to see that progress come along and to hear about that impact. Sarah, I want to get more into the bigger picture now and learn about how this partnership between WWF and Mars is looking beyond that one company's footprint to drive those bigger changes for the whole seafood industry. And I wanted to ask you to just briefly highlight some of the ways that we're doing that and what kind of changes we've identified as the most important ones to pursue.

Sarah Glaser: Sure. I'll highlight two things that we are doing that we've kicked off now. One is a little bit of a legacy of the past partnership and then, and one is a lot newer. So the, I'll start with the latter. The latter is thinking about the role of illegality and IUU fishing in supply chain.

So that stands for illegal, unregulated, and unreported. And I mentioned that's one of our key pillars of sustainability as well, is thinking about: making sure that all of the fishing practices that occur are legal. And we have a system in place right now for understanding where the growing risk of illegal fishing is around the world, particularly in relation to climate change, but not just climate change. It's trying to understand what are the factors that make a particular region or a particular fishery more likely to have illegal activity within it. And that, that's a bunch of different factors, I’ll name a couple. One is weak governance and enforcement in a different... in the waters of a particular country.

A country can have great policies, great management plans in place, but if they can't enforce those policies and plans, or if they can't monitor their ocean environment, then sometimes those policies are essentially paper policies and do not translate into on-the-water conservation.

Seth Larson: Yeah.

Sarah Glaser: The other thing is the growing problem of the industrial fishing fleet, and some of the bad behavior that we see on the ocean. That's dipping in and out of territories where they do have access and don't have access. So basically skipping into a place where they're not supposed to be fishing and then getting out really quickly before anyone notices or before any actions can be taken. Using banned fishing gear is another example. Not following best labor practices and treating their crew with dignity. That can include having crew out at sea for more than 60 days in a row with no access to cell phones or Wi-Fi so that they can communicate with their families, right? So we're trying to understand the conditions that make that kind of behavior the most likely, and then work with our partners like Mars PET Care, and say these are the areas you need to be concerned about.

So connecting that to the traceability standards that Andrew already said, we could have the best data in the world to say where the risk is high, but if we can't overlap that with where they're catching fish and where the fish are being imported from, it's not going to result in a lot of changes. And here I'll drop, you know, a quick, a piece of information, which is that fish and fisheries, seafood, I should say seafood is the number one traded global food commodity. So more than any other food commodity, the trading pathways are so complex and you can imagine that there's a fishing fleet going after a species on the high seas and there are 10 different vessels and they're small. Yeah, they're small. All those boats catch fish, but then they take it to a mothership and they all load their fish onto that one boat. You've already lost a lot of traceability there, right? Because all those fish came from 10 different vessels. So that's the first mile problem that we're trying to solve.

So anyway, back to the IUU component. One thing that we're doing with Mars, which is really forward thinking and that we hope can be a template for working with other partners and that other companies can look at as a way forward, is to putting that kind of a lens of the risk of illegal fishing and the risk of some of these other crimes at sea into their seafood supply chain. And then taking preventative and reciprocal measures.

Seth Larson: That's great. I'm from Rhode Island, I grew up around a lot of fishermen and fisherwomen, so I'm actually really interested in learning more about some of the ways that these changes get implemented, like how the nitty gritty of what this looks like for folks that are doing this work on fishing vessels around the world.

Sarah, sticking with you, I know there's this thing called the Vessels in Other Sustainability Initiative or VOSI, and that's providing one way to know which boats are abiding by best practices. I wanted to ask you what it means to be listed on that VOSI and what are those fishers doing differently than others? What makes them more sustainable or following better practices?

Sarah Glaser: I did mention at the top the ISSF and that is the creator, initiator, and custodian of the VOSI, which is a list of vessels that have voluntarily committed to following certain best practices at sea. And it builds on other, other vessels, other vessel registries that set a baseline. And this is looking at, as you already mentioned, vessels that are going above and beyond that.

And so the ISSF has put in place 30 different conservation and management measures that vessels that are on that list have agreed to abide by. And so companies, like Mars, like others that have agreed to source from vessels on the VOSI list, we can feel confident that they are an abiding by a couple... about 30 different management measures, conservation management measures.

I'll list a couple of them. One of them is the use of electronic monitoring, and this is one of the ways that we can improve traceability and transparency around the world. Those are not the same thing. Traceability is, do you know where the fish came from and how it ended up on your plate? Transparency is how many other people have that information? So a company could have perfect traceability, but if that information isn't shared, there's no transparency. And transparency is where the accountability comes in. Right. So I've digressed. But to get back to some of the measures that are on that VOSI vessels are taking part in, one of them is electronic monitoring.

So we also ask companies to source from vessels that have a hundred percent observer coverage, particularly on the high seas. But when we say that, we mean human observers. So people onboard vessels who can basically verify that the data that those fishing vessels are turned in are correct. So they answer questions like, how many of the species were caught? How big were they? Were there any turtles in those nets? That sort of thing.

It's actually really hard work to be an observer, and it's very dangerous out on the water too. And so electronic monitoring is technological innovation that is allowing us to have eyes onboard vessels when those eyes are not physically present human bodies, right? And so that could include a lot of different things.

But one thing is cameras onboard the ship. And those cameras should be angled in ways that capture the activities on the deck so that we see the fish when they come on board. We see what else may come on board. You can see from that kind of information how crew are being treated. How long are they actually working? Are they working 20 hour days or are they working more reasonable workdays? Again, I already mentioned bringing onboard endangered or threatened species that may have been accidentally entangled. How are those released back into the water? So there are a lot of things you can tell, and with the advent of AI, we're getting better and faster at translating just massive amounts of data streams that come from cameras on, onboard vessels into usable information.

I'm really optimistic right now that things like electronic monitoring can help us break through, in ways that are very scalable and give us the data that we're missing.

Seth Larson: Yeah, that's super interesting. And I knew a person in college who was doing the vessel monitoring in person. He was training to work for NOAA, I believe, here in the US. And incredibly hard work and really stressful, difficult, but really important too. And I think ultimately the fishermen he was working with really appreciated the relationship they were able to develop and the level of trust that it gave them when they were going to sell their product, that they were able to say with real definity that this is sustainable seafood that you can feel good about purchasing.

Andrew, I want to turn to you now and I want to talk a little bit about "blue finance." Because we've talked about a bunch of different approaches and different things that need to happen to make sure that seafood is being sourced sustainably, but those changes and improvements, they're not free, right? They've got costs to vessel operators, to folks throughout the supply chain. So I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about what Mars has been doing to help ensure that there are resources available to be able to make these changes at the scale required.

Andrew Russell: Yes, great. So blue finance, of course, is just to turn... describe it as just funds that are being used within the ocean space, particularly within marine resources. And unfortunately, you know, one of the biggest barriers to fisheries improving over time is this long-term access to funds, capital, to then put into place, to then make fisheries better.

And we worked with WWF as well as Finance Earth to set up the Fishery Improvement Fund. So the fund acts as a central fund. And it then allocates money to fisheries to not only set up fishery improvement projects in certain regions, but also to look at, Sarah mentioned EM on vessels. You know, how do we get EM on vessels, expanded within fisheries? How do we, you know, leverage this technology and get this, you know, really spread out across the entire network. And that is really expensive, right?

So I think it was in 2023, we started the fund and we pledged a contribution of a million dollars over five years. And of course, this is just the start. So this is just us trying to get things kickstarted, trying to get things off the ground. Really trying to get these projects going. Because what we've really realized is that initial funding, that kickstart, that's where the big blocker is. So these funds are used to get projects off the ground.

They're also used to, ensure fisheries can progress towards, if it's a certification or if it's just towards meeting certain, you know, higher standards. So that's kind of what the fund does. We have had some really great success in the last few years. With the help of WWF Chile, we were able to set up a fishery improvement project on that coastline.

And the FIP itself has think 25, 26 large vessels with around 250 fishers associated to that fishery. So this is a quite large fishery, but even to have this project start and to have these improvements happening, it is incredibly, incredibly important. What also helps is that the governance within Chile is improving. And it is, pretty, pretty sound. And there is even movement towards using EM on these vessels, right? So this is where the technology can then assist a project like this and hopefully gets get towards certification even earlier than expected. We're really trying to improve local livelihoods, to provide dignified living for those who are involved within this fishery to ensure that the stock health is healthy. And I know Sarah might mention, or has mentioned earlier around the climate impacts, El Nino is going to occur. It's going to occur this year, it looks like in this region. And that's going to have an impact on the availability of this incredibly important resource. We have to be able to build fisheries and build projects that are resilient to these impacts.

And it really is about work on the water. So having fishermen involved. Having, you know, fisheries management agencies involved. That is really where the work has to happen. You know and for a business we are also ultimately responsible to drive these changes. So by having partnerships with WWF and Finance Earth and others, we're actually able to not only benefit from improved supply chains ourselves, but this fishery once improved and into a sustainable space would benefit everyone, right? So it really is a win-win for our business, for other businesses, as well as for the people on the ground. So that really is our ultimate aim.

Sarah Glaser: And can I build on that a little?

Seth Larson: Sounds great. Yeah.

Sarah Glaser: So I wanted to mention, he, Andrew's talked about FIPs a lot and the... one of the main goals of a Fisheries Improvement Project is to put in place... is to improve the practices of the fishery so that ultimately that fishery achieves certification from the Marine Stewardship Council.

Andrew mentioned MSC and ASC, that's the Marine Stewardship Council, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. Yeah. And those are third party verified certification programs that WWF supports very much and asks a lot of our corporate partners to make sure that the seafood that they're sourcing are certified.

It can't cover everything in the world. It's not infallible, right? But it does a lot of great things and it provides that incentive that I talked about at the beginning, that boats and companies and fishing fleets need to have incentives to enact practices and gear improvements and data collection that ultimately lead to sustainable fisheries.

And so FIPs having a goal of putting in place improvements on the water that are needed to achieve that certification. That's one avenue by which investment on the ground can really improve things in a global marketplace. But FIPs have benefits even if they never achieve certification. And Andrew talked about a lot of those.

So even if certification never happens, and that, that is a goal, but there are a lot of other benefits that happen. And it's those improvements... So improvements in the amount of money that the fishers take home every single day, or improvements in the data that are collected and shared with the government for management planning. Those are all things that happen in those steps towards achieving certification

Andrew Russell: Yeah, absolutely correct. I was just going to add to that. We, yeah, we totally see that the certification at the end of the day is the bonus, right? That's the bonus that comes out of the hard work. But it really is, you know, seeing fisheries go from strength to strength and fishermen benefit, and ultimately the ecosystem remains resilient.

That's the, those are the main aims and the certification that ultimately benefits the market. And there's more of a signal of credibility and improvement. That's the bonus.

Sarah Glaser: Yeah.

Seth Larson: Yeah, I love that we're creating this sort of stepwise system where we're working with local fishers to make improvements to the sustainability of their own fisheries and to improve their livelihoods and have all these other benefits locally, with a goal of working up to this MSC, ASC certification. But if, even if that doesn't happen, there's all sorts of other good things that happen along the way.

So I have just one last question for you both, and it's basically this: looking ahead to the future of the partnership, what are some of the biggest challenges that are left to tackle in this work? And if you could change one thing, one policy, one industry practice, one corporate behavior that would have the single biggest impact on ocean health, what would that be? Sarah, I'll start with you and then we'll go to Andrew.

Sarah Glaser: Thanks Seth. I polled my team actually 'cause I was really interested in what everyone who works on these issues thinks. And I think the biggest thing for this partnership to continue to evolve around is climate. Sixty percent of fisheries are at risk from climate change, and we have ways to get ahead of that. But to answer your other question, the number one thing that I think could be done right now to improve ocean health, specifically around fisheries, is to end fuel subsidies for industrial and distant water fishing boats.

Seth Larson: Okay. Can you explain why?

Sarah Glaser: Sure, essentially government subsidies to vessels to make it cheaper for them to buy fuel allows them to stay out at sea for a lot longer. It allows them to fish much further from sea where fish are moving, where fish are contracting outside of national waters. And it essentially means that when you... that consumers do not pay the true price of seafood. And changing that is ultimately one of the things that we have to do, so that the incentives that we've been talking about all align towards sustainable practices.

Seth Larson: That's super interesting.

Andrew Russell: Hard to, to follow Sarah. I guess, but I think I was looking at it from like two kinds of perspectives. So for us, I would say it is really getting momentum on this traceability aspect. So I think as from a business perspective, right, having that information down to the vessel level. Understanding what is happening at the vessel level, if there is IUU involved, it's being able to act on that, right? It's being able to improve fisheries, if that's needed. It's being able to act further with governments and regulations if we need to, also. So I think traceability for a business perspective would really change the game. Having that common language shared from vessel all the way to manufacturing.

And then I had an ecosystem thought around what could happen. And it really is that, you know, looking after those biodiversity hotspots. So if it's, if it's coral reefs, if it's mangroves, sea mounts, sea grass beds. It's really trying to protect as much and as many of these ecosystems as we can. If that's through, you know, regulatory and government involvement, that's amazing. If it's through business action and through restoration projects, that's also a really, really important way for us to, for us to be involved.

Also, you know, it's, it's, through our understanding, it's through educating the public that we would get better understanding of what needs to be done.

And also because it is, it is Sir David's birthday tomorrow.

Seth Larson: Sir David Attenborough, yes?

Andrew Russell: I think his message about education, about the public around what's needed, where actions should be taken... I think all of us in this space should become advocates to be able to share that information.

Seth Larson: Yeah, I'm always happy when we have an excuse to invoke Sir David Attenborough here on Nature Breaking.

Andrew Russell: It's his hundredth birthday tomorrow, right?

Seth Larson: That's a, yeah... I saw some emails about that coming across, through my inbox. It's pretty exciting, he's been a big inspiration to so many people in the conservation space. I think a lot of us feel like we wouldn't be here without all the work he did to educate the public about the importance of saving nature. I think that's a great note to end on. Andrew, Sarah, thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Sarah Glaser: Thank you, Seth.

Andrew Russell: Thanks so much, Seth. Cheers.

Seth Larson: That's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks again to Sarah and Andrew for joining me today. You know, as a lover of both seafood and coastal seascapes, and as a pet owner, this topic is really close to my heart. But I hope it's something that all of us can find a reason to care about. Whether it's for dietary, environmental, or human rights reasons, no matter your personal motivation, it's clear that healthy oceans and sustainable fisheries matter a lot for the future of our planet. And I'm grateful for the work that Sarah, Andrew, and their teams are doing to make progress wherever possible. For now, thank you for listening and together let's keep building a more sustainable future.

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Rethinking seafood and the future of our oceans