NOAA Fisheries has released the draft National Seafood Strategy and encourages all interested members of the public to review and submit comments. This strategy underscores NOAA’s strong commitment to seafood sector resilience.
It aligns with the Biden-Harris Administration's goals for economic recovery, environmental sustainability, and climate resilience. Further, the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health points to the need for increased seafood consumption in the United States, which this strategy aims to address.
The strategy also responds to the unprecedented challenges facing the US seafood industry, including climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, new technologies and other ocean uses, and significant labor shortages and aging infrastructure.
Our Vision for Resilience
The National Seafood Strategy outlines our direction for supporting a thriving domestic US seafood economy. It describes our approach to enhancing the resilience of the seafood sector in the face of climate change and other stressors.
Our vision is to ensure that:
- US seafood continues to be produced sustainably
- The US seafood sector contributes to the nation’s climate-ready food production and to meeting critical domestic nutritional needs
- US seafood production increases to support jobs, the economy, and the competitiveness of the US seafood sector
- Supply chains and infrastructure are modernized with more value-added activity in the United States
- Opportunities are expanded for a diverse and growing seafood workforce
We will implement the strategy by focusing on four goals:
- Sustain or increase sustainable US wild capture production
- Increase sustainable US aquaculture production
- Foster access to domestic and global markets for the US seafood industry
- Strengthen the entire US seafood sector
Request for Public Input
Public comments are integral to finalizing the strategy and helping guide the direction of our work to support the seafood sector. Written comments may be submitted online until March 31, 2023. We hosted two virtual listening sessions on March 2 and 9, 2023 to present the draft strategy and gather input. We will schedule additional consultations with Tribal nations on request.
Listening Session 1: March 2, 2023, 2pm (EST)/11am (PST)/5am (ChST)
Listening Session 2: March 9, 2023, 5pm (EST)/2pm (PST)/8am (ChST)
