Jean-Baptiste Jouffray

Large seafood companies face climate-related risks across their operations, with substantial economic and financial implications. Nevertheless, corporate reporting remains limited, with nearly half of the 100 largest companies providing no climate-related disclosures. Reporting, which can be an indicator of action and priorities, has focused primarily on mitigation, with little attention to adaptation. We consider these gaps and propose four priorities to support capacity and pathways for climate-resilient seafood operations.

What happens when one looks at the ocean through an economic lens? Here, we describe the emergence in recent decades of narratives of an ocean economy and a blue economy – unsettled terms in a context of unprecedented scale and scope of economic activity associated with the ocean. We describe this ‘Blue Acceleration’ and its relation with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. We then turn to the multiple ways actors seek to bend the current trajectories of ocean industrialisation, highlighting a series of prominent recent multi-national, multi-corporate, and multi-financial initiatives. We conclude by noting (i) how mismatched SDG 14 is with the current ocean reality, and the need for more holistic framings in a post-2030 development agenda; and (ii) how major collaborations associated with the ocean economy have largely focused on articulating bold visions, but generally lack accountability mechanisms or appropriate monitoring and reporting frameworks.

Climate change and other anthropogenic pressures are likely to induce tipping points in marine ecosystems, potentially leading to declines in primary productivity and fisheries. Despite increasing attention to nature-related financial risks and opportunities within the ocean economy, the extent to which these tipping points could affect investors has remained largely unexplored. Here we used satellite data to track fishing vessels operating in areas prone to marine regime shifts, and uncovered their corporate beneficial owners and shareholders.We found that about 30% of the oceans are at risk of regime shifts (extreme marine heat waves and signals of instability in primary productivity).16% of the oceans have shown abrupt declines in primary productivity, while 252 fish stocks resulted in abrupt declines on historical data. The literature already showcase past events with impacts on employment and economic losses on the millions of dollars. So who is at risk today?We found that 15% (16,878) of the vessels tracked in Global Fishing Watch fish in areas susceptible to marine regime shifts. We find that Norway and China are important actors in hosting many of the vessels and shareholders in our data, but they are not strongly involved on foreign investment. Spain, the UK and France are central countries of origin for foreign investment, while Russia is a hotspot attracting these investments. The likelihood of these financial flows seems to be related to differences in government effectiveness and political stability.We provided lists of top shareholders and top companies with vessel ownership fishing in areas prone to marine regime shifts, and discussed the limitations of our study mainly related to data transparency. Nonetheless, we hope these lists of companies and shareholders help to identify actors with agency to manage the risk of marine regime shifts. We discussed potential interventions that can reduce regime shifts risks. Redesigning subsidy programs, lobbying company boards to fish in low-risk areas, or supporting the implementation of international agreements that take into account potential range shifts and conflicts are just a few examples of how these actors can incentivise practices that are aligned with long term sustainability values.

As ocean industrialization accelerates, corporate transparency is increasingly seen as critical to improve governance, yet little is known about how firms disclose their impacts on marine ecosystems. This study addresses that gap through a content analysis of sustainability and annual reports from 75 of the largest companies across 8 sectors of the ocean economy. We examine which impacts are reported, how they are measured and whether firms set related targets. Most companies focus narrowly on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, with limited attention to more ocean-specific impacts, for which fewer than 25% of firms have metrics and targets. Where measurements are reported, the use of 443 distinct indicators limits comparability and suggests a lack of consensus on what should be disclosed. Amid growing demands for corporate accountability, our findings provide a timely benchmark to support the integration of ocean-specific considerations into reporting frameworks and to guide materiality assessments that better reflect the environmental realities of the ocean economy.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the sustainability of fisheries and communities dependent on them. The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) is a key tool for combatting IUU fishing by foreign fleets, requiring standardized inspections, information sharing, and port denial. Using satellite data, we characterized how PSMA has affected high seas vessel behavior and identify opportunities to strengthen its impact. PSMA adoption has increased travel distances to the nearest ports in States not Party to PSMA and channeled more fishing effort to domestic and PSMA Party ports. However, domestic fishing fleets need greater attention because they constituted 66% of port visits in 2021. Among reflagged vessels, we also found a 30% increase in visits to PSMA ports by vessels shifting to domestic flags after PSMA entered into force, allowing them to avoid PSMA requirements for foreign vessels. Our results highlight the centrality of implementing consistent, effective port State measures across foreign and domestic fleets to address IUU fishing risks.

A central barrier to effective governance and accountability in fisheries is the limited transparency of corporate ownership. Transshipment—the transfer of catches, fuel, parts, or crew between fishing and cargo vessels known as reefers—is often criticized for its opacity and poor governance. Better insight into the beneficial ownership of vessels involved in transshipment and their operational patterns could lead to more effective management. Our study presents a publicly accessible database of reefers’ owners, operators, and flags. We identified 569 individual reefers and found that Russian and Chinese owners control 26 and 20% of the global reefer fleet, respectively. Results also show that 65% of all reefer vessels fly the flags of Russia, Panama, or China. This high level of consolidation suggests considerable leverage for enhancing transparency and governance. Our findings highlight the potential for reforming existing transshipment practices through collaboration among owners, flag states, fishery regulators, and scientists.

Marine bioprospecting, which involves the exploration of genetic and biochemical material from marine organisms, can be used towards addressing a broad range of public and environmental health applications such as disease treatment, diagnostics and bioremediation. Marine genetic resources are important reservoirs for such bioprospecting efforts; however, the extent to which they are used commercially for natural product discovery and the marine sources from which they are derived are not well understood. Here we introduce a comprehensive database of marine genes referenced in patent filings, the Marine Bioprospecting Patent database. It includes 92,550 protein-coding sequences associated with 4,779 patent filings, identified by analysing all relevant records from genetic sequence databases. Three companies alone—BASF, IFF and DuPont—included sequences from 949 species (more than half of referenced species with identified marine origin). Microbial life in the deep sea, a vast and remote biome predominantly beyond national jurisdiction, is already attracting substantial economic interest; the top ten patent holders have all filed marine gene patents referencing sequences from deep-sea life. Our findings provide an updated understanding of the marine bioprospecting landscape, contribute to the sustainable use of marine biodiversity and underscore the need for policymakers to ensure stewardship of deep-sea ecosystems.

Transnational companies have substantive impacts on nature: a hallmark of living in the Anthropocene. Understanding these impacts through company provision of information is a precursor to holding them accountable for nature outcomes. The effect of increasing disclosures (of varying quality) is predicated on ‘information governance’, an approach that uses disclosure requirements to drive company behaviour. However, its efficacy is not guaranteed. We argue that three conditions are required before disclosures have the possibility to shape nature outcomes, namely: (1) radical traceability that links company actions to outcomes in particular settings; (2) developing organizational routines, tools and approaches that translate strategic intent to on-the-ground behaviour; and (3) mobilizing and aligning financial actors with corporate nature ambitions. While disclosure is key to each of these conditions, its limits must be taken into account and it must be nested in governance approaches that shape action, not just reporting. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bringing nature into decision-making’.

Perceptions that marine bioprospecting will deliver vast commercial benefits have placed ‘marine genetic resources’ at the center of key policy processes yet our knowledge about their importance remains limited. Here, we introduce a novel global database of marine gene sequences referenced in patent filings, the MArine Bioprospecting PATent (MABPAT) Database. It includes 25,682 sequences from 1,092 marine species associated with 3,258 patent filings, identified by analyzing all relevant sequencerecords from INSDC. Microbial life in the deep sea, a vast and remote biome predominantly beyond national jurisdiction, is already attracting significant commercial interest; all of the top 10 patent holders have filed marine gene patents referencing sequences from deep-sea life, and only three companies, BASF, IFF, and DuPont, included sequences from nearly two-thirds of all species. Our findings underscore the need for policymakers to ensure stewardship of deep-sea ecosystems while providing the most updated understanding of the marine bioprospecting landscape.