One in five fish landed are estimated to be caught illegally.
With little or no regulation on traceability, illegally caught seafood can easily enter Hong Kong and become indistinguishable from legally sourced seafood.
As an example, the majority of South African dried abalones imported into Hong Kong are likely to be sourced illegally. Even the CITES listed and Endangered Humphead Wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus), illegal trade is frequently reported. In shark fin trade, fins of protected species are hardly distinguishable from those of non-protected species.
Source: Poached Abalone from South Africa is Flowing into Hong Kong Market
Insufficient labelling and mislabelling are global problems in the seafood industry.
In Hong Kong, these problems are also prevalent, and they might also breach certain ordinances and expose the seafood industry to legal risks.
Due to the lack of testing and monitoring, seafood with harmful substances can easily enter the market while remaining undetected.
94% of the world’s fisheries are overfished or fished to the maximum sustainable level.
Globally, nearly 4,000 species of fish are threatened with global extinction. This includes many of our daily favourites, such as groupers, tuna, cods, eels and seabreams.
As fish stocks decline, seafood prices are predicted to rise by approximately 25% over the next decade.
If we continue over harvesting these important resources, seafood prices will likely continue to inflate and today’s threatened species may disappear in the future.
Protect the reputation of your business and safeguard our ocean’s health by sourcing traceable, sustainable seafood.
By sourcing sustainably, you can protect your business’ reputation by making sure that your seafood is properly labelled, legally sourced, and does not contain artificially-added harmful substances.
By sourcing sustainably, you can also take part in protecting fragile fishery resources for future generations.
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