These are just a couple of highlights of our comprehensive work on promoting responsible seafood consumption, view the rest in our 2022 Year in Review.
Lifting Up Local framework
With a seafood portfolio extending to over 200 species, our challenge is to be strategic in our approach and optimize our available resources to achieve long-term objectives. Through our Lifting Up Local initiative, we develop partnerships that can support our work in-country and leverage existing initiatives to avoid duplicative efforts while creating new pathways for improvement that support our goal of sourcing 100% responsible seafood by 2025. This work was originally in line with SDG 14b and supported the development of (or existing) improvement pathways toward sustainable harvest management for local fisheries and the communities that depended on them.
Our Lifting Up Local program has evolved to address this through a more holistic approach to sustainability so that we can support strategies beyond SDG 14. For instance, supporting local producers and sourcing directly from them increases their income and economic growth (SDG 1 and SDG 8), thus alleviating poverty and ensuring food access (SDG 2). Also, working with local communities helps to provide capacity and training toward more sustainable production and consumption of seafood (SDG 12), to increase the visibility of women’s existing participation in these fisheries and to provide leadership training (SDG 5).
Continuing our journey and offering 100% responsible seafood in Mexico
In 2021, our Mexico properties reached the ambitious goal of sourcing 100% of their seafood from responsible sources. We continue to maintain this goal by working closely with our suppliers and identifying opportunities for improvement. We continue to support in-country products from fishery improvement projects, fisheries and farms that are certified by a certification benchmarked by the GSSI and products that are rated Green or Yellow by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program.
Thanks to the support of our stakeholders, we now source a variety of products, such as:
- Blue shrimp (Litopenaeus stylirostris) caught by suriperas and chocolate clams (Megapitaria squalida) from Sinaloa
- Yellowtail (Seriola lalandi) from Guaymas, Sonora and Baja California Sur
- Certified Kumamoto oysters (Crassostrea gigas) from the Western shores of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula
- Red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) from the state of Campeche
- Caribbean lobster (Panulirus argus) from Quintana Roo
- Farm-raised trout from Michoacán
- Mexican mojarra (Oreochromis niloticus)
Jamaica
In 2021, we conducted desk-work research to understand the main characteristics of the fishery as well as a site visit that included several interviews with local players. Usually, general standard measures can be more useful to get solutions, so a site visit is fundamental to understanding possibilities and limits for an improvement strategy.
According to publications, the lobster stock seems to need replenishment, but there is no precise information about its status. Therefore, it isn’t easy to understand the effectiveness of the current management measures and the degree of compliance with those measures.
Our first steps are to avoid undersized lobster at the hotels and work on data collection with the collaboration of local authorities to understand the actual status of the stock. We will work to improve vendors’ date recording, implement systematic sampling onshore and observe on board. This knowledge will help establish a better basis for effective rebuilding measures and exploring additional opportunities for collaboration with the fisheries authorities.
We invite you to learn more about our accomplishments on promoting responsible seafood consumption in 2022 by accessing our Year in Review.
