6 minute read
FEATURE - Traceability
Nothing fishy
Blockchain technology is the new frontier in traceability, with pilot project OpenSC leading the charge when it comes to tracking seafood.
WORDS Madeline Woolway
ONE OF THE world’s most prized fish species is found off the coast of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI), more than 4000 kilometres from Perth and 2000 metres below the ocean’s surface. Desired for its high fat content and snow white, flaky flesh, the Patagonian toothfish has spent decades dodging nets cast by pirates hoping to bring in a haul of ‘white gold’.
Glacier 51 toothfish
Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing nearly collapsed some fisheries in the Southern Ocean during the 1990s and 2000s. And the MSC-certified Australian government-run HIMI fishery is one of many remote locations targeting Patagonian toothfish that have felt the force of IUU.
Located at the southern tip of Heard Island is Fiftyone Glacier, which is where a fleet of Austral Fisheries vessels bring in the Glacier 51 toothfish. It takes crews one week just to get to the fishing grounds, and once they arrive, they’re faced with gale force winds, horizontal snow and just four hours of daylight.
Austral Fisheries work with numerous bodies to ensure their catch is both ethical and sustainable, and the company has committed serious capital to safeguard the fishery’s future. The product is recommended by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program; fish stocks are closely monitored in collaboration with the Australia Antarctic Division (vessels are required to participate in tag and release programs); the company is certified under the Australian government’s carbon neutral program and its crews work in accordance with strict safety protocols.
Such efforts have made the Glacier 51 toothfish a favourite among chefs looking for a premium product with ethics to boot. But the fish has also become a target of fraud.
In his time as Austral Fisheries CEO, David Carter has seen both clumsy and sophisticated attempts to rip off the brand’s look and feel. “This is a function of success,” says Carter. “As Glacier 51 becomes more recognised and the brand gains allure and exclusivity, there will be more people who want to cash in.” These attempts come at a cost — unregulated vessels put their crews and the Patagonian toothfish at risk by ignoring safety regulations and overfishing in protected zones.
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WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN ? According to theHarvard Business Review, “blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.” Its distributed database model means anyone with access to a particular blockchain can see the entire database and any modifications made to it, with no single party controlling the data. Records cannot be altered once entered into the blockchain because they’re tied to every prior transaction.
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The Glacier 51 toothfish is the perfect species to trial a new tracking program developed by the World Wildlife Fund in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Digital Ventures. OpenSC (open supply chain) combines a number of technologies, including blockchain, to create a system that tracks individual products from bait to plate. The aim is to provide businesses and consumers with a platform that helps them avoid environmentally damaging and unethical products.
Carter sees Austral’s participation in the pilot as a continuation of the company’s evolution. The Glacier 51 brand has become a vessel to promote the work conducted by Austral Fisheries and the regulatory bodies it works with. “Brands become a way for you to communicate the things that are important to you and your customers,” he says. “When your brand becomes successful, people want to steal the IP through fraud or misuse. A platform like this allows you to tell the story to customers and the supply chain so much better than we’ve been able to do.”
For chef Matt Moran, who serves Glacier 51 at his Sydney restaurant Aria, the decision makes total sense. “There was so much of it [Patagonian toothfish] on the black market coming out of Argentina,” he says.
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Tracking programs already exist, but OpenSC is unique for a number of reasons. “There are a lot of technologies out there tracking different products in different ways,” says Phil Freeman, WWF strategist and temporary OpenSC project director. “We’re using a combination of technologies to verify particular claims.”
In the case of the Glacier 51, it means verifying if individual fish were caught in legal fishing areas. “We aim to attach a RFID [radio frequency identification] tag to a fish at the first safe point process within minutes not hours,” says Freeman. “A digital twin is produced and [a variety of] data is collected and stored on the blockchain. We use the blockchain because once data is recorded, it’s tamper-proof. “We’ve also built machine learning technology that produces an algorithm that can verify if the boat was in a legal fishing zone and we can attach the verification to the digital twin for a particular fish,” Freeman explains. The fish are then tracked as they travel through to Perth via Mauritius for filleting before they are sent to their final destination — for example, a restaurant.
Glacier 51 toothfish
The development is a boon for an industry that’s been plagued by people telling ‘porkies’, says John Susman. “All these things embed deeply in the supply chain, which I think is a real positive — particularly in the wild catch sector,” he says. “It’s not uncommon to have five or six sets of hands in the supply chain before it gets to the end user.”
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MACHINE LEARNING - The digital nature of distributed ledgers makes them programmable, meaning algorithms can be developed and attached to them. OpenSC’s marine and data scientists used this technology to build a machine learning model, which overlaid the location of Austral’s vessel on to the map of zones where it is illegal to fish (but still legal to travel through). The information is combined with data collected about boat speed, sea depth and weather from the protected location at the time to determine whether it is possible the vessel was fishing while it passed through the illegal fishing zones.
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Data on the RFID tags is linked with a QR code and attached to packaging. Austral is able to share the stories of each Glacier 51 toothfish with clients, who can then pass the information on to their customers. OpenSC works with restaurateurs and retailers to develop simple and engaging experiences so customers can find out more information about the food they’re about to eat.
In a restaurant setting, this could mean providing diners with a QR code (printed on a menu for example) so they can access information directly or equipping front of house staff with details. “Billions of consumers around the world now have a super computer in the form of a smartphone in their pocket, so we have the ability to engage them about what they’re eating, where it came from and the story behind it,” says Freeman.
OpenSC has developed an app and website through which end users can view the journey of the individual Glacier 51 toothfish they have purchased, as well as other data such as details about the vessel it was caught by and cold chain management.
While Susman can’t see many diners reaching for their phones to scan a QR code at dinner, he agrees OpenSC has a clear value for the industry. “I think it’s more back of house security,” he says. “Having a known provenance and history is going to be of value to commercial buyers.”
Moran differs in opinion, arguing the platform’s novelty value will draw diners in at first. “Once they see what it does, I think they’ll keep using it, which is a great thing,” he says. “If you know even a little about the history of a product, it tastes better — there’s a romance to it.”
Storytelling has become key practice for many restaurateurs, with chefs going to great lengths to find ethical and sustainable produce. “Most chefs and restaurants understand the value of storytelling in the restaurant experience,” says Carter. “All the chefs I’ve met acknowledge the critical importance of good produce, so the data becomes another dimension for the chef’sown brand.”
Regardless of whether consumersactively engage with storytelling, theknowledge that the product they areconsuming was tracked using Internet ofThings (IoT) and blockchain technologyprovides reassurance they’re buyingsustainable, ethical products. It’s crucialprogress for businesses such as Austral,which stake their existence on claimsabout the ethicality of their operations.
Looking to the future, those involvedin the pilot believe the combination ofmachine learning, IoT and blockchaintechnology used by OpenSC couldbecome the foundation for product origin,environmental credentials, social impact,animal welfare concerns and workersafety. “It’s endless,” says Carter. “What themarket is keen to know about and pay apremium for will continually evolve — the platform provides a basis for people like usto respond to consumer trends.”
Freeman points to the potential ofimproved product recall procedures. “There’sa cost that gets built in [to the market],” hesays. “Look at strawberries and the massiveamount that had to be trashed because ofan isolatable problem. The cost has to flowthrough to consumers somewhere, andwhat a terrible waste of good food from anenvironmental perspective.”
With the cost of technology includingRFID tags rapidly decreasing, Moran seesno reason for the technology to remainthe domain of upmarket products. “In thefuture, I think there’ll be multiple productson it,” he says. “As a chef and restaurateur,I want to know where my food comesfrom, I want it to be sustainable, I wantit to be ethical and I want it to be knownthat it’s caught in the right waters by theright person. We have to start doing this orwe won’t have anything left.” ■
