Recognizing Innovation in Responsible Seafood: ISSF and FAU Queen Conch Lab Take Top Honors at the 2025 Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards
At this year’s Responsible Seafood Summit in Cartagena, Colombia, two remarkable initiatives took center stage for their contributions to a more responsible global seafood sector. The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) and Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Queen Conch Lab were named winners of the 2025 Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards, sponsored by the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC).
ISSF received the award in the fisheries category for its jelly-FAD – a biodegradable, net-free fish aggregating device inspired by jellyfish. FAU earned top honors in the aquaculture category for its mobile queen conch hatcheries, a trailer-based lab system that supports restoration, sustainable seafood, and community livelihoods across the Caribbean.
Together, these two projects showcase what innovation in seafood can achieve: better environmental outcomes, stronger local economies, and practical solutions that scale globally.
A Shared Commitment to Responsible Growth
Since 2012, the Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards have celebrated forward-thinking technologies and practices that drive the seafood sector toward sustainability. Presented annually by the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), the awards recognize ingenuity that improves production efficiency, reduces environmental impact, and supports communities that depend on fisheries and aquaculture.
USSEC is proud to sponsor the awards as part of its ongoing mission to advance responsible, resource-efficient food systems worldwide. Through partnerships across industries and continents, USSEC helps connect innovation with impact, encouraging practices that protect ecosystems, enhance transparency, and strengthen global food security.
As this year’s two winners demonstrate, collaboration between science, industry, and community can generate real-world progress for both people and the planet.
FAU’s Queen Conch Lab: Restoring a Caribbean Icon
In the aquaculture category, Florida Atlantic University’s Queen Conch Lab received top honors for a project that blends restoration, education, and community development.
The queen conch – a large marine snail known for its pink shell and cultural importance across the Caribbean – has seen populations plummet due to overfishing and habitat loss. In 2024, the species was listed as Threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Recognizing the urgent need for action, FAU researchers developed a way to bring aquaculture directly to the islands that depend on the species most.
Their innovation is elegantly simple: a fully functional conch hatchery built inside a trailer. Each solar-powered mobile lab contains tanks, filtration, and flow-through seawater systems that allow conch to be reared from egg to juvenile in self-contained units. When deployed to coastal communities, the trailers connect to local seawater sources, turning empty spaces into productive hatcheries within days.
Since the first trailer was launched in 2022, additional units have been established in The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Florida, with new projects underway in other Caribbean nations. Each lab can raise up to 2,000 juvenile conch annually, supporting both restoration and future broodstock programs.
The mobile labs also create ripple effects beyond conservation. They offer training and employment opportunities for local residents, including returning marine science graduates, and engage fishing communities directly in the restoration process. During storms and hurricanes, the trailers can be relocated for safety, ensuring continuity even in vulnerable coastal regions.
By combining restoration science with community-based aquaculture, FAU’s approach offers a replicable model for other island nations seeking to rebuild threatened species while sustaining local livelihoods.
ISSF’s Jelly-FAD: A Nature-Inspired Solution for Global Tuna Fisheries
Fish aggregating devices (FADs) are a common feature of the global tuna industry. These floating structures attract fish, allowing vessels to harvest efficiently, but traditional FADs often rely on plastic and netting that can entangle marine life and persist as ocean waste.
ISSF’s jelly-FAD turns that model on its head. Inspired by the gentle drift of jellyfish, the design replaces synthetic materials with biodegradable, locally sourced components such as bamboo, clay, cotton rope, and canvas. By mimicking the natural buoyancy of jellyfish, the device remains stable in the water column without the harmful entangling mesh that causes bycatch and ghost fishing.
Field trials across several regions, including the Pacific, Mediterranean, and tropical tuna fisheries, have shown that the jelly-FAD performs just as well as conventional models, maintaining catch efficiency while drastically reducing ecological impact.
Beyond its environmental benefits, the jelly-FAD is designed for accessibility. The materials are inexpensive and widely available, meaning fishing communities in developing regions can construct and maintain the devices themselves. ISSF has published open-source manuals to encourage global adoption, ensuring that this innovation is not limited to industrial fleets but can benefit small-scale fishers as well.
By addressing both ecological and economic realities, ISSF’s jelly-FAD reflects a new era of responsible fisheries innovation, grounded in science, collaboration, and open knowledge-sharing. Its recognition at the 2025 Responsible Seafood Summit underscores how practical design improvements can reshape industry norms and strengthen the long-term health of marine ecosystems.
The 2025 winners reflect a central theme that runs through both USSEC’s mission and the Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards: innovation is most powerful when it is practical, inclusive, and science-based.
In fisheries, ISSF’s jelly-FAD demonstrates how thoughtful engineering can protect biodiversity while preserving economic viability. In aquaculture, FAU’s mobile hatcheries show how modular, low-infrastructure solutions can empower communities to restore ecosystems and strengthen food systems from the ground up.
Both projects represent a shift from short-term efficiency to long-term resilience, which is a direction the global seafood industry increasingly recognizes as essential. They also illustrate how sustainability and profitability are not opposing goals but complementary drivers of progress.
For USSEC, this alignment reinforces the organization’s broader commitment to sustainable food production. Soy, a key protein ingredient in aquaculture feed, plays an important role in meeting global demand for seafood while reducing reliance on marine resources. By supporting responsible aquaculture and fisheries innovation, USSEC helps ensure that growth in the seafood sector can coexist with healthy oceans and thriving communities.
Celebrating Collaboration Across the Value Chain
The Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards are decided by audience poll during the annual Responsible Seafood Summit – an event that brings together producers, scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders from across the seafood value chain.
This year’s ceremony in Cartagena highlighted the power of collaboration across geographies and disciplines. From engineers and environmental scientists to local fishers and community leaders, the people behind these winning innovations share a belief that sustainability is a collective effort.
Their work also underscores how the seafood sector continues to evolve, embracing digital tools, circular materials, and inclusive community models to build a future where seafood production supports both human nutrition and ocean health.
As global demand for seafood continues to rise, innovations like ISSF’s jelly-FAD and FAU’s mobile conch hatcheries offer a roadmap for what responsible growth can look like. They combine creativity, evidence-based design, and cross-sector collaboration, setting new standards for transparency and accountability in both fisheries and aquaculture.
The U.S. Soybean Export Council congratulates the winners of the 2025 Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards and celebrates all the finalists who continue to advance sustainable solutions across the seafood industry.
This article is funded in part by the Soy Checkoff.