ANSWER 1

Written response:

As noted in the question, there is growing momentum to make seafood labels tell consumers more about their food choices – people increasingly want to know what the fish on their plate is, where and how it was caught, how nutritious it is, and whether it comes from a sustainable fishery or aquaculture production. Labels including climate-vulnerability information would give consumers a stronger basis for choosing seafood that is not only responsibly caught or farmed today, but also likely to remain available and sustainable in a changing climate.

At present there is no widely adopted seafood ecolabel or mandatory label in Australia that directly reports a fishery or product’s climate-vulnerability score (for example “highly vulnerable to warming” or “climate-resilient”). Research and national programs (e.g., Climate Adaptation Handbook) have developed vulnerability assessments and tools that could support such labelling, but those outputs are still used mainly by managers and scientists rather than as consumer-facing labels.

In short: the science exists to evaluate vulnerability, but it has not yet been standardised into a consumer label. 

How consumers can choose seafood with climate impacts in mind:

1. Prefer clear and detailed labels, with species names and origin. Knowing the species and where it came from is the single most important first step, many consumer choices are undermined by vague names or mislabelling. If the product is clearly labelled with species and origin, you can check sustainability guides or local risk statements. We also found that vague labels were more likely to be mislabelled – that is that the product did not match the label description (Scientific Reports).
2. Prefer locally managed, well-monitored fisheries. State and federal agencies and fisheries managers in Australia (for example at the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, AFMA) already recognise and are planning for climate impacts in management advice. In general, Australian wild-capture and aquaculture products come with a higher assurance of robust management and monitoring compared with many imported alternatives, which may originate from regions where fisheries governance and sustainability standards are less stringent.
3. Use trusted ecolabels and guides that consider future risk. Tools such as the GoodFish guides and international certifications like the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) can be helpful, even if these do not specifically label climate vulnerability, they consider it in their assessment criteria and they do highlight well-managed fisheries and responsibly produced aquaculture – those management systems are more likely to be adaptable to climate change.
4. Ask retailers and fishers for more information. When seafood is sold at fishmongers, markets or restaurants, ask for the species name, where it came from, whether it has any certification, or if they know if recent impacts (like marine heatwaves) have affected supply. Transparent suppliers will share this and consumers showing interest will help improve labels in the future.

What a climate-vulnerability label could look like
A credible consumer label for climate vulnerability would combine:
(a) species-level vulnerability (biology, thermal tolerance, life history),
(b) region-specific exposure (recent trends and projected warming / marine heatwaves), and
(c) management capacity (is the fishery monitored and capable of adaptive management?).

The science to assess fisheries’ climate vulnerability is now robust in Australia; the priority is to translate those assessments into standard, audit-ready consumer information, integrated with species, origin and sustainability labels, so consumers can make choices that reflect both: present sustainability and future climate resilience.