World’s First Alternative Seafood Association Aims to Revolutionize Global Seafood Industry

Editor/Mohamed Shihab

Future Ocean Foods, a new global seafood association dedicated to supporting and accelerating the alternative seafood industry, was unveiled today with an impressive inaugural membership base of 36 companies across 14 countries, including the United States, Canada, the UK and Singapore. Spanning plant-based, fermentation and cultivated food and technology, Future Ocean Foods members are united in their mission to promote food security, human health, environmental sustainability and ocean conservation. Future Ocean Foods is dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion, with 40% of its member base comprised of women founders.

Alternative seafood is a relatively nascent but fast-growing industry, helping to solve key challenges facing the growing global demand for protein. Future Ocean Foods members have received significant venture capital from the world’s leading food and climate investors, and are already working with large legacy seafood companies to create sustainable food options. 

There have been enormous recent developments in advancing the taste, texture, nutrition and price of seafood alternatives. Invested capital into the space grew 92% from 2021 to 2022 and US retail sales grew 42% over a similar period. The worldwide plant-based food market is expected to surpass $100 billion by 2030 and the alternative seafood industry is poised to capitalize on this.

Future Ocean Foods members are using plants and cells to help create seafood alternatives ranging from whole-cut salmon filets, sushi-grade tuna, smoked salmon, flaky white fish, shrimp, crab, calamari and much more. Alternative seafood is such an exciting and investable industry, in large part because there are so many different species to develop. It moves the alternative protein industry beyond the burger and the nugget, and past North American diets, which is crucial, as more than 3 billion people around the world eat seafood as their primary source of protein.

Food and Climate

Future Ocean Foods arrives at a critical time. The world is in the midst of a climate crisis and our oceans face significant peril, with a predicted total collapse of global fisheries by 2048 due to human-led destruction and climate change. The importance of ocean conversation and restoration cannot be underestimated: the oceans cover 71% of the globe’s surface, represent The planet’s largest carbon sink and generate 50% of the oxygen on earth. Ocean warming and acidification, algae blooms, coral bleaching, mercury levels and the omnipresence of microplastics, as well as enormous problems with antibiotics, disease, animal welfare and bycatch, are causing extreme and rapid loss of biodiversity and marine life, and threating international food supplies. The global seafood industry is projected to surpass $700 billion by 2030, however wild catch and aquaculture simply cannot - and should not - fulfil this demand. As we prepare for a future population of 10 billion people by 2050, the need for creating and scaling sustainable protein sources has never been more urgent.