Seafood’s Picture Perfect Problem: We’ve Made It Easy to Get Us Wrong

We don’t expect the average grocery shopper to know what a trawler looks like. Or a seiner, a troller, or a gillnetter. Most people have never been to a commercial dock, let alone stepped foot on a working fishing vessel. So how could they know?

Yet the seafood industry often operates as if they do, and that blind spot is costing us credibility, understanding, and, ultimately, will impact consumer choice.

This came into sharp focus when we read a recent article from Country Life UK titled “Sir David Attenborough’s record-breaking nature documentary reveals the devastating effects of bottom trawling on our oceans.” It’s a commentary expanding on the newly released Ocean documentary, but what really caught our attention wasn’t the copy.

It was the cover photo. A glossy Getty Images drone shot showing a small fishing vessel. Sun-dappled, breezy, maybe 30 feet long at most, calmly laid against azure water, nets set.

But it’s not a trawler. Not even close.

And yet, there it is, stamped onto the public imagination. That’s “bottom trawling” now to the casual reader. That’s the villain.

Yes, we got visually played. This is a perfect example of why the seafood industry finds itself so easily misrepresented. We have left the door wide open for outsiders to dictate our narratives for us, often with visuals that aren’t even accurate.

And that’s on us.

(Alexa, play Radiohead - You Do It To Yourself)

Out of Sight, Out of Mind — But Not Consequence

At this point in our human timeline, the general public is profoundly disconnected from its food sources — but when it comes to seafood, that disconnect is even more extreme.

Seafood is caught, harvested, and processed in places most people will never visit, by people they will never meet, using equipment and techniques they have never seen or heard of. You can’t take your kids on a “day at sea” visit the way you can take them to a hobby farm. Or peer over the fence and see a fish farm in operation like your neighbor’s urban chicken coop.

That distance creates an enormous burden of explanation, and it’s an extremely difficult job to do. But it’s still our job.

We’ve Seeded the Soil for Misrepresentation

We assume people know the difference between a seiner and a trawler, and that they recognize the difference between good practice and bad practice. They don’t. And honestly, the vast majority don’t have time to figure it out on their own.

If an article posts a stock photo captioned “bottom trawling,” then to the average reader, that’s a trawler. If they hear trawling is destructive, most consumers aren’t going to research where their cod, sole, or shrimp came from. They’re just going to stop buying it altogether.

It’s an easy solution for them and a massive problem for us.

And the truth is that we’ve left the field wide open for this to happen. We’ve failed to flood the internet, media, and the public sphere with our visuals, our stories, and our firsthand accounts.

Instead, we watch AI-generated content, stock footage, anti-seafood social posts, activist campaigns, and sweeping documentaries fill the vacuum. And because we haven’t consistently and professionally told our own story, we’ve provided no foundation for the public to stand on.

Fishing Has Always Been a Mystery — But It Doesn’t Have to Be

Historically, there’s always been a gap between life at sea and life on land. That’s why maritime communities developed rich traditions of communication through folklore, music, legends, and oral history. They needed ways to communicate the unseen world offshore back to the people waiting at home.

Guess what? That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is the technology we have to bridge that gap. We have cell phones, drones, satellite communication, social platforms, and global media networks. We have all the tools to tell real, vivid, enchanting, true stories grounded in the details and realities of our work.

And yet, as an industry, we’re barely using them. Meanwhile, industry-opposing voices are using them every single day.

Visuals Aren’t Extra, They’re Everything

In order for consumers to understand who we are and to trust our products enough to purchase them, we need to show them why they should consistently, and credibly. For the upcoming generations to even give seafood a chance, we need to meet them where they are, using the media and platforms they already connect with.

It’s not enough to quietly do good work behind the scenes, hoping that consumers understand the nuances. We can’t afford to believe that “our work speaks for itself.” It doesn’t. Not when the public has no idea what they’re looking at.

And why would they? If it’s not in their day-to-day wheelhouse and we haven’t shown them, then it’s an open door for misrepresentation. This is where visual storytelling becomes something far more powerful than a marketing extra or a nice-to-have. It’s reputational armor.

If we want to protect the incredible, necessary work happening across this industry from being flattened into a one-note villain story, we need to flood the field with our own truth long before we’re backed into defensive damage control.

Show or Be Shaped

We believe the most powerful communication that any business along the seafood value chain can do is proactive, creative, transparent storytelling — not defensive PR.

This isn’t about railing against any outlet that gets something visually or contextually wrong. It’s acknowledging how easy we have made it for people to believe what others have to say, and show, about us, because we haven’t given them a concrete and resonant counter perspective to lean on.

As an industry, we have to recognize our responsibility to tell the stories of our work before someone else does. Show your boats, your farms, your people, your processes, your wins, your challenges, and how you are contributing, not just taking. Do it professionally with honesty and clarity. We are responsible for providing the only window that most people will ever get into seeing where their seafood comes from. And we haven’t been doing that. Not in a way that’s unified, clear, and landing for audiences.

Seafood has allowed itself to become an easy target, and as long as we stay silent and let others define the visuals, the headlines, and the tone, we will always come out looking like the villain.

No one is coming to save us. It’s up to us to show up and set the record straight.