Learn · Traceability

What Is Seafood Traceability?

The ability to track seafood from vessel to consumer — with documented chain of custody at every step. It's the only way to verify what's on a label, prevent fraud, and connect buyers directly to the people who caught their fish.

20–30%

Seafood Mislabeling Rate

Oceana's testing of retail seafood found that 20–30% of fish sampled was mislabeled — a different species than the label claimed. Traceability is the only systemic fix.

~$23B/yr

Global IUU Fishing Value

Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing accounts for an estimated 11–26 million metric tons annually. Without traceable chain of custody, IUU product enters legitimate supply chains.

FSMA 204

FDA Traceability Rule

FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act Section 204 requires enhanced traceability recordkeeping for high-risk foods including finfish and crustacean shellfish, effective 2026.

What Traceability Actually Means

Traceability is not a label or a certification. It is a documented chain of custody — a continuous record of what happened to a product from the moment it was harvested through every step until it reached you.

A traceable piece of fish can answer: Which boat caught it? Which captain? On what date? In which waters? By what method? Which processor handled it? Who shipped it? Every one of those answers should be backed by a document or data record, not a claim.

Most commercial seafood cannot answer these questions. The supply chain is fragmented — fish passes through dozens of hands, lot codes get reassigned, and by the time product reaches retail, the vessel-level information has been lost or aggregated beyond recognition. Oceana's testing found that 20–30% of retail seafood was mislabeled as a different species entirely.

The solution is not more labeling — it is data that travels with the product from harvest through every Critical Tracking Event, in a format that allows verification at any point in the chain.

Key Data Elements (KDEs)

The specific data points that must travel with a traceable seafood product. These are defined in the GDST standard and required under FSMA 204.

Vessel Name

The specific boat that caught the fish — not just the fleet or company name.

Captain

Named individual responsible for the harvest, whose permit is on record.

Catch Date

When the fish was harvested, allowing correlation with stock survey data and season compliance.

Species

Precise species identification — not "salmon" but "sockeye salmon" (Oncorhynchus nerka).

Fishing Method

Gear type: longline, troll, pot, seine. Determines bycatch, habitat impact, and quality of handling.

Region / Gear Area

ADF&G stat area or IPHC regulatory area identifying the specific geographic harvest zone.

Processor

Which facility processed the fish, with processing date and lot codes.

Handler

Each entity in the supply chain that received, stored, or shipped the product.

Critical Tracking Events (CTEs)

Each handoff in the supply chain is a Critical Tracking Event. A complete traceability record documents what happened at every CTE with verifiable data.

Event	Responsible Party	What Gets Recorded
Harvest	Vessel	Fish brought aboard, species confirmed, catch logged
Landing	Vessel + Buyer/Tender	Fish transferred from vessel to dock or tender, weights recorded
Processing	Processor	Cleaning, portioning, freezing; lot codes assigned
Shipping	Processor / Distributor	Product leaves facility with lot codes and chain of custody documentation
Receiving	Distributor / Retailer	Product received, lot codes verified against shipping documentation
Retail / Consumer	Retailer / End buyer	Product sold with traceable documentation available to consumer

The Standards Behind Traceability

Three frameworks that define how traceable seafood data is structured and regulated.

GDST

Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability

Interoperability standard

Defines the data elements (KDEs) and chain events (CTEs) that should travel with seafood through supply chains, and establishes a data format that allows different software systems to exchange that information. Not a consumer label — the technical foundation that platforms like Wholechain are built on.

GS1

GS1 Global Standards

Identifier system

The standards body behind barcodes, QR codes, and product identifiers. GS1 GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) uniquely identify seafood products. GS1 standards for lot codes and location numbers underpin supply chain traceability at the individual package level.

FSMA 204

FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, Section 204

Federal regulation

Requires enhanced recordkeeping for high-risk foods including fish. Processors and distributors must maintain Critical Tracking Event records and Key Data Elements with 24-hour recall capability. Effective January 2026. Compliance requires the data infrastructure that traceability platforms provide.

The Technology

Modern seafood traceability runs on platforms that record supply chain events as immutable records — using blockchain architecture to prevent retroactive modification of catch or handling data.

Wholechain is the traceability platform used by PCS. It records each Critical Tracking Event in a blockchain-backed ledger following GDST data standards. QR codes on packaging link directly to the chain of custody record.

When you scan a QR code on PCS packaging, the record you're accessing is not a marketing page — it is the actual data logged at harvest, processing, and shipping, by the people responsible at each step.

The PCS Approach

PCS sources direct from vessel. Every product includes the vessel name, captain, catch date, species, gear type, and gear area — documented at harvest and carried through processing and shipment.

We don't rely on certification to make traceability claims. We document the chain of custody and make it verifiable. The difference: a certification tells you the fishery passed an audit. Traceability tells you which fish this is.

This is what “from the boat to your table” means in practice — not a marketing claim, but a documented record that exists at every point in the chain.

Boat to Table →Sustainability Certifications Reading Seafood Labels