Inspiring Conservation Action

Talking about inspiring stories got me thinking about how one could go about inspiring others to care about our world’s oceans and seas. It was in my research into this topic that I came across the Sustainable Seafood Initiative at the South Carolina Aquarium. The South Carolina Aquarium is located in Charleston, South Carolina, opened on May 19, 2000 on the historic Charleston Harbor. It is home to more than ten thousand plants and animals.

At first glance, it may not seem that the Sustainable Seafood Initiative at the South Carolina Aquarium is an interpretive program. The program teaches chefs how to choose environmentally friendly seafood for their menus. But food, especially seafood, is tied to both the natural world and to history. Using these powerful raw materials, people can be moved to care about resources that they might take for granted.

Seafood is one of the only types of food we harvest from nature instead of from a farm. As an organization, the South Carolina Aquarium inspires conservation of the natural world, and seafood provides one of the strongest ties many people have to the ocean, no matter where they live. It is through this connection that they encourage people to consider their impacts on the ocean.

Seafood's connection to history may not be so evident at first glance. But the food on your plate has a history, more than you may realize. How was the fish caught? Who depends on the fish for their livelihood? Where did it live? How fast did it grow and how long did it live before it was caught? Did it have a chance to reproduce before it was harvested? The answers to these questions have a substantial impact on the sustainability of the seafood and on the fishermen that harvest it.

A student learns in the Certified Interpretive Guide training class that they must "know their audience." This was very important in the development of the Sustainable Seafood Initiative. They chose to target chefs because more than 70 percent of seafood is sold in restaurants. Instead of trying to educate thousands of seafood consumers who tend to eat more seafood in restaurants than at home, they streamlined their focus on a more targeted group, chefs, thereby influencing all the consumers who dine in their restaurants. But they also need to engage restaurant guests; after all, they are trying to inspire conservation of the oceans, so they need to touch as many people as possible.

Chefs have very specific needs. They are busy, they often do not have a scientific background, and they need to keep their guests happy. These needs played a major role in the design of the educational messaging. When they give them something it must be packed with useful, concise information in a non-technical format that can be used in a restaurant. And finally, their advice must be constructive. It is easy to spend much time and effort telling an audience what not to eat, instead of what they should eat, but continually negative messaging can be frustrating. Thus, their recommendations to chefs come in the form of what fish are good choices to serve, not what should be avoided. These techniques have served us well for the past eight years and their audience has grown to more than 80 partner restaurants throughout South Carolina.

The secondary audience, guests of their partner restaurants, is widespread. They rely on staff at the restaurants to provide the proper information using the interpretive products they give them. They get the opportunity to interact with guests directly however, through the Sustainable Seafood Dinner Series. Every month, one of the partner restaurants hosts a multi-course sustainable seafood and wine dinner. Before each course is served they speak about the sustainability of the seafood, giving information on the history and natural life of the species. The overall tone is fun and light-hearted (while meaningful and worth the guests' attention), but also brief.

Food is central to life, nourishing in body and soul. It is a medium through which communication can be established to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Don't miss the interpretive possibilities.

“Knowing that we may never fully understand what we study of our natural world inspires our wonder and strengthens our respect for what we are privileged to observe.” - Charles Saylan

"We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting."

— Jacques Yves Cousteau

"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself."

— Rachel Carson