Melanie Siggs is Global Head of Seafood at LRQA and a leading strategist on responsible seafood systems. Over more than two decades she has worked globally across industry, intergovernmental organisations, NGOs and policy makers helping navigate complex environmental, social and commercial challenges. Prior to LRQA Melanie was Director of Strategic Engagement with Global Seafood Alliance and a Project Adviser with the World Economic Forum Ocean Programme.
She serves as a Non-Executive Director of Cefas, the UK government marine science agency, chairs Fisheries Innovation & Sustainability and is an Honorary Professor at Heriot-Watt University. A regular international speaker, facilitator and connector across the global seafood community, Melanie is known for listening, sense-making and bringing together diverse perspectives to turn complexity into practical action. In 2025 IntraFish named Melanie as one of the leading Women Shaping the Future of Seafood.
What initially inspired you to pursue a career in fisheries and aquaculture?
I came to seafood following a decade in commercial global forest products with a Finnish company who have huge global forestry and manufacturing interests, and via an MSc in ‘Responsibility & Business Practice’.
I had dipped in to the seafood world prior to that working on contract with FAO (from a role in communications and agricultural policy) where I developed global events on seafood trade in Russia, Indonesia, Japan and Europe. Fun fact: I organised the first world cephalopod conference! When you work in seafood it’s hard to let go, so when I had the opportunity, after that Masters, to use my experience in the commercial sector, in policy, strategic communications and my passion for ‘good business’ to create the European arm of a US seafood NGO (SeaWeb), I leapt at it. We created the first good seafood guides and specialised in creating partnerships between NGOs and the private sector – something that may seem the norm now but wasn’t twenty years ago. And I’ve been in seafood ever since.
I was drawn into the sector because I like to work in natural capital and food systems connecting at that nexus of all the ‘P’s; policy, people, planet, profit and purpose. I was fascinated how seafood sits at the intersection of some of the world’s biggest challenges and opportunities: feeding a growing global population through appropriate food systems, a role in ocean conservation as well as land and aquatic system management, supporting coastal communities, creating sustainable livelihoods and decent work – a protein which not only nourishes, but can positively promote good health, which, when managed well, is self-replenishing, has species to suit all environments, is super adaptable from a culinary perspective. All that and more and yet seafood is often under prioritised, both wild and farmed, by governments and investors, punches way above its financial weight in terms of reputation and brand, is wasted in large amounts between harvest and consumption.
As a regular international speaker, facilitator and connector across the global seafood community, which experiences and what work has most shaped your approach to responsible seafood systems?
One of the privileges of my career has been seeing the seafood sector from many different perspectives. I’ve worked with businesses trying to meet customer expectations, achieve their corporate value commitments or respond to difficult challenges, with NGOs pushing for faster progress, with governments developing policy, researchers generating new evidence and investors increasingly recognising seafood as part of good pathways to future food security on many different levels. I’ve been fortunate to work across wild capture fisheries, aquaculture, processing, retail, finance, technology and assurance, giving me a super broad view of the complex global seafood system.
Every role has reinforced that no single organisation, standard, policy, company, NGO or technology alone can see or resolve the ever-evolving challenges to responsible seafood systems, all the challenges and opportunities are not only interwoven, but constantly shifting like all systems. My strength has been listening, connecting people, spotting patterns across sectors, making sense of complex and sometimes conflicting perspectives and translating those insights into practical action.
That is why my thinking has evolved beyond viewing sustainability as a series of individual issues. Good seafood systems as interconnected. Environmental performance, human rights, animal welfare, food safety, climate resilience, technology, economics, traceability and trust are not separate challenge, they are all part of the same system and need to be looked upon as such. Ultimately, my role has become less about having all the answers and more about asking the right questions, connecting people, evidence and ideas and creating the conditions for best practice across all the dimensions.
Having worked across industry, government and research, how important is collaboration between these sectors in driving more sustainable and resilient aquaculture systems?
Each sector brings something unique, they contribute to the success of the system. Researchers develop the evidence and innovation. Industry understands the operational realities and has the ability to implement change at scale. Government creates the policy environment that enables adoption and responsible investment.
The challenge is that these groups don’t always speak the same language – or to each other! – or work to the same timescales. One of the most valuable roles third party organisations can play is by connecting the actors, translating the needs and the science, facilitate conversations, help industry identify risk and opportunity and importantly share the good stories, the evidence of best practice, the art of the possible, celebrate.
As the challenges facing seafood systems, both farmed and wild, are so interconnected from climate change and biodiversity to human rights and cyber security, collaboration is key to how we build resilient, adaptive, food systems.
During your keynote at Aquaculture UK 2026, you spoke about assurance evolving beyond compliance to build resilience and trust. What does this mean in practical terms for aquaculture producers?
Compliance remains important. Compliance to regulations and laws, and using the high quality, benchmarked, standards that we have available in seafood – for farmed, wild and feed. These provides the cornerstones and demonstrate what can and should be expected. In turn they collect valuable understanding, data and offer and embrace new learning. But today’s risks are evolving much faster than these cornerstones can respond. Global labour mobility, climate change, the hypertransparency and information velocity with which data is shared, AI are all accelerating the way in which we are aware of and must address risk faster and smarter.
Building resilience to withstand risk through mitigation, understanding and adaptation means helping producers identify emerging risks and supporting them in adapting. That could be understanding climate impacts on production, strengthening biosecurity, improving labour practices, enhancing supply chain transparency or using data to make better management decisions for example.
I think assurance will increasingly become a strategic business tool that supports decision-making and due diligence not only through audits, but as part of an evolving system that builds on agreed best practice into dynamic, broader, smarter, strategic models, that support both producers and buyers, is more real-time and looks at performance over time. That will require collaboration precompetitively, with standard holders and across supply chains.
Another aspect of collaboration we don’t talk about often, is looking outside of seafood to see what is being used in other sectors with success. Making sure we sit in other food spaces is important to ensuring we don’t think we have to invent everything, but can adapt. We have learning to offer as well and I’ve been fortunate to be invited in to other sectors to talk about managing the complexity of seafood in business and policy making.
Which innovations do you believe will have the greatest impact on the sector over the next decade?
I think we are moving towards assurance becoming more continuous rather than periodic, likely with deep dives to test the system.
AI will increasingly help identify emerging risks from multiple data sources long before they become obvious and in ways we don’t yet know. Remote sensing, satellite monitoring and sensor technology will provide much richer insight into environmental performance and production systems, not only in a ‘big brother’ sense, but also as part of that ability to flag emerging risks or opportunities.
Digital traceability will continue to mature, allowing seafood businesses to understand supply chains with greater accuracy and confidence.
I’m excited by platforms that combine different datasets to create a much broader picture of operational risk—not just environmental performance, but human rights, climate exposure, food safety, regulatory change and supply chain resilience together. If we’re identifying risk we can identify opportunity too.
I feel there is a place for both technology and people, but we can use tech to enable smarter ways of working, of forecasting, and it will in effect shorten the distance between producers and buyers through improved visibility of whole systems. All of this will allow us to identify not only the risks, but the good. If we can identify risk earlier, we can also identify opportunity earlier. Technology shouldn’t just help us prevent failure—it should help us accelerate success. Perhaps one of the biggest shifts will be moving from asking ‘How do we stop the bad?’ to asking ‘How do we identify, reward and scale the good?’
Looking ahead, which emerging trends do you believe will have the greatest influence on the future of global aquaculture and what gives you the greatest optimism for the industry’s future?
I think we’re entering a new era where resilience becomes the defining characteristic of successful aquaculture. For many years we’ve talked about sustainability. I think the next chapter is resilience—environmental resilience, social resilience, economic resilience and supply chain resilience. I’m not throwing sustainability out, although it’s not my favourite word, its rather a static measurement of a moment in time, while resilience builds strong systems so sustainability is built in across the business and across time.
Climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, changing consumer expectations often developed through sound bites, investor scrutiny and more rigorous, specific, regulation all mean producers and buyers need systems that are adaptive rather than simply compliant. One measurement is not resilient or sustainable but can be an important corner stone on which to build out the system.
At the same time, businesses will increasingly manage risks – and opportunities – as interconnected parts of one operating system.
What gives me optimism is that this industry has repeatedly shown its ability to innovate. The future forecasts and the opportunity for aquaculture as a globally appropriate food system for nutrition, good health, livelihoods, decent work, economic prosperity, communities, entrepreneurs, technology developers – aquaculture offers huge opportunity across the world.
I haven’t even touched on the potential for what will happen with the residual material from aquaculture. That material (shrimp shells, fish skins, salmon blood, frames etc) can produce truly game changing products in highly influential and wealthy sectors such as pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and agro chemical industries. If aquaculture and investors, take advantage of those opportunities the face of aquaculture could be very different.
It may even be that, in twenty years’ time, the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and biomaterials sectors become the primary drivers of value creation, even the owners of aquaculture enterprises, with seafood protein being one of several highly valuable outputs.
