By comparing snapper production, import and export statistics from international and national databases for 2006–2013, we discovered wide anomalies in records and showed that officially reported snapper trade may be underestimated by >70%. Major discrepancies were found between imports reported by the USA, the world’s largest snapper consumer, and exports declared by its main suppliers – Mexico, Panama and Brazil. New Zealand emerged as the world’s largest snapper exporter, however, our analysis suggests that the traded fish is silver seabream (Pagrus auratus), belonging to a different fish family and distorting ‘true’ snapper export statistics by 30%. The most obvious reason for these large discrepancies lies with the lack of unique trade codes for snappers, allowing a substantial portion of trade to go undocumented or be lumped under generic categories. Due to the ambiguities associated with this poor trade-code specificity, no robust inferences can be drawn on the extent to which dubious practices contribute to trade data discrepancies, nor on the magnitude of illegal harvests.
By DNA barcoding 300 ‘snapper’ products from six countries, we found 67 species from 16 families masquerading under this umbrella term, deriving from numerous disparately-managed fisheries and with different traceability and conservation concerns. Over half of the identified species were reef-dwelling species, which are likely threatened by overfishing, habitat loss and insufficient protection. At least 40% of samples were mislabelled, with common substitutes being seabreams, rockfishes, threadfin breams, fusiliers and tilapia. Despite following the EU’s highly stringent seafood labelling and traceability regulations, samples from the UK were linked with the highest misrepresentation rates, species diversity, number of potential origins and risks of arising from poorly-managed fisheries.
Two full manuscripts, one correspondence article and one conference abstract were published in leading open-access journals with direct links to SNAPTRACE. The results were also orally presented at three international symposia and four invited guest lectures. We capitalised on our strategic alignment with key global NGOs and academic collaborators to ensure that the project outcomes were channelled to relevant managers and regulators to catalyse timely policy and enforcement interventions. We also actively participated in media-related communication and public outreach throughout the project, mainly via press releases, social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, ResearchGate), blogposts, interviews and short films.
