Ocean Sourcing and Sustainability: The Questions Worth Asking

Ocean sourcing sits at the intersection of two things that are both hard to verify from a label alone: where a fish came from, and whether that fishery is managed responsibly. Neither question has a one-word answer, which is exactly why it is worth asking both.

What "sustainable" alone does not tell you

The word "sustainable" has no single legal definition in most markets, which means it can mean very different things depending on who is using it. A more useful question is whether a brand can point to a specific fishery, a specific catch method, or a specific certification—rather than the word itself.

A short list of better questions

• Where, specifically, is the fish caught—not just "ocean" or "wild"?
• What is the byproduct? Collagen from fish skin is often a byproduct of fisheries supplying food, not a separate catch
• Is there any third-party documentation, or only a claim on the packaging?

Marine collagen made from skin that would otherwise be discarded—a byproduct of fisheries already supplying food—is generally a more considered use of the catch than sourcing an entirely separate supply chain. It is a detail worth asking about directly.

Where Unmade lands on this

Unmade is sourced from certified wild fisheries—the kind of third-party certification that exists specifically so "sustainable" is not just a word on the label. Marine collagen also carries a meaningfully smaller carbon footprint than land-farmed animal collagen sources like cattle, simply because there is no land, feed, or farming infrastructure behind it—it is a byproduct of fish already being caught for food.