Nereus Research Associates Lydia Teh (UBC), Richard Caddell (Cardiff University), Elena Finkbeiner (Conservation International), John Kittinger (Arizona State University), and Director (Policy) Yoshitaka Ota (University of Washington) recently published an article in the open access journal PLoS ONE, entitled ‘The role of human rights in implementing socially responsible seafood’. In the abstract, Teh et al. discuss human violations and social abuses (e.g. slavery and human trafficking) in fisheries and the seafood supply chain, which are partly allowed to continue due to insufficient pressure from the seafood industry and governments to face the issue. They perform a literature review on human rights within the seafood supply chain and analyze the opportunities and challenges that come with implementing socially responsible seafood through the lens of human rights, legal and policy instruments. Some challenges they recognize and focus on are weakly defined economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights infringements, a lack of mechanisms to enforce human rights entitlements, and insufficient resources to carry out supporting and securing rights. The authors argue that if the principles of socially responsible seafood are going to be translated into action, clear legal obligations are required, as well as the necessary national capital and political will to carry them out.