April 21, 2021 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) announced 20 fisheries and research projects will receive up to £60,000 through its Ocean Stewardship Fund, a fund dedicated to sustainable fishing across the globe.
The awards include grants to the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), WWF India and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as well as to fisheries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia, the MSC said. A quarter of the funding will focus on Global South fisheries.
April 20, 2021 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:
Twenty fisheries and research projects around the world will receive up to £60,000 each from the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) Ocean Stewardship Fund – a fund dedicated to enabling and supporting sustainable fishing around the world.
The awards include grants to the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), WWF India and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as well as to fisheries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Nearly a quarter of the funding has been awarded in support of fisheries in the Global South.
Research into fishery observer safety is a special focus this year given the critical role observers can play in providing the data and evidence required to demonstrate fisheries are operating responsibly. An Ocean Stewardship Fund grant will support Saltwater Inc. – a company which trains and deploys fishery observers – in collaboration with the I.T. consulting firm Chordata, LLC, to create a ‘one-touch’ communications platform. This will enable fishery observers to safely communicate with their home office, or alert emergency services to unsafe working conditions.
Three other grants will fund research aimed at reducing bycatch – a major cause of ocean biodiversity depletion – whilst other projects focus on fisheries’ harvest strategies and improvements in bait fisheries.
The 20 awardees include:
The Fund also supports fisheries that are in the early stages of improving their management practices. Six of the grants, totalling nearly a quarter of the funding (£157,724) are supporting fishery improvement projects in the Global South, including the deep-sea shrimp trawl fishery in Kerala, India and blue swimmer crab fisheries, squid fisheries and snapper and grouper fisheries in Indonesia.
The MSC’s Chief Executive, Rupert Howes, said:
“Congratulations to all the 2021 awardees of the Ocean Stewardship Fund. The MSC established the Ocean Stewardship Fund in 2018 to fund credible projects and initiatives that will deliver real improvements in the way our oceans are being fished and importantly, will help fisheries around the world to progress on their pathway to sustainability.
“The knowledge generated by these projects will inform the sector more widely and we hope, will catalyse and lead to further adoption and scaling of solutions beyond the immediate beneficiaries of the grants.
“I was very impressed by the quality of all of the applications this year and have no doubt the Ocean Stewardship Fund’s focus on collaborative projects is driving innovation and creativity. Without doubt our collective efforts can help to ensure our oceans remain productive and resilient in the face of the growing pressures and demands placed on them but much more needs to be done and urgently if we are to deliver the UN strategic development goals by 2030.”
Since 2019, the Ocean Stewardship Fund has awarded 35 grants totalling £1.3 million and the MSC hopes the impact of those projects will contribute to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water.
For more information about the Ocean Stewardship Fund, including previous grant awards, please visit: www.msc.org/oceanstewardshipfund
April 12, 2021 — It is true that my research program receives funding from the fishing industry. Industry funding makes up about 22% of my total funding, while I receive similar amounts from environmental foundations, Universities, and private individuals unassociated with the fishing industry. In addition, I receive funding from environmental NGOs, including over the years the National Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Pew Institute for Ocean Science.
Here is my response to those who say this means you should not believe what I say about fisheries:
Science is collaborative, not individual
When I say that all fish will not be gone by 2048 or that fish stocks are increasing in abundance in much of the world, these are not personal opinions, but results of scientific papers authored by a large group of people, each of whom stands by the results of the paper.
When the claim that “all fish would be gone by 2048” came out, the lead author on that paper, Boris Worm, and I agreed to meet together to understand why we had different perspectives. We organized a group of about 20 scientists and looked at trends in fish stock abundance where it was measured and found no sign that these stocks were generally declining. In 2009, we published a paper in Science Magazine showing this, and the lead author was Boris Worm. It is absurd to say that because I, one of 21 authors, had received funding from the fishing industry this work was biased.
I was the first author on the 2020 follow-up paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Effective fisheries management instrumental in improving fish stock status, that showed that fish stocks were actually increasing in much of the world, but this paper had 23 authors, including professors from several different universities, an employee of The Nature Conservancy, a member of the Board of Directors of The Nature Conservancy, a member of the Board of Directors of Environmental Defense, and an employee of the Wildlife Conservation Society all of whom stand by our conclusions. It is not my work, but group work, and where I get some of my funding is largely irrelevant.
Almost every paper with my name on it in fisheries has a range of authors and many of them have at least one author representing conservation organizations.
Look at the data and what was actually done
My research is not cloaked in secrecy. In every research paper I have been a part of, we tell the reader what data we used and how we used it to get the results we did. This is the methodology section. We describe our data and methods so you, or anyone else, can redo and/or verify the analysis.
This is an important part of science. I have criticized the methodology section of others before, and others have criticized mine—this is what makes information evolve closer to truth. Unfortunately, that part of science gets lost in press releases and hyperbolic headlines, which was a large reason I started this website—to explain the methodology sections of important fisheries papers to give the public (and journalists) proper context. For example, we have been highly critical of Oceana’s seafood fraud methodology on this website, but we appreciate the work they do and gave them a platform to respond to our criticism.
March 2, 2021 — From weather predicting apps to using artificial intelligence to monitor the fish they catch, small-scale fishermen and coastal communities are increasingly turning to digital tools to help them be more sustainable and tackle climate change.
Overfishing and illegal fishing by commercial vessels inflict significant damage on fisheries and the environment, and take food and jobs from millions of people in coastal communities who rely on fishing, environmental groups say.
In addition, climate change affects on small-scale fishermen – who account for about 90% of the world’s capture fishermen and fish workers – include fish moving to new areas in search of cooler waters or if their habitat is destroyed, rising sea levels, and an increase in the number of storms.
Launched in January by nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Small-Scale Fisheries Resource and Collaboration Hub (SSF Hub) is a multilingual website that aims to bring together fishermen, their communities and advocacy groups to connect, share ideas and find solutions to the problems they face.
February 18, 2021 — Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is launching a new program with the aim of improving data collection and fisheries management.
The program, SmartPass, integrates shore-based cameras with artificial intelligence to get a more accurate assessment of the number of vessels fishing in a particular region, according to EDF Global Fisheries Initiatives Senior Manager Sepp Haukebo.
February 10, 2021 — The global effort to harness the potential of small-scale fisheries to achieve sustainable food systems and eliminate poverty has led to the launch of the Small-Scale Fisheries Resource and Collaboration Hub (SSF Hub) by a global coalition involved in various operations along the entire seafood value chain.
“The SSF Hub is a multilingual, interactive online platform to strengthen small-scale fisheries governance and community development,” according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one of the organizations involved in forming the new entity.
January 20, 2021 — Scientists are urging global policymakers and funders to think of fish as a solution to food insecurity and malnutrition, and not just as a natural resource that provides income and livelihoods, in a newly-published paper in the peer-reviewed journal Ambio. Titled “Recognize fish as food in policy discourse and development funding,” the paper argues for viewing fish from a food systems perspective to broaden the conversation on food and nutrition security and equity, especially as global food systems will face increasing threats from climate change.
The “Fish as Food” paper, authored by scientists and policy experts from Michigan State University, Duke University, Harvard University, World Bank and Environmental Defense Fund, among others, notes the global development community is not on track to meet goals for alleviating malnutrition. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of malnourished people in the world will increase from 678 million in 2018 to 841 million in 2030 if current trends continue—an estimate not accounting for effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fish provide 17% of the animal protein consumed globally and are rich in micronutrients, essential fatty acids and protein essential for cognitive development and maternal and childhood health, especially for communities in developing countries where fish may be the only source of key nutrients. Yet fish is largely missing from key global food policy discussions and decision-making.
“Fish has always been food. But in this paper, we lay out an agenda for enhancing the role of fish in addressing hunger and malnutrition,” says Abigail Bennett, assistant professor in the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. “We are urging the international development community not only to see fish as food but to recognize fish as a nutrient-rich food that can make a difference for the well-being of the world’s poor and vulnerable. What kinds of new knowledge, policies and interventions will be required to support that role for fish?” she adds.
December 9, 2020 — Japan’s Diet, its national legislature, passed a law on 4 December to ban the importation of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) seafood.
The new law will require records on catches and transfers to be gathered and submitted to the government in order to establish traceability. For imports, a “certificate of legal catch” from a foreign government will be required.
August 10, 2020 — New research suggests contamination of oyster beds with plastics, paint, and baby formula in Asia could reveal a larger emerging global public health risk.
Scientists from the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with Environmental Defense Fund, Cornell University, and Australia’s University of Queensland, found traces of plastics, kerosene, paint, talc, and milk supplement powders in the beds on the eastern Andaman Sea of Myanmar.
April 14, 2020 — The following was released by the Environmental Defense Fund:
The global COVID-19 pandemic gives us all pause about what the future holds. Our focus and attention are on all those hurt by this terrible disease. But for many of us, this is also a time of deep reflection about society and the world we’ll inhabit when this scourge is over. So for me, it’s also a moment to reflect on the prospects for the ocean, one of the planet’s fundamental life-support systems — making it vital to human health and well-being.
A just-released article in Nature, by Professor Carlos Duarte of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and colleagues, argues that the global ocean can once again return to abundance, rebounding from overfishing and pollution by 2050, if humanity puts its shoulder to the wheel and redoubles efforts across all types of threats. We emphatically agree.
Here, we dive into what such lofty ambitions might require, through one of the key lenses that Duarte and company identify: sustainable fishing.
First, peer-reviewed research shows very clearly that sustainable fisheries management works. That should come as no surprise. Our own work with University of California, Santa Barbara and others (Costello et al., 2016) modelling the world’s fisheries showed that the “upside” of informed and effective management rapidly outweighs the downside of unsustainable fishing (which would otherwise deplete more than 85% of fish populations). Our modelling shows that such management approaches would allow full rebuilding of most stocks (and total global fish abundance) in less than a decade — restoring fish as a valuable asset both for nature and human needs. This exciting finding was recently underscored by a deep and systemic analysis (Hilborn et al., 2020) showing that, in fact, when good management is put in place, fish and fisheries respond impressively.