Monthly Archives: October 2019

Putting people at the center of solutions is crucial to ensure healthy fisheries

By / Bio / Published: October 8, 2019

Behind every single seafood dish you have ever eaten is a chain of hands that helped bring that gift from the sea to our plates, often starting with men and women in small-scale fisheries. At Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), we believe that protecting our world’s oceans and coastal livelihoods can only be achieved when we protect people and nature together. In other words, protecting the lives behind all those hands that work in the fisheries and seafood sectors is central to ensuring long-term healthy oceans. Read More »

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Everyone’s Gulf: inspiring a new generation of ocean advocates

By / Published: October 4, 2019

“I learned about sustainability that if you catch too many fish, you’ll catch them faster than they can reproduce … and there won’t be any more fish.”

A simple concept, but one that took decades to integrate into U.S. law — and one that Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) works to establish as an underlying fisheries management principle across the globe. And it’s a concept that we hoped to reinforce with an event we held in Jackson, Mississippi focused on connecting local youth to their seafood.

For Sadarius, a gregarious 11-year-old at Blackburn Middle School in Jackson, the idea made sense almost immediately. It was one of the core messages intended to impress upon students at Everyone’s Gulf, a collaborative project among Share the Gulf supporters EDF, Chef Nick Wallace, Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, Gulf Wild™, Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association, Silver Dollar Charters and of course, Blackburn Middle School. Read More »

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Will fisheries management best practices need to adapt as climate change impacts the ocean?

By / Bio / Published: October 3, 2019

Editor’s note: This is the second in a multi-part blog series, Fisheries for the Future, examining the impacts from climate change on global fisheries and the opportunities to address these emerging challenges. Throughout the series, we’ll be investigating how climate change will impact the world’s supply and distribution of fish and what we can do to ensure the most sustainable future for ourselves and our planet. Learn more about this work: Resilient Seas

Doctors say a healthy patient is better able to recover from an injury than an unhealthy one. As our colleagues at the University of British Columbia point out, this is similar to healthy marine ecosystems, where a healthy ecosystem is better able to withstand the effects of climate change compared to an unhealthy one. Managing fisheries right is one of the most important factors for addressing marine ecosystem health. In this blog we will talk about fishery management best practices and their importance in the face of climate change, how those practices may look different as a result of climate-related factors and some recent experiences with fisheries in Lithuania.

Over the last few decades we have learned what it takes to manage fisheries well and have worked with fishing communities around the world to develop robust management plans that are yielding positive results for fish populations and fishing communities. Read More »

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