Over the last couple of years, EDF has actively worked to raise the contributions of aquatic foods in transforming food systems and making progress on 9 of the 17 the Sustainable Development Goals—global goals established under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a universal call to action to end poverty, to protect the planet, and to ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.
EDFish
Working with partners to evaluate the potential of blue foods in climate adaptation and mitigation strategies
Local knowledge is key to understanding climate impacts on fisheries
By Gemma Carroll, Jacob Eurich and Krista Sherman
Shervin Tate is a recreational fishing guide in The Bahamas, known locally as the Bonefish Specialist. He takes visiting anglers by boat to fish remote beaches and shallow water flats flanked by mangroves. The ultimate prize for his guests is landing and releasing a bonefish: pound for pound, one of the strongest sportfish in the world. Shervin assesses the conditions to select the perfect place to fish, then he and the angler scan the flats for where to target the next cast. Read More
SmartPass and Smartphones: An Innovative Approach to Small-Scale Fisheries Monitoring in Lampung Province, Indonesia
By Harlisa and Dustin Colson Leaning
In Lampung province, Indonesia, a few smartphones and three well-placed cameras are revolutionizing the way that small-scale fisheries are monitored. In a previous blog post, we introduced how smartphone-based catch reporting and the SmartPass camera system could have the potential to play a fundamental role in sustaining small-scale fisheries. A few years later, these two technologies have been implemented to generate reliable estimates of total effort and total catch in Lampung’s blue swimming crab fishery – metrics often hard to come by in a small-scale fishery characterized by limited resources and many fishers. Read More
A framework for more agile and sustainable crustacean fisheries in Asia
By Ming Sun, Stony Brook University, and Adityo Setiawan, Environmental Defense Fund
From warming ocean waters to increased acidification and rising sea levels, it’s no wonder that fish are on the move to find suitable habitat! Climate change is creating dramatic shifts in species’ distributions and affecting their productivity. Fisheries managers who try to ensure sustainable fishing efforts find their jobs more difficult as fish are changing how and where they live. Now more than ever, managing mobile fish stocks is even more of a challenge. Read More
Prioritizing Climate Resilience in United States Fisheries
The impacts of climate change are already apparent in U. S. offshore waters, creating challenges for fisheries, fishing communities and fisheries management. Examples of climate impacts are prevalent across all regions of the coastal U.S. As ocean temperatures warm, species distributions are shifting. For instance, market squid moving up the West Coast from Baja California to Oregon spurred a harvest boom in the Pacific Northwest. Species, including blue crabs and black sea bass, are shifting northward on the Atlantic coast. Read More
Finding the lowest-hanging fruits to improve crustacean fisheries with limited data and capacity
By Nathan Willse, Stony Brook University, and Harlisa Harlisa, Environmental Defense Fund
Crustacean fisheries offer enormous opportunities as high-value and potentially resilient alternatives to over-exploited finfish stocks. However, rising global demand for crustacean products and rapid environmental change call for an increased focus on the sustainable management of crustacean stocks. While landings, the catch received from a harvester, of crustaceans are on the rise globally as traditional finfish landings are declining, effective fishery management is hampered in many geographies by limited data availability and capacity for data collection and processing.