Tag archives for sustainable fishing
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I was honored to be asked to speak at the Caribbean Challenge Initiative’s Summit of Political and Business Leaders, which took place in the British Virgin Islands May 17th and 18th. (See AP story for an overview of the event.) I spoke from the heart, and here is what I said: At the risk of…
This past weekend I spent an afternoon with Barbudan fisherman Josiah “Papa Joe” Deazle and his family. 82 years old, still fishing, lucid, and so wise. I interviewed him as part of the Waitt Foundation’s Barbuda Ocean Initiative, and it was an honor. He was in the midst of his children and grandchildren who jogged his memory and…
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Theresa Peterson has been an Alaska fisherman for three decades. During summer break one year in college she went to Homer, Alaska, to work in a cannery. She lived in a tent with friends. But after four days of being cooped up in the factory she decided she wanted to get a job on a…
Bycatch. That’s the fish that fishers didn’t mean to catch but did – baby fish, species people don’t like to eat, fish no one will buy. High levels of bycatch make fishing unsustainable, not to mention it’s a huge waste. So what can be done about it? Well, that depends on the type of fishing gear…
How do you publicly launch an island-wide ocean zoning initiative aimed at sustainable use of ocean resources? A party with a steel band, of course. Or better yet, two parties. The Blue Halo Initiative diplomatic launch celebration (photo album, press coverage) took place aboard the Waitt vessel, anchored a few hundred meters off Barbuda’s coast. It…
What if ocean zoning was conducted on an island-wide scale, centered on the values and goals of the community? What if management holistically strove for sustainable use, which led to improved livelihoods and improved ecosystem health? Well, then you might have something the Waitt Foundation calls a Blue Halo Initiative. The Blue Halo concept is…
This island grows and grows on me. It is my fourth trip to Barbuda (part of the country Antigua and Barbuda) in the last six months. I am here to launch a comprehensive ocean zoning initiative called Barbuda Blue Halo, an exciting collaboration between the local government and the Waitt Foundation with the goal…
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There are a lot of fish in the sea. But their numbers are no match for growing human appetites and the ultra-efficient fisheries that have sprung up to feed our hunger. A shift towards “blue job” fisheries is urgently needed, experts say, if the oceans are to nourish future generations as they have in…
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Perched on the water’s edge a few kilometers down a wide channel running south west from the vast and beautiful Lake Ayapuá, Uixi is part of Piagaçu Purus Sustainable Development Reserve. In addition to Uixi, Pinheiros and Evaristo, the reserve has 52 other small communities, pinpricked across 834,245 ha of várzea (seasonally flooded forest), higher, never-flooded terra firme rainforest, and lakes including Ayapuá. One-third the size of Vermont, Piagaçu Purus has been a sustainable development reserve since 2003. Within it it communities and conservationists work together to balance biodiversity conservation with achieving sustainable livelihoods for traditional communities, with only a closely controlled amount of commercial activity.
Posted by The newest reality TV stars aren’t college kids thrown together in a group house, or a couple who race around the world to win a million dollars. They are the men, and occasionally the women, who do the jobs that many of us didn’t even know existed: the axmen from the Pacific Northwest, the ice-road…
