The future of fish is uncertain. For the first time in history, fishers are faced with the possibility of being excluded from their historic fishing grounds — displaced for conservation and other economic opportunities. But, fishers see and touch more of the ocean than any other stakeholder and should be considered an important ally in ocean monitoring, management, and conservation. The eOceans® Smart Fishery Tracker™ was designed to help position fishers in this role, to effectively and efficiently improve their efforts, eliminate the barriers that lead to unreported and unregulated fisheries, and enable them to play a critical role in the management and conservation of our ocean.
A magnum opus of citizen science: 592 sites, 30,668 dives, and 146,304 shark observations.
A simple bank account analogy:
Imagine your bank account was depleted by 90%. You deploy strategies to slow your spend to avoid bankruptcy. These “Sustainability” activities help you to maintain your account for longer. But, because you have already committed to payments that keep drawing down your account, they can’t help you avoid bankruptcy forever. For that, you need to rebuild your account with “Regenerative” activities.
The ocean is like your bank account.
Regardless of how you look at it, misuse has depleted the ocean to a fraction of its health and value. To avoid collapse (bankruptcy), both “Sustainable” and “Regenerative” activities are urgently needed. Both suites of activities need to be measured, prioritised, and appropriately invested in to rebuild ocean health and wealth. To date, this has not happened because it’s hard. The eOceans platform has a variety of tools to measure, track, and prioritise activities that have the greatest positive impact for the ocean and the people that depend on it.
#sustainble #blueeconomy #regenerative #ocean #health #wealth
A rapidly growing number of organisations collect, distribute, and use ocean data from the backyards of communities that depend on the ocean. Use of these data could upend local ways of life. Below, I elaborate on the issues, share perspectives, and describe why and how the eOceans® platform was designed with ethics at its core.
