A recent article in Forbes delved into the importance of traditional fishing communities – a group that has been long overlooked – in ocean conservation.
“A sector that has alienated people needs to reimagine itself as one that delivers real value and benefits to communities on a daily basis. If we can fix that, then we have a pathway to scale. We have a market in this population that is truly global and through which solutions can be scaled up very quickly. At that point, the conservation sector becomes the people that interact with the ocean: the fishing population – who are overwhelmingly in low income countries in the tropics – interacting with some of the most important life and diversity on the planet on a daily basis. They have a far richer traditional knowledge of ecology and ecosystems than I do or than we as Western scientists might ever have.” says Alasdair Harris, founder of Blue Ventures.