Sian Morgan has ten years of experience in the fields of marine ecology and fisheries science, with particular expertise in market-based fisheries reform, certification, and quantitative methods for decision analysis. As Director of the Americas for SCS Global Services, Dr. Morgan leads expert teams that evaluate fisheries against the MSC standard and farming operations against ASC standards. Sian Morgon’s talk “Markets-based conservation through MSC, ASC, and Fair Trade” provides her unique insight into the practical applications of market-based conservation approaches from her work as an independent auditor with Sustainable Certifications Systems (SCS). In her presentation, she provides an overview of seafood certifications and recommendation lists for both capture and aquaculture fisheries, address the roles of independent auditing and core organizations involved in the certification process, discusses comparative advantages and shortcomings of evaluation standards, and introduces a new set of standards for capture fisheries under Fair Trade USA.

This colloquium is part of a series of visiting professors speaking about the global challenges and opportunities of farming and seafood. Dr. Øverland was the Director of 
The Norwegian University of Life Sciences Aquaculture Protein Centre (a 10 year research initiative ending in 2014), where her research combined fundamental approaches in fish and animal nutrition with more applied approaches to provide knowledge of use to both academia and industry. Her current research, now at the Center for Research Innovations, is focused on developing novel feed ingredients for the aquaculture and farm animal industries, using basic natural resources in the production on high-quality feed components based on advanced biotechnology. Margareth holds an appointment as a Professor in Aquaculture at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). In her talk, Margareth shares her work on overcoming critical sustainability bottlenecks within larger-scale aquaculture systems.

Miguel A. Cisneros is a fishery biologist (Mazatlan, 1982) with a MSc in Ecology (Ensenada, 1985) and a PhD in Ecology (UC Davis, 1995). He was a post-doctoral researcher at AWI, Bremerhaven (Germany, 1996) and coordinator of WWF-Mexico Gulf of California Program (Guaymas, 2004-2006). He is senior researcher in Mexico’s National Fisheries Institute where he was Director of Research (2000-2003) as well as Chief Director (2007-2010). He is actively involved in work of undergraduate and graduate students from several universities and research institutes, and has long standing work relations with various conservation organizations. His publications and reports as well as current work deal mainly with population dynamics, environmental forcing, and fisheries management of shrimp, swimming crab, jumbo squid, sardines, totoaba, Spanish mackerel, snappers, and with conservation of vaquita. For this seminar, Dr. Cisneros talked about his recent works assessing Mexico's emerging jellyfish fishery, and insights for sustainable management.

Professor Bjorndal is the director of CEMARE at the University of Portsmouth, and former chairman of the World Fish Centre and former president of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade. Professor Bjorndal's talk addresses on a specific environmental concers associated with aquaculture, primarily focusing on how increased demand for feed will, in turn, increase fishing pressure on wild stocks and consequently threaten the sustainability of the associated capture fisheries since marine proteins are integral to the diet of cultured seafood. This dilemma is also known as the "fish meal trap." Other local concerns discussed include discharges from farming sites, destruction of local habitat, and spreading of pathogens. Professor Bjorndal discusses these issues related to salmon aquaculture using cases and learning from his home country of Norway. 

This colloquium is part of a series of visiting professors speaking about the global challenges and opportunities of farming and seafood. Felipe Sandoval is the current president of SalmonChile – an industry association comprised of Chile’s largest salmon producers that seeks to address health, environment, social and economic challenges facing the salmon global industry. Prior to leading SalmonChile, Sandoval was the Undersecretary of Fisheries of Chile, and was tapped by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to lead the so-called “salmon table,” being a public-private taskforce to address critical urgencies in the sector and lead it out of its earlier state of crisis. Sandoval comes from a civil engineering background, and served for many years in both government posts and in the private sector involved in the fisheries and aquaculture. Felipe Sandoval provides his unique perspective on the role of government regulation and the challenges for industry in reducing the environmental costs of industrial salmon aquaculture.

In this talk, Hugo Salgado reviews the experience of ITQs in Chile. He discusses the observed economic benefits, including creating more secure jobs, products of higher value, and more exports with reduced catches. In addition, he speaks about the challenges that have come with ITQs including industry concentration, unemployment, entry of new fishermen into the artisanal sector, entry barriers in the processing industry, and decreased wages in the harvesting and processing industry. Hugo discusses how the highly concentrated industry now has more political power to influence regulators and the quota-setting process, which has led to quotas being set much higher than biological recommendations, while harvests have been lower than the quotas set during the past few years. Fish stocks do not seem to recover, indicating overexploitation. All of this has generated intense debate between those who are benefitting and those who are being negatively affected by the ITQ system. Hugo asserts that understanding this process is crucial to designing ITQ systems that could contribute to more sustainable fisheries in developing countries, not only from an economic perspective, but also from a biological and social perspective.

As a Mexican marine biologist with a PhD in Environmental Economics and Environmental Management, Dr. Sáenz-Arroyo employs a long-term historical perspective in seeking to understand the role played by humans as intelligent predators in the planet’s ecosystems. She is fascinated by how modern humans perceive environmental impacts and how some sophisticated, but inappropriate, scientific paradigms have prevented society from committing resources to nature conservation. In 2000 she joined Comunidad y Biodiversidad A.C., a Mexican nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging marine conservation through participatory approaches. In her talk, Andrea discusses that although marine protected areas (MPAs) have proven to be a powerful tool to recover species, few have shown economic benefits for their users, especially poor people with limited alternative livelihoods. She describes how the global community remains frustrated by the slow speed at which MPAs are created and their lack of effectiveness in protecting large, vulnerable species, such as sharks and turtles. Dr. Sáenz-Arroyo presents a simple solution in which local agents are able to make financial transactions with global agents to preserve intangible goods and services, which are mostly appreciated by the global community. The solution is illustrated by two case studies, one in the Baja California kelp forest in Mexico and the other in the District of Kubalau, on the Island of Vanua Levu, Fiji.

Dr. Doris Soto, Senior Officer for FAO's Environmental Aquaculture Division, was invited to lead the seminar titled "Enhancing coastal-social ecological systems through aquaculture." Her talk, titled "Global Aquaculture and the challenges to increase food security in a sustainable way" provided unique insight for students and faculty researchers based on her work at FAO headquarters in Rome. Additional speakers in this special topics seminar will include experts from across the aquaculture arena, examining markets and consumer dynamics, innovations in feeds and production systems, regulatory and industry considerations, and key sustainability issued as relate to intensification of sustainable aquaculture.

Salvador Lluch-Cota was born in Mexico and trained as a marine biologist earning his PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur. His talk focuses on fisheries in a changing climate. He discusses how traditional fisheries management practices have proved to be limited, and management is increasingly demanding deeper interdisciplinary understanding of the functioning and changes of the marine ecosystems and the services they provide. During this talk he reviews some of the major observed and predicted impacts of climate variability and change on marine ecosystems, with special focus on fish resources, as well as the challenges to be faced for the adaptation of the fishing sector, the limitations for the construction of fish production projections, and the need for new and renewed management strategies. He concludes by exposing an ongoing effort to build climate change adaptation plans for the industrial fisheries in Mexico.

Responsible Fishing Areas (RFAs) were created by the Costa Rican Institute of Fishing and Aquaculture in 2008 as a spatial tool to help respond to demands from local communities for a greater voice in managing their local fisheries. While the tool was considered an innovative alternative to other approaches of small-scale fisheries management when it came out, several policy limitations have restricted its use. Today, eight RFAs exist in the Gulf of Nicoya, a highly productive tropical estuary, but these spatial-management strategies have yet to live up to their promises and prove their value to control fish mortality and provide benefits to local communities.

Haiti is the poorest country the western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. With massive issues related to governance, health, economic growth, and the environment, it is extremely difficult to generate momentum among all levels of society to protect natural resources. Most individuals are concerned only with the here and now — how am I going to feed my family today? Environmental issues in general are a far-off concern, and, despite being a Caribbean island nation, the management and protection of coastal and marine resources are at the bottom of the list. Haiti is only now trying to undertake serious management of its environment, but the issues are often overwhelming, and resources, both human and financial, are extremely scarce. Without a capacity to engage in the enforcement of environmental laws, the current methods of stakeholder engagement and the force of peer pressure are the only remaining routes to success. Following a brief overview of FoProBiM’s history and its successes and failures in engaging in resource management and protection in Haiti based on its holistic approach, there will be a discussion with the audience of the challenges of the current situation.