Simultaneously, overfishing is endangering the health of fish stocks, resulting in lower catches and growing food insecurity, while large-scale industrialized fishing fleets roam the world’s oceans to meet demands worldwide, creating even more damage.
Most of the world’s fisheries are small, coastal, unregulated, and overexploited – and located in the global South. Small-scale fishers land almost half of the world’s total catch and feed one billion people. Yet, many of them go hungry as their coastal regions are overfished by local as well as foreign commercial fleets. Today, important marine habitats are beyond mere preservation; they have to be restored.
Seafood makes up more than half of the per capita protein intake in some developing regions and island states. Almost one billion people are at risk of undernourishment if fisheries continue to decline.
Blue Ventures is a marine conservation organization that exists to protect the life in our oceans. The organization was founded on the simple idea of putting communities at the heart of conservation. Their operations span the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, with field programs in Madagascar, Belize, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and East Africa.
To date, Blue Ventures has supported coastal communities to establish hundreds of locally led marine conservation initiatives that benefit people and nature alike. It employs 280 field-based conservationists across the Indian Ocean, and supports coastal community conservation initiatives worldwide.
Blue Ventures was co-founded in 2003 by Alasdair Harris, Matthew Linnecar, Dr. Robert Conway, and Tom Savage. Their partners include Conservation International, the MacArthur Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, the Marine Stewardship Council, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, WWF, as well as ministries and universities worldwide.
