ADDRESSING OVERFISHING
One of the most immediate sources of the destruction of aquatic life and the degradation of ocean habitats is overfishing. Over 85% of the worlds’ stocks are overfished. Anthrocean’s initiatives addressing this problem include:
- Marine Protected and Restricted Area Mapping — Raising awareness through mapping of marine protected and managed areas, so that people are aware of locations and restrictions, and aquatic life can have safe havens to recover. Effective Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can result in an 8-14 fold increase in fish populations if implemented well.
- High Seas Protection — The most threatened species are wandering the high seas and do not necessarily inhabit a single location. Since COP21 has enabled negotiations of the oceans, we are supporting international treaty negotiations through the NRDC and the IUCN to enhance High Seas Protections. As one example of a threatened species, we assisted with website development to display the path of great white sharks in the High Seas in time for a voyage to the Great White Shark Cafe.
- Low-Cost Monitoring — Overfishing can be prevented if vessel activity can be monitored 24×7. Marine Monitor (M2) detects vessel activity for near-shore MPA’s, and transmits vessel activity onto the cloud where it can be replayed.
- Emerging Technologies for Monitoring — To prevent overfishing, low-cost, longer endurance aerial surveillance is needed. Flightwave.aero is working with M2 for waterproof maritime applications, and can fly for 2 hours.
- Addressing demand — Over 90% of forage fish are ground up into aquaculture feed. Anthropocene Institute is one of several crowd-sourced supporters of the F3 prize, launched November 2015, to encourage alternative ingredients to substitute for wildcaught fish in aquaculture feeds.