Tracking Fish From Hook to Fork

Farmers in Vietnam face rising sea levels but rejected the city's water engineering projects. They prefer gradual measures to cope with climate change so scientists have allowed the farmers to steer the conversation.

Vermont's passage of a law requiring food that is genetically modified to be labeled spurred action at the national level to create one standard, rather than a patchwork of state laws, that offers food companies several ways to label foods with GMOs. The national bill did eventually pass, but as this piece illustrates, no one seems very happy about it. Environmentalists feel it leaves large loopholes and while the food industry likes one standard, it does not like the stigma the GMO label confers.

Canada is paving the way in marine solutions, but they didn't get there without failure first. After decades of overfishing, the country is experimenting with a sustainable commercial fishing catch-share system that has relied on quotas, leading to a full retention, fully monitored fishery.

New DNA testing technology is showing promise as a faster, cheaper way to determine if a shark fin came from a protected species, an important task to curbing the illicit shark fin trade across the world. While experts warn that the technology won't act as a deterrent to the practice, it will help authorities better track and determine if shipments are suspect.

In Jamaica, locally-led coral nurseries are working to restore the coral reef that have been lost to natural and manmade disasters. These organizations have small coral gardens where they can grow free of danger and when they’re big enough, are transported to a reef. With coral and fish being so codependent in the underwater ecosystem, the regrowth of coral has meant an increase of fish and fishing for the country, which many people rely on for their livelihood.

Coastal Shellfish, an Indigenous aquaculture company in British Columbia, is focusing on sustainable food and food security through its product Great Bear Scallops. This is the first project funded by the Costal Funds trust set up by donors, governments, and First Nations to support sustainable Indigenous-led businesses. The company has been selling scallops to several local businesses like restaurants and breweries.

A growing number of governments, companies, and nonprofit organizations are working together with new technology and data to identify fishing vessels that are breaking laws and engaging in human rights violations. Using satellite imagery and tracking signals, for example, a philanthropic company and a nonprofit worked with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to help the Ghanian navy arrest four vessels for illegal fishing practices. Technology by itself won’t stop forced labor and unregulated ships, but it can be helpful for cash-strapped governments looking to increase oversight of their fisheries.

Off the coast of Australia, the energy company Chevron is experimenting with new quarantine management techniques to ensure that any plants and pests don’t hitchhike to new places, which can devastate the global food economy. They’ve redesigned shipping containers to make it harder for insects to tag along and they’ve created a video game to train workers on how to be better at finding these pests in their inspections. Some creatures and plants can slip through the process, but these tools have been successful and could be used in other ways.

The Yurok Tribe, located in Northern California, depends on fishing to sustain a living. However, a severe drought, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a crumbling highway severely affected the tribe. So, leaders are turning towards new ways of making an income: a community garden.

Mangroves can store up six times more carbon than an area equal to the Amazon rainforest. However, they are rapidly declining, over the past century their population has been reduced by 30 to 50 percent. One nonprofit, Blue Ventures, is working with local communities to regenerate fisheries, which helps the mangroves. They're also helping local communities to manage their mangroves.