Ocean Futures: Predicting and Preventing Fisheries Conflict | American Blue Economy Podcast

October 26, 2023

Security, seafood, conservation: a unified approach.

In the October episodeofthe⁠American Blue Economy Podcast⁠, our host⁠Rear Admiral, Tim Gallaudet, PhD, US Navy (ret) ⁠takes a deep dives intoa new initiative by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the⁠Ocean Futures⁠Platform. Ocean Futures isan innovative effort to predict and prevent conflict over illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUUF). He is joined by⁠Dr. Sarah Glaser,⁠the Senior Director for the project. Few in the U.S. know that fish is a conflict commodity. From community-level disagreements about the borders of fishing grounds to the use of force between international navies and industrial fishing vessels, conflict over fisheries is on the rise worldwide. The likelihood of such conflict is amplified by climate change, threatening food security, contributing to social upheaval, escalating geopolitical tensions, short-circuiting the success of conservation efforts, and massively undermining the global and American Blue Economy. WWF'sOceans Futures platform integrates existing climate and fisheries models with emerging science and data on the causes of fisheries conflict to predict the location of future conflict hot spots. Check it out if you want to learn how users from the national security, seafood, and conservation sectors can explore the platform to understand how to design strategies and direct resources toward reducing risk across the globe.

Show Transcription
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Adm. Tim Gallaudet

Rear Admiral Gallaudet, PhD, USN (ret) is the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting. From 2017-2021, he served as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere / Deputy NOAA Administrator, and from 2017-2019 he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere / NOAA Administrator. As Acting Administrator, he led the agency comprised of 20,000 federal employees and contractors managing the nation’s fisheries, coastal resources and waterways, weather satellites, weather services, and environmental research, overseeing a $6B annual budget and daily operations of 18 environmental satellites, 16 oceanographic ships, 9 aircraft, 450 boats, and 400 technical divers, 6 supercomputers, over a dozen laboratories, and several hundred field sites across the country. As the Deputy Administrator, he led NOAA’s Blue Economy activities that advance marine transportation, sustainable seafood, ocean exploration and mapping, marine tourism and recreation, and coastal resilience. Prior to NOAA, Rear Admiral Gallaudet served for 32 years in the US Navy, completing his career as the Oceanographer of the Navy. He has a Bachelor’s degree from the US Naval Academy, and Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, all in oceanography.