Equitable Fisheries

What is the Blue Economy?  Canada is creating a nationwide roadmap for ocean development: The Blue Economy Strategy is Canada’s vision to...

The legal access policies currently regulating B.C. fisheries are failing many fishermen and coastal communities. Based on a market-driven philosophy, access to our fisheries is being turned into an investor controlled commodity. This has increased licence and quota value far beyond what most fishermen and coastal communities can afford, leaving many to lease the right to harvest fish from our water, sometimes for up to 80 percent of the landed catch value. If prices drop dur

Fisheries management in B.C. has historically focused exclusively on sustaining marine ecosystems' biological health, with little consideration granted to the fisheries' socio-economic and cultural contributions to coastal communities' well-being. This narrow vision of sustainability in fisheries management has had devastating impacts on B.C.'s coastal communities. We contributed to the paper, Integrating Diverse Objectives for Sustainable Fisheries in Canada that proposes a

We initiated the Thriving Coastal Communities Initiative with Dr. Nathan Bennett to identify areas where we could support coastal communities as they adapt to these changes. This report covers one of the project’s early planning meetings we convened with 24 experts and through-leaders to map out areas for further development.

The importance of commercial fisheries to B.C.'s coastal communities is poorly documented, and often overlooked in discussions concerning the future of Canada's west coast. In 2015, we partnered with Ecotrust Canada to identify the full suite of economic, social, and cultural values commercial fisheries bring to the North Coast.