This article proposes the case of Kenyan coastal fisheries as a potentially crucial reservoir of food-related benefits for the marginalised and those living in poverty, but where a food-centred lens or approach is seldom mainstreamed in local and national governance. Borrowing insights from post-structuralist marine social sciences, this article presents an ethnographic account of grassroots practices in-the-making such as handling, sorting, and allocating fish once caught, and how these practices lead to local categorisations and classifications of fish. This sort of evidence and knowledge around local categorisations and classifications of fish spotlights the importance of considering the post-harvest sector (as opposed to the activity of fishing alone), that is, how the use of catch determines access through micro relations of power and agency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSustainable development aspires to "leave no one behind". Even so, limited attention has been paid to small-scale fisheries (SSF) and their importance in eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Through a collaborative and multidimensional data-driven approach, we have estimated that SSF provide at least 40% (37.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Biol
October 2024
Coral reefs support an incredible abundance and diversity of fish species, with reef-associated fisheries providing important sources of income, food, and dietary micronutrients to millions of people across the tropics. However, the rapid degradation of the world's coral reefs and the decline in their biodiversity may limit their capacity to supply nutritious and affordable seafood while meeting conservation goals for sustainability. Here, we conduct a global-scale analysis of how the nutritional quality of reef fish assemblages (nutritional contribution to the recommended daily intake of calcium, iron, and zinc contained in an average 100 g fish on the reef) relates to key environmental, socioeconomic, and ecological conditions, including two key metrics of fish biodiversity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Clim Chang
October 2023
Seafood is an important source of bioavailable micronutrients supporting human health, yet it is unclear how micronutrient production has changed in the past or how climate change will influence its availability. Here combining reconstructed fisheries databases and predictive models, we assess nutrient availability from fisheries and mariculture in the past and project their futures under climate change. Since the 1990s, availabilities of iron, calcium and omega-3 from seafood for direct human consumption have increased but stagnated for protein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoral reef fisheries supply nutritious catch to tropical coastal communities, where the quality of reef seafood is determined by both the rate of biomass production and nutritional value of reef fishes. Yet our understanding of reef fisheries typically uses targets of total reef fish biomass rather than individual growth (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWild-caught fish provide an irreplaceable source of essential nutrients in food-insecure places. Fishers catch thousands of species, yet the diversity of aquatic foods is often categorized homogeneously as 'fish', obscuring an understanding of which species supply affordable, nutritious and abundant food. Here, we use catch, economic and nutrient data on 2,348 species to identify the most affordable and nutritious fish in 39 low- and middle-income countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFish Fish (Oxf)
July 2022
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
May 2022
Many conservation interventions are hypothesized to be beneficial for both the environment and people's well-being, but this has rarely been tested rigorously. We examined the effects of adoption or nonadoption of a conservation intervention on 3 dimensions of people's well-being (material, relational, and subjective) over time. We focused on a fisheries bycatch management initiative intended to reduce environmental externalities associated with resource extraction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe international development community is off-track from meeting targets for alleviating global malnutrition. Meanwhile, there is growing consensus across scientific disciplines that fish plays a crucial role in food and nutrition security. However, this 'fish as food' perspective has yet to translate into policy and development funding priorities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConservation is likely to be most successful if it draws on knowledge from across the natural and social sciences. The ecosystem services concept has been called a boundary object in that it facilitates development of such interdisciplinary knowledge because it offers a common platform for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. However, a question that remains is to what extent the interdisciplinary knowledge needed is provided by disciplinary diversity within the field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
September 2020
Many islands are biodiversity hotspots but also extinction epicenters. In addition to strong cultural connections to nature, islanders derive a significant part of their economy and broader wellbeing from this biodiversity. Islands are thus considered as the socio-ecosystems most vulnerable to species and habitat loss.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe worldwide decline of coral reefs necessitates targeting management solutions that can sustain reefs and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them. However, little is known about the context in which different reef management tools can help to achieve multiple social and ecological goals. Because of nonlinearities in the likelihood of achieving combined fisheries, ecological function, and biodiversity goals along a gradient of human pressure, relatively small changes in the context in which management is implemented could have substantial impacts on whether these goals are likely to be met.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe World Trade Organization (WTO) is in the final stages of negotiating an agreement to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies, thereby achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.6. An effective agreement should be viewed as an opportunity for nations to proactively transition towards sustainable and equitable fisheries and pave the path for other SDGs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF