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

In the October episode of the American Blue Economy Podcast, our host Rear Admiral, Tim Gallaudet, PhD, US Navy (ret) takes a deep dives into a new initiative by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Ocean Futures Platform. Ocean Futures is an innovative effort to predict and prevent conflict over illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUUF). He is joined by Dr. 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's Oceans 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.