The Blue Economy consists of new marine-based industries that could provide alternatives for isolated or marginalized coastal communities to improve their well-being, and ocean health overall. However, this once equitable and sustainable concept has gradually lost its focus and is shifting toward more conventional industrial development.

By Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor, Nereus Program Manager and Research Associate

From shore you can see the windmills that provide electricity to the whole town, just behind the desalination plant that supplies freshwater to most of the region. The adjacent bay is where the fishing boats—fishing sustainably, of course—come to unload at the seafood processing centers that take in both wild captured fish and the products from integrated mariculture, where multiple species are grown, simulating an ecosystem. This is the vision for the Blue Economy fostered by the World Bank, the UN, and some of the largest global financial and conservation foundations.

Scientists with the VaquitaCPR conservation project recently caught a live vaquita in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Vaquita are the smallest marine mammal in the world and are dangerously close to extinction. The captured vaquita was about six months old; since it was so young, it was quickly released.

Reducing tourist consumption of reef fish is critical for Palau’s ocean sustainability, finds a new Nippon Foundation-UBC Nereus Program study published today in Marine Policy.