Our Thoughts

The Wild Blue Crab Investment Model – a case study

Industry stakeholders understand that overfishing undercuts long-term value and prevents realization of full economic potential in local communities. The question is, what to do about it? Wilderness Markets and Blue Star Foods collaborated on a pilot program to develop one potential solution. Problem Rising demand for seafood combined with limited public spending on fishery management systems […]

Projected change in global fisheries revenues under climate change

A recent paper (September 2016) in the scientific journal of the National Institutes of Health exploring the implications of climate change on global fisheries revenues provides some sober reading. The report explores how fisheries revenues of maritime countries will be impacted by climate change as a necessary  “crucial next step towards the development of effective socio-economic policy […]

Coral Reefs and Ocean Health

Every so often, we run across reports that force us to stop and question our assumptions. Recent papers on global warming and the impact on oceans is a topic we have been monitoring for a couple of years now, with each new paper more depressing than the last. It is our view that the role of […]

Sustainable Fisheries – the role of the fishermen

Significant attention is being paid to the oceans. Between the UN Oceans Conference as the recent Economist leader, attention is (finally!) being given to the significant and numerous benefits and threats to the worlds oceans. At a time of increasing populations, increased demand for healthy proteins – and arguably a climate imperative – human consumption […]

Lessons Learned – Indonesia’s Blue Swimming Crab Fishery

Wilderness Markets has recently completed a “lessons learned” document regarding our experiences working with a lead firm in Indonesia to develop and implement sustainable fisheries practices for the Blue Swimming Crab fishery in Lampung Province. The presentation provides an overview of our theory of change, our focus and goals and the key lessons learned during […]

How Crabs, Fishermen, and Bankers Benefit from Better Data in Indonesia

In our previous post, we discussed why we and others have concluded that good data is crucial to fisheries management and investment decisions. This post dives deeper into our work to incorporate better data collection, analysis and availability into the Indonesian blue swimming crab (BSC) fishery. How many fishermen are there? Where are they fishing? […]

How Poor Data is Holding Back Fisheries Reform AND Impact Investors

The Problem(s) Poor management of fisheries is calculated to result in losses of USD $83 billion to the world economy each year. As cited in many other fisheries papers, data indicates an alarming proportion of fisheries, nearly 90 percent in 2013, are fully overfished, depleted or recovering, an increase from 75 percent just eight years prior.  […]

Governance or a Markets Approach? Both. Adopt a Parallel Approach to Fisheries Reform

In our previous posts, we’ve discussed reasons and ways for involving private capital in fisheries reform, including taking a lead firm approach. This post about the parallel approach is a direct follow-up to the three models we propose for investment sequencing; we recommend checking out that post first. Overview Is there only one way to make […]

West Coast Groundfish Pilot: What’s Next for Developing Local Markets?

A previous post outlined the results of the recent market demand research for West Coast groundfish. This post follows-up with more detail on the proposed West Coast groundfish pilot. Purpose and Intent And now what? That was our first question after learning the results from the market demand research. Those results indicated that next efforts […]

Regional Demand and Opportunities for West Coast Groundfish

Our latest project, West Coast Groundfish Regional Market Demand and Opportunities, explored the market demand for U.S. West Coast groundfish in Oregon, Washington, and California. This post is a brief summary of that work. For more, please check out the executive summary of the report. Background Faced with plummeting catch levels and fish populations near collapse, […]