The ocean is a vast, precious resource. Comprising more than 70% of the globe, it has far-reaching impacts into our daily life that few realize. Every second breath comes from the ocean, it regulates our climate, and generates nearly every drop of rain. One of eight people relies solely on fish as their source of protein, and more than three billion eat seafood every day.
In fact, fisheries employ more than 200 million people and the value of legally landed fish is over $100 billion worldwide; international trade in coastal and marine fisheries in the U.S. alone is worth $70 billion.
Fishing is an ancient profession that has failed to evolve. Rather than fishing smarter, fishermen around the globe are fishing harder–building larger boats, traveling longer distances, and requiring greater government subsidies to stay afloat. In short, this is an industry ripe for disruption.
Despite the ocean’s essential role in food security, global trade, and other eco services, its value and importance are undervalued–perfect for impact investing.
The ocean occupies the bottom of our collective consciousness, the last spot on anyone’s philanthropic giving list and the bottom rung of importance in terms of government policy. Agents of change are needed.
The TerraMar Project, is on a mission to create a global community around our shared love, need and reliance on the ocean. If we do not value our ocean or fully understand the essential global services it provides, how can we protect it? If we eat the last fish, continue to indiscriminately pollute and mine at will, where does that leave future generations?
The TerraMar Project was created to build a global community of citizens to ask governments and industries to mandate sustainable use of ocean resources. Our top priority is realizing an ocean-specific Sustainable Development Goal at the United Nations in September 2015 when the UN votes on a global sustainable roadmap.
In September, the United Nations will vote on the follow-on to their Millennium Development Goals called the Sustainable Development Goals, outlining their post-2015 sustainable agenda. Similar to their predecessors, the Sustainable Development Goals will unite public policy and funding with private philanthropy and passion to dramatically impact the stated priorities, of which the ocean is currently on track to be included.
Consumers, investors—including impact investors—and businesses have a crucial role to play. Food resources, financial benefit, and planetary services all have an immense dollar value attached to them. Loss of fish stocks leads to job losses. Poor ocean management results in $50 billion of lost revenue a year, according to the World Bank.
Impact investment based in sustainable management is one solution. It behooves us all to protect our greatest resource.
When a single fish costs $1.7 million dollars, we can agree that scarcity is driving up the price. That’s what someone paid for a Bluefin tuna in 2013.
Wild fish are the most renewable and sustainable food source we have. If properly managed, fished, and maintained, we can have a balanced ocean ecosystem and global fish stocks to last generations while feeding a growing population.
Investments in sustainable fisheries and ocean preservation ventures need to move from uncoordinated innovation to a mature marketplace while building easy-to-understand and profitable models that can capitalize on the growing interest from impact investors.
While wild fisheries landings have just about peaked, global aquaculture production continues to grow at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent. Enter Aqua-Spark, the first investment fund devoted to advancing sustainable aquaculture, which launched in late 2013.
Its founders, Mike Velings and Amy Novogratz, are respectively a serial entrepreneur and the former director of the annual $1 million TED Prize. Their meeting occurred in 2010 aboard Mission Blue, a voyage to the Galapagos launched by TED Prize winner Sylvia Earle with the world’s leading activists, environmentalists, entrepreneurs and policymakers.
It was there that they began developing a concept for an impact-driven fund that could help protect the ocean. With more than 87 percent of wild fisheries exploited, overexploited or collapsed, it’s clear innovation is required to feed the growing global population and the growing appetite for seafood. Aquaculture, if properly executed, is one answer to alleviate this pressure on global fish stocks and be a business growth opportunity.
Aqua-Spark believes that committing to a long-term vision is the way to realize effective, lasting results and looks for companies that have proof of concept, are ready to scale, are existing businesses that want to expand, or have crucial technologies that have the potential to transform the industry. The small-to-medium enterprises in which they invest are working toward the production of safe, accessible aquatic life, such as fish, shellfish and plants, in ways that do not harm the environment.
The consumer market needs further development as well. The fish and seafood supply chain is overrun with middlemen—a fish can change hands fourteen or fifteen times before it hits the plate in the U.S. This opaqueness makes it hard for sustainable suppliers to differentiate themselves from their unsustainable competitors. Also, it is difficult for the end user to know the true origin or variety of fish. If you take the head and skin off a fish, even professional chefs can’t tell the species.
Only a few main fish processors dominate the industry and this makes it difficult for others to enter the business. Some of the biggest business opportunities, as a result, lie in traceability, processing technology, and branding.
Business, technological advances and consumer-led change have a place in changing how we use, view and treat the ocean. TerraMar seeks to partner with all relevant industries to promote best, and sustainable, practices on and around the ocean. New investment models like Aqua-Spark make sense.
In fisheries, TerraMar would like to promote sustainably managed fisheries that have a proven track record of increasing fish stocks and promoting an industry standard, both of wild and farmed fish. The more fish there are in the ocean, the healthier and more resilient the seas will be. The more marine parks we establish, the more fish there will be in the ocean. The more we adopt sustainable fishing practices, the more we can count on fish remaining a key food source for future generations.
TerraMar needs your participation to secure a thriving ocean. Get your free ocean passport, share your innovative ideas for change, or invest in new ideas that promote sustainable use of the ocean.
Legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau summarized it perfectly when he said, “For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.”
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