Company: Blue Marine Foundation
Founders: Charles Clover, Chris Gorell Barnes and George Duffield
Website: https://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/
About Blue Marine Foundation
Blue Marine Foundation is a UK ocean conservation charity set up in 2010 by some of the team behind the award-winning documentary film ‘The End of the Line’. Blue Marine aims to restore the ocean to health by addressing overfishing, one of the world’s biggest environmental problems. The charity is dedicated to creating marine reserves, restoring vital habitats and establishing models of sustainable fishing.
The London-based marine conservation charity has a mission to see at least 30% of the world’s ocean under effective protection by 2030 and the other 70% managed in a responsible way. In a world where overfishing is rife, oil companies are causing disruption to delicate seabed-dwelling creatures and governments are allowing big businesses to dump sewage into the sea – much work is needed to protect the ocean and the essential life within it.
Our ocean is in crisis. Marine life is under threat from climate change, acidification, pollution, and invasive species. But these threats are compounded by overfishing, which strips the ocean of life, and so reduces its capacity to produce oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide and regulate the climate. It’s estimated that almost 94% of commercial fish stocks are fully or overexploited and 90% of large, predatory fish are gone.
Clare Brook, CEO, Blue Marine Foundation, says: “Oceans are the critical life-support system for life on earth. If we are to save the planet, there is clear evidence that if we don’t have a healthy & functioning ocean, we have zero chance. The ocean provides half the oxygen we breathe, it absorbs half the carbon, feeds the world, and it employs hundreds of millions of people. If it’s not functioning, it will be game over for humanity. Our work seeks to protect and restore the ocean’s health so future generations can benefit from and enjoy it as we do and we have an incredible team at the forefront of innovation and conservation.”
Overfishing therefore represents a major threat to the food security of millions and could have devastating consequences for Earth’s climate.
The Blue Marine Foundation also just published the results of a six-month investigation, undertaken with French NGO BLOOM Association and Greenpeace UK, into the canned tuna sold by UK retailers. The report, titled “The UK’s Tuna Blind Spot”, found huge disparities between the sourcing policies that cover most UK retailers’ ‘own-label’ canned tuna and the brand-name tuna that they sell alongside it. Only one of the UK’s top ten supermarkets – Marks & Spencer – was able to demonstrate that none of the canned tuna sold in its stores is caught using massively harmful drifting fish aggregating devices (FADs) – a type of fishing gear used by purse seine fleets to attract tuna which overwhelmingly catches juveniles before they have had a chance to breed.
The Blue Marine Foundation works using a combination of top-down intervention to improve governance of our seas and bottom-up project delivery to help local communities who are at the front line of ocean conservation. Key goals are:
- Securing marine protected areas to ensure the protection of at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.
Developing models of sustainable fishing proving that low-impact fishing benefits marine life, local fishers and communities.
- Restoring marine habitats to revive and protect vulnerable and threatened species and to sequester carbon.
- Tackling unsustainable fishing by highlighting poor practices and developing solutions.
- Connecting people with the sea and enhancing ocean understanding across generations.
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