In delivering the opening keynote address at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit on Monday, Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA Administrator and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, identified stopping illegal fishing and growing aquaculture production in U.S. waters as national priorities.
“It’s very clear that aquaculture is a job creator and it can and should play a larger role,” she said before approximately 500 attendees at the Summit, held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in New Orleans, La., USA. “Aquaculture is a bright spot, one that we need to continue to nurture for the food that it provides and the jobs that support communities.”
Aquaculture production in the United States is limited, with shellfish farming leading the way. Sullivan recognized the “regulatory uncertainty” standing in the way of expanding the industry, despite the fact that much of the technology driving the industry forward globally was created in the United States.
“Let’s start using more of this U.S. technology and expertise here and stop exporting jobs to other countries that are more aquaculture friendly,” she said. With the world population expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050 the need for sustainable protein production is huge, she added. “The global abundance of human beings is rising, but global abundance of fish stocks is not.”
Sullivan, one of the first American women to walk in space who has been recognized as one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people of 2014, also addressed the ongoing global issue of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing as one of the seafood industry’s greatest challenges. Stating that it costs the global industry up to USD 10 billion to 23 billion (EUR 8.8 billion to 20.3 billion) annually, she cited trade partnerships as a method to level the playing field for law-abiding fishermen and to combat seafood fraud.
Referring to government, industry and conservation organization collaborations as the “sine qua non,” for driving solutions, Sullivan closed by acknowledging the great challenges that the Presidential Task Force on IUU Fishing and Seafood Fraud, which she co-chairs, faces in the future.
“We live on a dynamic planet and human interactions are a challenging thing,” she said.
NOAA, which Sullivan said is the U.S. “environmental intelligence agency,” has three major goals that Sullivan outlined at the beginning of her presentation: investing in observational infrastructure, evolving the National Weather System to build a “weather-ready nation” and providing information and services that make communities more resilient. “When we say resilience at NOAA, we recognize societal economic and ecological elements. They must be present in our planning and our thinking.”
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