Small pelagic fish off the West African coast are being scooped up in large numbers and ground into a product called fishmeal. This fishmeal is then used to support animal production and aquafarms around the world.

How is this industry impacting local fishers? And what does this mean for the global supply chain? Host Ruxandra Guidi partners with Gambian reporter Mustapha Manneh to look at fishmeal production in both the Gambia and Senegal for Season 5 of The Catch. Other voices in this episode include Sally Yozell, Senior Fellow and Director of the Environmental Security program at the Stimson Center and Dr. Ensa Touray, a historian at the University of The Gambia.

Foreign fleets off Gambia’s shore are straining local fish stocks by “coming in at night and fishing illegally,” Sanyang fisher Alagie Gasama says. And the lack of enforcement, or even political will, by the government leaves these fishing communities to struggle on their own. On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi continues her journey along the Gambian coast by hearing directly from the fishers, processors, and local officials navigating these changes in their fish stocks.

On this episode of The Catch, Ruxandra Guidi and her team cross over into Senegal to see how the fishmeal industry’s impact compares. She hears from local fishers as well as Bassirou Diarra of the Environmental Justice Foundation.

In a region characterized by high unemployment, food insecurity, and depleted fish stocks, many fishers are forced to migrate. The fishmeal plants dotting the coast have only exacerbated these existing problems, economist Rashid Sumaila notes, saying that “overfishing would still be an issue in West Africa without the plants. But the plants make them worse.”

On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and her reporting partners look into the migration crisis. Senegalese reporter Borso Tall shares her reporting from a village in the region of St. Louis directly impacted by a fishmeal plant. And Sumaila sits down with Guidi to share his take.We want to hear what The Catch means to you! Reach out to us at [email protected].

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, roughly 4 in 10 people working in small-scale fisheries are women. Half are fishers themselves, and half process the fish, like Cary Badgie, from Gambia, whom the reporting team met as she salted and preserved the local catch. Female activists and entrepreneurs also underpin these fishing communities, as you’ll hear from Senegalese climate activist Ndeye Yacine Dieng and local official and businesswoman Yayi Bayam Diouf, based in Dakar. Finally, host Ruxandra Guidi gets a perspective on a possible way forward for fishmeal production in a conversation with Libby Woodhatch, the executive chair of MarinTrust.

Coming up on Season 4 of The Catch, how fishing communities around the world are facing major global and environmental shifts—and are working to adapt. Follow and listen to The Catch wherever you get your podcasts.

This season we kick things off off in Ecuador, where reporter Carolina Loza León heads to the famed Galápagos Islands to hear how a sea cucumber boom shaped the economy and current conservation efforts.

SHOW NOTES:

If you’re a fisher, we want to hear from you! The Catch is hosting a live podcast taping at the United Nations General Assembly, and we’re looking for a fisher who has experience with marine protected areas and is either based in New York or can be in New York in September.

Please reach out to us at [email protected].

Quito-based reporter Carolina Loza León continues her reporting from the Galápagos Islands. We hear how some fishers, frustrated by decreased yields and the dangers of harvesting sea cucumbers, have turned to tourism to make ends meet.

Elsewhere, efforts are being made to connect and engage fishers and scientists in a dialogue, in the form of a quota system. Its aim is to protect this fragile ecosystem and could be a model for cooperation elsewhere in Ecuador.

SHOW NOTES: If you’re a fisher, we want to hear from you! The Catch is hosting a live podcast taping at the United Nations General Assembly, and we’re looking for a fisher who has experience with marine protected areas and is either based in New York or can be in New York in September. Please reach out to us at [email protected].

For today’s episode, we head to South Africa’s southern coast, where journalist Rasmus Bitsch saw firsthand the tension between local populations and environmentalists over plans to expand designated marine protected areas. The country is moving forward to implement the United Nations’ 30 by 30 goals, which seek to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by the year 2030.

While environmentalists contend that this will actually help increase fishing stocks, many local fishers and others are skeptical of government plans because of the country’s history of apartheid and forced removal of locals from their land.

Bitsch relays to host Ruxandra Guidi what he heard from both sides on what it will take to build trust and protect both marine habitats and local livelihoods.

This week, Bali-based reporter Febriana Firdaus explores how Indonesia has been affected by environmental damage from land reclamation projects put in place to bolster the country’s tourism industry. Land is a premium for this country of 17,000 islands. And so the country is expanding its buildable land by dumping sand into the water, negatively impacting the small-scale fisheries nearby. Firdaus tells host Ruxandra Guidi how these projects are hurting fishers both in Bali, where the sand is dumped, and in far-away Lombok, where the sand is mined.

The Catch is going LIVE in New York City later this month.

Come be a part of our live audience on Sept. 26 at 4:30 p.m. at Rockefeller Center’s Studio Gather to hear from experts and fishers on how protecting our oceans can benefit everyone. Click the link here to reserve your seat for this special event. Space is limited.

Maine-based reporter Caroline Losneck reports on how the state’s iconic lobster industry is changing due to forces such as climate change, a changing labor market, and damage to fishing areas. Caroline shares with host Ruxandra Guidi how local fishers are adapting by finding new sources of income and how communities as a whole are banding together to provide more resources to protect the industry.

Reporter Caroline Losneck joins The Catch once again to share how Maine’s iconic lobster fishing is adapting to new arrivals. First, you’ll hear how green crabs, an invasive species, are being turned into a delicacy by the local culinary scene. And then, learn about how a new training program is helping to change the face of the fishing industry.

Last week, Foreign Policy hosted a live taping of The Catch at the United Nations General Assembly. The discussion, on marine protected areas, was moderated by Matt Rand, the senior director of marine habitat protection at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

A few guests joined Rand on stage:

Monica Medina is a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. She’s currently a distinguished fellow at Conservation International.

Joel Johnson is the president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

Editrudith Lukanga  is the founder and CEO of EMEDO, an organization that supports small-scale fisheries in Tanzania, and she currently leads the Secretariat of the African Women Fish-Workers Network.

Jim Leape is a co-director and the William and Eva Price senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Coming up on Season 3 of The Catch, hear how one of the Arctic’s most valuable fisheries—cod—is being impacted by the politics of Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as changing fish migration patterns due to climate change. Host Ruxandra Guidi heads to northern Norway to meet with the fishers and processors caught the middle. Follow and listen to The Catch wherever you get your podcasts.

Host Ruxandra Guidi heads to northern Norway to get a firsthand look at one of the country’s top fisheries: cod. Joined by northern Norway native and co-reporter Eskild Johansen, Guidi hears from local fishermen and stakeholders in the port city of Kirkenes, as it closes port access to Russian fishing trawlers. And we hear from policy experts on a decades-old cooperation agreement between Russia and Norway as it’s being tested like never before.

On this episode of The Catch, we kick off our program with a British staple: fish and chips. We then hear how this iconic dish led to an interstate dispute between Iceland and the U.K. known as the Cod Wars. Host Ruxandra Guidi is joined by historian and Icelandic President Gudni Th. Johannesson, and Mark Kurlansky, the author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, to hear how the Cod Wars have shaped our oceans to this day.

On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen hear firsthand how northern Norway’s oldest fishing communities have dealt with cod fishery collapses in the past. These communities weren’t the only ones facing “cod crashes.” Fisheries supply chain expert Jim Cannon then joins Guidi to share how he worked directly with business partners and stakeholders in the ‘80s and early ‘90s to improve sourcing and save cod fisheries from further collapse.

On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen hear how the economics of fishing shape Norway’s identity—and vice versa. The two explore the impact of fish farms and visit places where the burgeoning industry has been welcomed, and others where it’s been shunned. The episode also features insight from Norwegian aquaculture researcher Irja Vormedal.

Making sure that fish stocks are healthy—and that fishers can keep on making a living—is no simple task. On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen hear from local fishermen on how they have to be just as aware of political winds as they do bad weather. And then Guidi hears from Sergey Sennikov, Norebo’s chief sustainability officer, and Konstantin Drevetnyak, the head of the Russian Union of Northern Fishermen, on how they work to meet the demands of the Russian-Norway cod fishery agreement.

For our final episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen head to the island of Svalbard to see firsthand how geopolitical tensions between Russia and Norway are playing out. Guidi is then joined by former U.S. diplomat Evan Bloom to hear how diplomacy and cooperation have shaped the Arctic region.

Over half of the world’s fish populations are likely to move from their historic habitats by the end of the century. Pushed by rising temperatures and changing ocean cycles, these migrating fish stocks could be the cause for our next international conflict. Between the end of WWII and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a quarter of the world’s conflicts were tied to fisheries. And experts expect this number to rise as fishing grounds shift, reliance on the oceans for food increase, and maritime borders move with sea level change. What can be done to prevent this next global conflict?

Foreign Policy teamed up with the Walton Family Foundation for a live podcast taping at COP28.

PANELISTS:

Manuel Barange, Assistant Director General and Director Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Sarah Glaser, Senior Director, Oceans Futures, World Wildlife Fund

Rashid Sumaila, University Killam Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, Fisheries Economic Research Institute, OceanCanada Partnership, The University of British Columbia

Dr. Manumatavai Tupou-Rosen, Director General, Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency

MODERATOR: Rebecca Hubbard, Director, High Seas Alliance

Listen to The Catch in Spanish here.

In Part 1 of our new season of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi along with co-reporter Ernesto Méndez and marine biologist Alex Olivera travel to the Upper Gulf of California to meet with local experts and shrimp fishers. The underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau once deemed this area “The Aquarium of the World” because it was so rich in biodiversity. But unfortunately much of this ecological wonder is under threat due to illegal gillnet fishing. At the center of everything is a small porpoise called the vaquita, whose numbers have dwindled to less than a dozen.

In this episode, Guidi speaks to local fishers and hears from environmentalist Rick Brusca as well as former NOAA Fisheries official Barbara Taylor. They discuss how the highly desirable blue shrimp endemic to the Gulf of California has been tied up in conservation efforts to protect the vaquita.

Listen to The Catch in Spanish here.

On today’s episode, we look into what led to the dire situation faced by the vaquita and the fishing communities in the Upper Gulf of California. Host Ruxandra Guidi and her travel companions learn more about the history of fishing in the area and how demand for high-value seafood such as the totoaba and blue shrimp led to a dire situation for the vaquita porpoise.

In this episode, Guidi speaks to Carlos Tirado, a champion of sustainable fishing in the Upper Gulf. He’s also the leader of an independent regional federation of small-scale fishers.

Later, she heads out on the water with Captain Naya to explore an area where scientists had hoped to study and protect vaquita in captivity.

Listen to The Catch in Spanish here.

On today’s episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi continues her exploration of the Upper Gulf of California to learn more about what can be done to stop illegal gillnet fishing. We hear from Zak Smith, a senior attorney and the director of global biodiversity conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He led an effort to force a U.S. embargo on seafood from the area.

Guidi then reports on the efforts made by the NRDC and others to compel Mexico to follow its own laws to protect the vaquita. She and her travel companions venture out on a boat to see firsthand whether or not tighter restrictions have impacted local fishers and the market for the highly desirable blue shrimp.

In today’s episode, host Ruxandra Guidi looks at the conditions in the upper Gulf of California that have allowed Mexican cartels to embed themselves into nearly all aspects of the fishing industry. She investigates the weak response from the Mexican government in rooting out the cartels and tries to learn what, if anything, can be done about all this.

This episode features conversations with Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Carlos Tirado, a local fishers leader who runs a large artisanal shrimp fishing operation and is an advocate for sustainable fishing.

In this episode, host Ruxandra Guidi follows the market for Mexican blue shrimp up the supply chain to see what pressure importers and consumers can have on ensuring the shrimp is not caught illegally. She’ll hear from sustainable importers and packagers and talk about how they are trying to implement different practices, as well as the limitations they face. She’ll also hear how pressure from international markets such as the United States could force the Mexican government to implement meaningful change to how the Gulf of California is fished.

Host Ruxandra Guidi concludes this season with a look at the state of fishing in the Upper Gulf of California. She meets with members of Pesca ABC, an organization of fishers who are trying to implement sustainable fishing practices. She also shares some good news about the vaquita porpoise and the efforts to protect its habitat.