How can I be a commercial fish harvester and love marine life?

That’s easy! To be a good, sustainable fish harvester means having a deep understanding, respect, and education of all marine life. I am not separate from the marine ecosystem, I am a part of it, we all are.

My twenty plus years of commercial fishing with my family has given me my love for the ocean, it has given me a level or respect that most people can’t identify with and it has given me a unique and incredible knowledge base which makes me a better diver, a better photographer, a better filmmaker and a better artist.

Outside of the fishing community, there is a lot of misunderstanding about what fishing is, how it’s done and who can do it. I was told by kids at school “girls can’t fish” but, growing up, I had a lot of female role models, like my mom, who worked on fishing boats. They provided a good example for me to see there’s room for women to have a strong position in the marine industry and inspired me to pursue a career at sea.

I hope to be an example to the next generation of young female mariners, to show them there is space for us here and that it can be an incredibly rewarding career!

As I grew up, I learned about other stigmas of the fishing industry; people often villainize fisheries. Not all fisheries are the same. There are plenty of hopeful examples of respectful and sustainable harvest techniques, some right in our backyard. Thats not to say there isn’t room for improvement in every fishery, we always can do better and we must always strive to innovate to have less impact.

3 billion people rely on our ocean for food. It is our responsibility to harvest that food in sustainable, logical and respectful ways. That doesn’t always happen, but I believe in being the change you want to see. So I hold myself to high standards; I have worked with Department of Fisheries and Oceans, fishing associations, and spoken at the United Nations on the importance of safeguarding healthy ocean ecosystems for future generations or SDG 14: Life Below the Water, and the import role seafood can play in global food security or SDG 2: Zero Hunger.

This is why I support the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and have been appointed an MSC Ambassador. The MSC’s mission to end overfishing and safeguard sustainable seafood deeply resonates with me. The MSC certification is a rigorous, science based, peer reviewed, transparent process which looks into every aspect of a fishery so consumers can trust the seafood they choose marked with the little blue fish MSC logo has been harvested responsibly and sustainably.

Right now with all that is going on in our world, it is really easy to feel powerless to make positive change. I know I struggle with that. But when it comes to protecting our renewable marine resources, as the consumer it is important to realize you have a lot of power. Your choices at the grocery store can directly drive positive change in the seafood harvesting industry by choosing to eat sustainably harvested seafood.

I work in the wild Pacific halibut fishery which is one of the most rigorously monitored fisheries in the world. Each fish harvester is held accountable for their individual actions at sea by two automatic cameras that record the size, species, location and depth caught of each and every fish encountered. This data is backed up by the fish harvesters logbooks and are validated by an independent dockside validator who meets the vessel at the dock, records and tags every fish as they are offloaded with an individual barcode so they can be traced back to the boat. This means we know exactly what the impact of the fishery is and consumers can track where their fish is coming from.

In the fishing community I grew up in, there is a deep knowledge that our livelihood and the food we put on our table directly depends on the health of the marine ecosystems we go to work in everyday. There is no separation between the natural world and the human world. I was raised foremost to respect the fish we harvested and to value them for much more than a paycheque. This translates into the kind of diver I am. I am just a visitor in the underwater world and I need to act respectfully to those whose home I am visiting.

It is of the utmost importance that we are all held accountable for our actions, at land and at sea.