Alex Douglas currently works on a range of HD projects across Asia on peace processes, forced migration, and communal violence. From -, he managed HD’s project to reduce communal violence in Myanmar. Before joining HD, Alex was working for the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) where he focused on humanitarian emergencies, managing natural resources and social protection in both Australia and Indonesia. He was previously involved in monitoring violence and elections for the Carter Center, in Nepal and Liberia. Alex has two degrees from Flinders University in Australia, one in International Studies and the other a Bachelor of Laws and Legal Practice.

SmartFish Inc., the business side, sells their catch into more profitable markets, rewarding fishers like Porfirio for their more responsible fishing and incentivizing them to further improve their performance. Core to SmartFish Inc’s model are shorter supply chains, rigorous sourcing policies, comprehensive traceability systems and full transparency, including open-book’ negotiations. Unfortunately, these basic approaches are lamentably unusual in the extremely opaque seafood sector.

Additionally, WTO members continue to disagree over how to define a country’s eligibility for such exemptions. Several fishing entities, including the European Union and the United States, strongly oppose the inclusion of terms in the WTO agreement that state that any developing country is exempt from removing harmful subsidies, regardless of their contribution to global fisheries subsidies. On the other hand, China – one of the largest contributors to global fisheries subsidies – opposes this view and wishes to be included under such exemptions.

Hoyt Peckham is leading the development of WCS’ new global Small-scale Fisheries program. Prior to this, Hoyt founded and led the The SmartFish Group to incentivize more responsible fishing across Mexico and beyond. He holds a BA in biology and English from Bowdoin College, a doctorate in evolutionary ecology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and was awarded a Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship. Hoyt has experience as a captain, diver, fisher, ecologist, and serial entrepreneur working in and on fisheries in Latin America, Polynesia, the Caribbean, NW Atlantic, SE Asia and Japan, and his specialties include responsible seafood, social enterprise, and transparency and equity in value chains.

To characterise marine biodiversity based on eDNA we require a library of references. That way, we can look up the snippets of DNA found in seawater and identify all the species present in our samples, similar to a dictionary. Unfortunately, to date only one per cent of the , known species of marine fish have had their genome sequenced. In collaboration with our global partners, one of OceanOmics’ ambitious goals is to generate and release to the public the reference genomic resources for thousands of marine species; and by doing so empower conservation science.