To ensure against these unintended impacts, we start by screening fisheries for several enabling conditions, including that access is limited to the fishery, and target species are biologically resilient. We also developed a suite of both intrinsic and conditional ‘safeguards’, including systematic assessment to identify risks; third-party environmental validation to improve trust and easily communicate improvement actions; and conservation covenants to protect against overfishing and habitat destruction. With these safeguards in place, SmartFish NGO is gearing up to replicate nationally, aiming to directly empower more than , Mexican fishers by .

David Kroodsma leads Global Fishing Watch’s Research Program, which is a collaboration between Global Fishing Watch and a network of over research institutions. He is responsible for leading and facilitating new research projects, and he works with the GFW engineering team to develop new technologies. David has over a decade and a half of experience working with NGOs and researchers to address global environmental challenges. He has a B.S. in physics and an M.S. in earth systems science from Stanford University.

“We have been fighting wildfires the same way for decades – it’s not working, and the destruction is getting increasingly worse. We need a radical re-invention of how we detect and battle these blazes,” said Peter H. Diamandis, Executive Chairman of the Board, XPRIZE. “The convergence of exponential technologies such as AI, robotics, drones, and sensors offer us the opportunity to detect wildfires at inception, and put them out in minutes before they spread – that’s the mission of this XPRIZE.”

Cecilia Blasco is Executive Director of Smartfish Rescate de Valor, AC where she oversees a multidisciplinary team that provides technical and entrepreneurial assistance to artisanal fishers and seafood buyers. Founded in , SmartFish’s mission is to foster a market for sustainably caught seafood in Mexico by catalyzing both supply and demand. Before joining SmartFish Cecilia worked at the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature for over years. Cecilia is originally from Argentina and lived in Kenya, Switzerland, and the USA before moving to Mexico. She has a Master’s in Environmental Science from the Yale Environmental School and a BA in geography from Dartmouth College.

The United States provides some insight into the power of fisheries management to impact stock health. Alaska is home to the largest fisheries in the country – including pollock, cod, sole, salmon, crab, herring and halibut – many of which have sustained Alaskan communities since humans first arrived. Offshore fisheries were developed far more recently by foreign vessels, until the declaration of the United States’ EEZ in . By that time, industrial fishing in the North Atlantic had already overfished many stocks, and Alaska’s managers, scientists and fishermen had seen the catastrophic consequences of poor fisheries management. As a result, managers had learned the lessons of the North Atlantic and fishing pressure never rose too high — the abundance of the fish has remained well above target levels.