October 16, 2013
World Food Day – Save the Oceans, Feed the World
October 16 is World Food Day, dedicated to ending hunger across the globe. Here at Oceana, we think a lot about food security and sustainability, because the oceans will play a critical role in feeding our growing world.
Our CEO, Andrew Sharpless, recently partnered with actor and activist Ted Danson to help spread the word about how ocean conservation and food security go hand-in-hand in an editorial for the Huffington Post. Though they seem like unrelated issues, making our oceans a healthier place will result in more fish in the sea, and those fish can feed millions of hungry people. You can read an excerpt of the editorial below, or read the entire article here.
In 1614, Captain John Smith arrived off the coast of Maine searching for minerals, whales, and wealth. But the greatest bounty he discovered was actually fish. Smith and his crew stumbled upon vast schools of cod, a valuable commercial fish and a kitchen staple in Europe. Dried or salted, the nourishment from North America’s rich seas paved the way for colonization of a vast new continent.
Inevitably, these deep-water fish became an economic centerpiece of the New World. Cities like Boston transformed from basic settlements into thriving cities by trading cod for European goods and Caribbean sugar. But in the 1600s the world was a much less crowded place. Today, with the human population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, we have many more hungry mouths to feed. But like Smith, we sit on the edge of a potentially vast resource for fighting hunger: fish.
Continue reading at the Huffington Post Green.