Economic revival in California got a colour of its own, blue, as in California’s Pacific Ocean. A public-private partnership known as the California Fisheries Fund launched at Google’s Mountain View headquarters last week to invest in the state’s blue economy. An alliance of environmentalists and state government, the fund is using market mechanisms to bring blue – and green – jobs to our fishing industry.
The work has been started with a modest pool of $5 million – contributed by California’s Ocean Protection Council and the Environmental Defense Fund – the California Fisheries Fund provides seed money for great entrepreneurial ideas that will create higher-paying and safer year-round jobs for fishermen. It is said that such investment would breathe new life into coastal fishing communities, protect valuable ocean habitat and wildlife through environmentally sound fishing techniques, and deliver sustainably caught fresh fish to our tables every month.
Between 1981 and 2005, while Californians’ appetite for seafood increased, commercial fishing in California declined from more than 900 million pounds to less than 300 million pounds. In the same period, California’s commercial fishing fleet shrank from about 6,700 boats to 2,700.
It is also mentioned that boosting up the blue economy supply chain brings us to Giovanni Comin, owner of Central Coast Seafood in nearby Atascadero, which buys Morro Bay seafood from Cunningham’s company.
Cunningham, who wants to buy more fish in Morro Bay, and Comin, who wants to ramp up the marketing of local seafood, had great ideas to grow the blue economy, but moving from innovative ideas to marketplace execution is costly. The California Fisheries Fund is certainly a good example of how businesses, environmental groups and the state can partner to meet multiple goals, including rebuilding coastal economies, saving the environment, making Californians healthier by putting fresh Pacific seafood on their tables and – most important of all – creating blue and green jobs.
