The Catch

Maine based reporter Caroline Losneck reports on how the state's iconic lobster industry is changing due to forces like climate change, a changing labor market, and damage to fishing areas. Caroline shares with host Ruxandra Guidi how local fishers are adapting by finding new sources of income and how communities as a whole are banding together to provide more resources to protect the industry. Le...

This week, Bali-based reporter Febriana Firdaus explores how Indonesia has been affected by environmental damage from land reclamation projects put in place to bolster the country's tourism industry. Land is a premium for this country of 17-thousand islands. And so the country is expanding its buildable land by dumping sand into the water, negatively impacting the small scale fisheries who live an...

For today’s episode we head to South Africa’s southern coast, where journalist Rasmus Bitsch saw firsthand the tension between local populations and environmentalists over plans to expand designated marine protected areas. The country is moving forward to implement the United Nations’ 30 by 30 goals, which seek to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by the year 2030. While environmentalists c...

Quito-based reporter Carolina Loza León continues her reporting from the Galápagos Islands. We hear how some fishers, frustrated by decreased yields and the dangers of harvesting sea cucumbers, have turned to tourism to make ends meet. Elsewhere, efforts are being made to connect and engage fishers and scientists in a dialogue, in the form of a quota system. Its aim is to protect this fragile ecos...

This season we kick things off off in Ecuador, where reporter Carolina Loza León heads to the famed Galápagos Islands to hear how a sea cucumber boom shaped the economy and current conservation efforts. SHOW NOTES: If you’re a fisher, we want to hear from you! The Catch is hosting a live podcast taping at the United Nations General Assembly, and we’re looking for a fisher who has experience with m...

Coming up on Season 4 of The Catch, how fishing communities around the world are facing major global and environmental shifts—and are working to adapt. Follow and listen to The Catch wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over half of the world’s fish populations are likely to move from their historic habitats by the end of the century. Pushed by rising temperatures and changing ocean cycles, these migrating fish stocks could be the cause for our next international conflict. Between the end of WWII and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a quarter of the world’s conflicts were tied to fisheries. And experts expect th...

What can the Arctic region tell us about fisheries conflicts in the future? On our final episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen head to the island of Svalbard to see how geopolitical tensions between Russia and Norway are playing out firsthand. Guidi is then joined by former U.S. diplomat Evan Bloom to hear how diplomacy and cooperation have shaped the Arctic reg...

Making sure that fish stocks are healthy–and that fishers can keep on making a living–is no simple task. On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen hear from local fishermen on how they have to be just as aware of political winds, as they do bad weather. And then Guidi hears from Chief Sustainability Officer Sergey Sennikov and Konstantin Drevetnyak, head of...

On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen hear how economics of fishing shapes Norways identity, and vice versa. The two explore the impact of fish farms and visit places where the burgeoning industry has been welcomed and others where it's been shunned. The episode also features insight from Norwegian aquaculture researcher Irja Vormedal. Learn more about y...

On this episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi and co-reporter Eskild Johansen hear firsthand how northern Norway’s oldest fishing communities have dealt with cod fishery collapses in the past. These communities weren’t the only ones facing “cod crashes.” Fisheries supply chain expert Jim Cannon then joins Guidi to share how he worked directly with business partners and stakeholders in the ‘80s...

On this episode of The Catch, we kick things off with a British staple: fish and chips and a visit with chef Nick Martino, owner of Aboveground at DC's Union Market. Then we hear how this iconic dish led to an interstate dispute between Iceland and the U.K. known as the Cod Wars. Host Ruxandra Guidi is joined by historian and Icelandic President Gudni Th. Johannesson, and Mark Kurlansky, the autho...

Host Ruxandra Guidi heads to northern Norway to get a firsthand look at one of the country’s top fisheries: cod. Joined by northern Norway native and co-reporter Eskild Johansen, Guidi hears from local fishermen and stakeholders in the port city of Kirkenes, as it closes port access to Russian fishing trawlers. And we hear from policy experts on a decades-old cooperation agreement between Russia a...

Coming up on Season 3 of The Catch, hear how one of the Arctic’s most valuable fisheries—cod—is being impacted by the politics of Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as changing fish migration patterns due to climate change. Host Ruxandra Guidi heads to northern Norway to meet with the fishers and processors caught the middle. Follow and listen to The Catch wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more a...

Host Ruxandra Guidi concludes this season with a look at the state of fishing in the Upper Gulf of California. She meets fishers who are members of Pesca ABC who are trying to implement sustainable fishing practices. She also shares some good news about the vaquita porpoise and the efforts to protect its habitat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, host Ruxandra Guidi follows the market for Mexican blue shrimp up the supply chain to see what pressure importers and consumers can have on ensuring the shrimp is not caught illegally. She'll hear from sustainable importers and packages and talk about how they are trying to implement different practices as well as the limitations they face. She'll also hear how pressure from inter...

In today's episode host Ruxandra Guidi looks at the conditions in the Upper Gulf of California that have allowed Mexican cartels to embed themselves into nearly all aspects of the fishing industry. She investigates the weak response from the Mexican government in rooting out the cartels, and tries to learn what, if anything, can be done about all this.  This episode features conversations with Van...

On today’s episode of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi continues her exploration of the Upper Gulf of California to learn more about what can be done to stop illegal gillnet fishing. We hear from Zak Smith, a senior attorney and the director of global biodiversity conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He led an effort to force a U.S. embargo on seafood from the area. Guidi th...

On today's episode, we look into what led to the dire situation faced by the vaquita and the fishing communities in the Upper Gulf of California. Host Ruxandra Guidi and her travel companions learn more about the history of fishing in the area and how demand for high value seafood such as the totoaba and blue shrimp led to a dire situation for the vaquita porpoise. In this episode, Guidi speaks to...

In the Part One of our new season of The Catch, host Ruxandra Guidi along with co-reporter Ernesto Méndez and marine biologist Alex Olivera travel to the Upper Gulf of California to meet with local experts and shrimp fishers. The underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau once deemed this area "The Aquarium of the World" because it was so rich in biodiversity. But unfortunately much of this ecological w...

After nearly two decades of negotiating, the United Nations passed an agreement called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, also known as the High Seas Treaty. Host Rux Guidi is joined by Lisa Speers, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Director of the International Ocean Program and Duncan Currie, a lawyer with the High Seas Alliance, to hear more about this recent breakthrou...

Coming up on this season of The Catch, we head to the upper Gulf of California, to see what a porpoise, a fish whose bladder fetches tens of thousands of dollars on the black market, and the highly desirable—and delicious—colossal shrimp tell us about the complicated world of fishing. This spring, Foreign Policy is partnering with the Walton Family Foundation for season two of The Catch, hosted by...

In the final installment of our series we hear from two U.S. congressmen—Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, and Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican—who are working to curb illegal fishing practices. We learn about the ways individual countries such as Japan and China are adapting their laws to hold industrial fishers more accountable. Finally, chef and food advocate Barton Seaver talks about...

This year, the future of squid and the oceans in general is being determined by a relatively small group of diplomats and representatives who are working on new agreements to regulate the laws of the oceans. With new incentives to curb fishing subsidies, new marine protected areas, and new laws for the high seas, collectively these agreements could have a major impact on the health of the Earth's...

A look at the international efforts being done to curb Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported fishing. Host Ruxandra Guidi hears from Peter Hammarstedt a captain from the organization Sea Shepherd as well as Dyhia Belhabib, Principal Investigator at Ecotrust Canada and an Executive Director at Nautical Crime Investigation Services. The two discuss ways in which NGOs are assisting log enforcement to...