Session III: Blue Food

People, Food, and Our One and Only Ocean

Blue food contributes significantly to food security. Can blue food production be nature positive and climate positive? Restorative aquaculture rehabilitates habitats, but how do we ensure the carbon captured stays in the water and the benefits created by restorative aquaculture are enjoyed by the community? Can wild catch be regenerative or nature-neutral?

A panel of blue food experts, representing the public, private, and academic fields, will reflect on the regeneration potential of blue food and also share their thoughts on how blue food can address food security and food sovereignty.

Panelists

Mike Williams Sr., Chair of Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (KRITFC) Executive Council

Mike is the current Tribal Chief of the Akiak Native Community. He helped found KRITFC and is former Area Vice President of the National Congress of American Indians, former Chairman of the Association of Village Council Presidents, Former President of the Rural Community Action Program, Board Member of the Native American Rights Fund, Former Vice Chairman on the Alaska State Board of Education, and an avid and long-time musher and lditarod Sled Dog Race veteran and retired US Army Veteran. He has testified before Congress concerning the impacts of climate change on Indigenous Peoples in Alaska. He is the recipient of Healthy Alaska Natives Foundation Luminary Award.

Kendall Barbery, Director of Partnerships & Program Development at GreenWave

Kendall develops the organization's program strategy and leads partnership development and expansion efforts. Since joining GreenWave in 2017, Kendall helped develop the organization's Training & Support and Innovation programs, delivered training to over 600 prospective and current ocean farmers, and incubated four kelp hatcheries across New England, the west coast, and Alaska. She served on the leadership team for the development of GreenWave's online Regenerative Ocean Farming Hub.

Karly Kelso, Director of Climate Resilient Food System at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)

Karly builds partnerships to elevate and advocate for the recognition of blue foods in contributing to global nutrition security and in enhancing resiliency to climate change and other global disruptions, like the COVID-19 pandemic. She leads the Secretariat for the Aquatic Blue Food Coalition established at the 2021 UN Food System Summit and has spent over 10 years on EDF's Oceans team advancing sustainable fishery management implementation in Asia and the Pacific.

Dr. Michelle Tigchelaar, Research Scientist of Blue Food Assessment at Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions

Michelle is an interdisciplinary climate scientist whose work focuses on the impacts of climate change on food systems, spanning the aquatic and terrestrial and the ecological and human. At the Center for Ocean Solutions, she coordinated the Blue Food Assessment (http://bluefood.earth), an integrative assessment of the role of aquatic foods (food from marine and freshwater systems) in transformations towards healthy, sustainable, just and resilient food systems. She currently leads research on the role of blue foods in national climate strategies, on tools for assessing blue-green climate risk to nutrition, and on climate impacts and adaptations for fishery worker health.

Moderator

Grace Cajiski, Yale College

Grace Cajski (she/her) is a superjunior in Yale College majoring in English and in Environmental Studies, with a self designated concentration in marine conservation. She has researched and written about Hawaiian fishpond aquaculture for two years. She is from New Orleans, and is currently researching anchialine pools on the Big Island.