Testimony

As the sun began to set and the shadows lengthened across the white sand, I lowered my mask and snorkel over my face and slipped into the warm Indian Ocean water. The tide had just turned, and I swam against the current across the lagoon's shallow waters. I could almost feel the beach receding in the distance, and I recognized the familiar shiver of fear and helplessness accompanying me every time I swam in open water. I charted a straight course for the fringing coral reef that lay between me and the open ocean, thrilled to finally be encountering one of the study sites where I had been analyzing years of data from the local fishery.

I began my work on coral reef fisheries as a regent at the Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa (JENA) in Nairobi, Kenya, and I have continued to collaborate with partners at JENA and elsewhere since returning to my native United States in 2023. My study system, the East African Coral Coast, is home to one of the longest reef systems in the world, stretching from the southern tip of Somalia [in East Africa] to KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Millions of people depend on these coral reefs along thousands of miles of coastline for food and income. But too often, the fish they harvest are valued only in economic terms, which contributes to overfishing and food insecurity at a time when climate change already threatens the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities.

Agroecology provides an alternative approach that sees coastal food systems more holistically. This holistic and systemic approach led my colleagues and me to connect the dots between public health nutrition and marine ecology, asking how fisheries can provide nutrition to people while also building ecological resilience on coral reefs. After a few years of research, we now find that these two goals often go hand in hand. In Kenya, fishers who use basket traps began adding escape gaps to protect juvenile fish in 2010. They could soon tell that the modified traps caught more fish, but our research also found that catches had become more sustainable and nutritious. We then evaluated fish catches across the region for their micronutrient content and found that small-scale fisheries provide key micronutrients to food-insecure coastal communities. In some countries we studied, ending overfishing, an important biodiversity goal, would also produce enough additional micronutrients to provide more than 100% of the current demand for selenium, omega-3, and zinc among children 1–3 years old. In other words, fishing less and using sustainable methods can support public health while protecting coral reefs.

After several minutes of swimming, I reached the reef, turned around, and allowed the current to carry me on its slow journey to the shore. The seagrass meadows and coral patches slid by, revealing their coterie of cautious juvenile fish, territorial crabs, and even a few tiger cowries with their mantles extended like long fingers searching the water above. This reef was overfished but recovering; I was encouraged to see the diversity of species benefiting from the intact habitat the local community had worked to protect. I sighed contentedly through my snorkel as I thought of the interspecies care, building resilience and abundance in this little lagoon. The sun lowered toward the horizon, the current carried me along, and I knew the reef was healing.