I don’t get seasick. That fact has also been a blessing for my work in the commercial fishing industry — it’s hard to keep a job when you’re incapacitated while working on a big ocean swell or choppy seas. Secondarily, and more to the point of my CBE Summer Fellowship, my lack of seasickness also applies to reading and writing on boats. Over a summer in Alaska — where I started gillnetting for sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay then onto seining for pink and chum salmon in Southeast Alaska and longlining for halibut on the Gulf of Alaska — I read dozens of government and NGO reports, peer-reviewed papers, and media articles on how offshore wind development impacts commercial fisheries.

Climate change is arguably the greatest obstacle facing fisheries in the United States. We’ve seen this through the spike in whale entanglements in California Dungeness crab gear from 2015-2017 when a climate-related warm water event — known as “the Blob” — pushed whale migration patterns and commercial crabbers into the same waters at the same time. The iconic Maine lobster is migrating north to adapt to warming seas, warm rivers and droughts are causing die offs in Pacific salmon streams, and in tropical areas nearshore ecosystems are fundamentally changing as corals die in bleaching events.