Current clients

Monterey Bay Aquarium, OceanKind Foundation, California Ocean Science Trust

Current Projects

A Regenerative Seaweed Economy for California. California values clean energy, sustainable food, and vibrant ocean ecosystems. California also wants to help slow down and stop climate change. Ocean Innovations is helping to identify knowledge gaps and other barriers to harnessing the power of seaweed to achieve these goals.

Increasing the Climate Mitigation Potential of Seaweed. Seaweed can sequester carbon, helping to mitigate climate change, while supporting food security, economic development, and ecosystem restoration. However, the carbon sequestered is a fraction of the tremendous amount of carbon seaweeds are capable of absorbing when farmed at scale, and sequestration via natural pathways only occurs under certain conditions. Ocean Innovations is working on ways to dramatically increase the contribution of seaweed farms to climate mitigation by scaling the manufacturing of products from seaweed that: store carbon, like building materials; replace carbon-intensive products, like plastic, fossil fuels, and fertilizer; or suppress emissions of methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) from cattle and manure.

Improving Fishery Performance. Hundreds of millions of people depend on fisheries directly for food and jobs, while billions benefit from the seafood that fisheries produce. Seafood is a relatively low carbon, healthy source of protein that can go a long way toward alleviating hunger and malnutrition. While progress toward ending overfishing is being made by shifting toward science-based assessment and management, thousands of fisheries - especially scale scale fisheries that are particularly important for supporting food security and livelihoods in climate-vulnerable tropical coastal communities - are falling behind. Ocean Innovations is building capacity to assess and manage these fisheries in order to improve their social, economic, and ecological performance. We are also exploring ways to boost fishery productivity, for example by converting the world's hundreds of thousands of Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) from fish killing devices to biogenic, productive habitat that can help replenish depleted fish populations and biodiversity by planting them with seaweed and shellfish.

Ocean Innovations - Rod Fujita, PhD (sole proprietor)

Qualifications

• Ph.D in marine ecology and seaweed physiological ecology (1988) with experience in seaweed aquaculture, seaweed products for climate change mitigation

• 35 years of experience working on environmental issues including acid rain, climate change, overfishing, bycatch, habitat damage, marine protected areas, marine biodiversity loss, small scale fisheries reform and empowerment, blue carbon, ocean-based climate change mitigation, and climate justice

• Strong record of innovation in service of ocean conservation including creation of EDF’s Oceans Program, market-based policies, behavior change strategies, financial mechanisms, data-limited analytical and management tools

• Research on: dynamic fisheries allocation and other approaches for increasing fishery resilience to climate change; blue carbon systems to inform development of MRV and verified carbon unit development; data-limited fishery stock assessment and management to drive fishery improvement in data- and capacity-limited contexts; principles for scaling conservation initiatives; behavior change interventions to reduce illegal fishing; aquaculture-small scale fisheries interactions; ocean governance

• Author of over 80 peer-reviewed articles, and the well-received books Heal the Ocean: Solutions for Saving Our Seas and Making Shift Happen: Designing for Successful Environmental Behavior Change

Outcomes that I have contributed to

• Acquisition of 65,000 acres of land and the removal of 4 dams to help restore the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem

• Establishment of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (including a network of marine reserves and water quality protection program) protecting 2,900 square miles of underwater habitat

• Establishment of the Channel Islands marine reserve network (which protects over 250 square miles of spectacular underwater habitats)

• Enactment of California's Marine Life Protection Act which resulted in the protection of 850 square miles of ocean habitat (15% of state territorial waters) 

• Enactment of California's Marine Life Management Act, which mandates science-based management plans for the state's fisheries

• Reauthorization of the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act

• Transition of federal west coast groundfish fishery to catch share management with Rockfish Conservation Areas, resulting in dramatic reduction in overfishing and discard, and in the rebuilding of many overfished stocks

• Transformation of the trawl fishery off California's central coast to low impact, high value hook fisheries using a pioneering private buyout and conservation leasing model, resulting in the protection of over 6000 square miles of spectacular underwater habitat

• Successful TURF-reserve systems and fishery reform in the Philippines

• Passage of Japan’s most important fishery reform legislation in 70 years, transitioning fisheries to management under total allowable catch limits

• Establishment of a national TURF-reserve system in Belize

• Fisheries reform in Belize, Mexico, Chile, Cuba, the Philippines, and Indonesia using data-limited assessment and management methods

• Establishment of the first US Aquaculture Innovation Center to use federal appropriation to reduce barriers to entry related to research and permit expenses, especially for small operators and promote regenerative seaweed cultivation

• Establishment of a seaweed farm in the Philippines to facilitate research on carbon sequestration, ecosystem service provisioning, and climate change mitigation via seaweed products that store carbon, replace carbon-intensive products, or suppress greenhouse gas emissions

Training and Capacity Building

• Expert designer and facilitator of workshops (systems mapping, expert elicitation, capacity building)

• Skilled trainer with experience training a variety of groups including hundreds of fishermen, government officials, and other fishery practitioners in a variety of contexts, including both developed and developing countries

• Experience supervising research and mentoring over 100 interns, fellows, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows

  
  

Visionary Leadership

• Co-founded EDF’s Oceans Program in 1992, which now includes over 100 staff working in 10 geographies around the world

• Established Ocean Innovations and the Research and Development Group, teams within EDF charged with supporting conservation practitioners with scientific and technical expertise, identifying emerging issues, and developing new projects

• Created the California Fisheries Fund, an innovative conservation financing entity which won the Governor’s Award for Environmental and Economic Leadership Award, California’s highest environmental honor

• Founded Root Solutions, an NGO dedicated to improving conservation outcomes via behavior change strategies

• Helped to pioneer integrated multitrophic aquaculture (phytoplankton+sewage+bivalves+seaweed) to produce food, biogas, and phycocolloids with zero waste

• One of the first scientists to make a data-based argument that global warming was responsible for mass coral bleaching (1990)

• Co-developed the American Museum of Natural History’s exhibition Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, which has been viewed by over 2 million people since it launched in 1992

• One of the first advocates of Marine Protected Areas (starting in 1988)

• One of the first environmentalists to advocate secure fishing rights to avert the tragedy of the commons in open access fisheries

• Co-developed innovative private buyout of central California trawl fishery with establishment of new no-trawl zones

• Pioneer of the modern era of data-limited fishery stock assessment and management

• Developed and led EDF’s strategy for increase climate change mitigation, ecological and social benefits of seaweed farming

• Co-author, federal legislation to create an ocean carbon dioxide removal research program at NOAA

• Co-author, federal legislation to create a governance system for US offshore aquaculture

  
  

Awards

Thomas J. Watson Fellowship (1978)

Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation (2000)

California Governor’s Award for Environmental and Economic Leadership (2012)

Visiting Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment and Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University (2009 – 2019)

Nautilus Gold Medal Award Winner – Better Books for a Better World (2023)

Hatfield Marine Science Center Award for Science in Action (2024)

Appointments

Member, Federal Advisory Committee on Marine Protected Areas.

Member, CALFED Selection Panel, Integration Panel, Bay-Delta Advisory Council Ecosystem Restoration Workgroup, CALFED ecological indicators workgroup, and various other CALFED technical teams.

Member, Pacific Fishery Management Council Marine Reserves Committee, Habitat Steering Committee, Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel, Groundfish Advisory Panel, and Alternative Groundfish Management Committee.

Member, Master Plan development committee for California’s Marine Life Protection Act

Member, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration West Coast Advisory Committee on Individual Transferable Quotas for fish harvest privileges.

Invited participant, National Research Council Committee on Ecosystem Management for Sustainable Marine Fisheries.

Member, Technical Citizens Advisory Committee for Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services study of alternative onsite wastewater treatment systems for the Florida Keys.

Member, Technical Advisory Committee for the Water Quality Steering Committee of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Member, United Nations Development Programme Roster of Experts for Global Environmental Facility project review.

Consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board. Alaskan Oil Spill Bioremediation Project.

Observer, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations Environmental Programme, Working Group on Scientific Assessment

Member, Water Quality 2000.  Interdisciplinary roundtable of industry, academic, governmental, environmental group representatives to produce comprehensive reports on water quality in the U.S. and recommend measures to improve water quality and protect aquatic ecosystems.