Fishermen’s reflections: How to make mCDR research and development “fishery sensitive”?
From left to right: Shaye Rooney, Bruce Steele, Antonio Arena, Katie Almeida
By Sarah Schumann
May 30, 2025 — On May 28, the Fishery Friendly Climate Action Campaign co-hosted a webinar on “Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal - What Fishermen Need to Know” with our partners at the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, Alaska Ocean Acidification Network, California Current Acidification Network, and Northeast Coastal Acidification Network.
Although originally intended for a fishing audience, the webinar generated strong interest across a wide range of communities and lived experiences, from the mCDR research community, to federal and state fisheries science and management agencies, to conservation NGOs, to funders, to students, and beyond. We were delighted to have such a diverse array of actors across the mCDR space represented, and to showcase the fishing industry’s early leadership on this complex issue.
Highlights of the webinar included an overview of the science of mCDR pathways by Kalina Grabb (contractor to NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center), an overview of the economic and public policy landscape by Brad Warren (Global Ocean Health), and an overview and lessons learned so far from our project, called "Engaging U.S. Commercial Fishing Community to Develop Recommendations for Fishery-Sensitive mCDR Governance, Collaborative Research and Monitoring, and Outreach to Fishing Communities,” by project partner Darcy Dugan (Alaska Ocean Acidification Network).
But for me, what most stood out was a panel of four commercial fishermen and fisheries representatives who reflected on their participation earlier this spring in a set of roundtables hosted through the Fishery Friendly Climate Action Campaign to support this project. These four voices stood in for the larger group of 34 fishermen who participated in these virtual deep-dive discussions, where topics ranged from how early to engage fishermen in mCDR planning, to how to include fishing communities in benefit distribution, to how to define critical impact thresholds, to how to best monitor for these impacts, and to how to involve fishermen closely in data collection activities at every step of the way.
I am grateful to these four individuals — Shaye Rooney, Bruce Steele, Antonio Arena, and Katie Almeida (who stepped into this panelist role at the very last minute) — for going the extra mile by sharing their personal reflections from our roundtable conversations and on the trajectory of mCDR more generally, with the diverse audience of participants at our webinar.
I hope that readers of this blog enjoy these reflections as much as I did. They are reprinted in full below, but you can also view and hear these four individuals in their own works by viewing our webinar video.
Panelist prompt question: In your view, what single action is most urgently needed to ensure that any future mCDR research and development is responsible and "fishery-sensitive"?
Shaye Rooney
Shaye Rooney is the co-director of the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island (CFCRI), where she organizes the Commercial Fisherman Apprenticeship training, coordinates a seafood donation program, and represents the Rhode Island fishing community in the process of offshore wind development.
“A key takeaway for me as a participant in the roundtables was that we're in these very early stages of mCDR technologies and it's going to be critical to involve the fishing community in the planning process as early and as often as possible. Each of these technologies are very different. They each come with their own concerns and their own potential impacts to the ecosystem and to fishing. The pathways are still very much unknown to the majority of the industry, and I think efforts to raise awareness and educate members of the fishing industry about these technologies and to gather industry input like this project through the Fishery Friendly Climate Action Campaign and RODA, are key first steps, and I think this educational component is really necessary prior to development of any type of policy framework work so that the fishing industry can properly engage in the process.
“The roundtable certainly helped deepen my understanding in thinking about the different needs for responsible MCDR projects, but I still feel that my understanding is at the surface level. I think there's a lot more learning to be done about these different pathways and about what these could actually look like in practice. I think it's going to be critical for industry to engage and provide input on things like siting of these projects, the timing, research priorities, and also potential mitigation measures that might be needed down the road. I think it's also going to be ideal if a guide to best practices for all these aspects could be developed through an industry-led initiative very much like this.
“Kudos to all of the project team. This is a great initiative. I also think it's clear that further research and funding for research is a necessary next step, just to understand what those potential impacts might be to both fishing and to the ecosystem. There are definitely still a lot of unknowns and questions to be considered and addressed before any projects should be able to move forward.
“I was just going to give like a really quick kind of overview about a project taking place in our region. There is a project taking place in our region. It's an ocean alkalinity enhancement project. It’s led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and it's called LOC-NESS, which stands for Locking away Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope. I attended one of the meetings that the researchers had held to engage the commercial fishing community. Fishermen came, they expressed some concern with the project. The researchers did listen, and they were able to adjust some aspects of the project such as the timing and location. But through that, it was clear that the fishing industry had a lot of interest in engaging, but also that there's definitely this educational gap and definitely a need for more education efforts so that fishermen can properly engage in this effort.”
Bruce Steele
Bruce Steele, based in Buellton California, has harvested sea urchins, abalone, salmon, herring, and roe on kelp. Bruce has served on the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary advisory council and the board of the California Coastal Acidification Network.
“Fishermen don't have the expertise to make decisions on a lot of this stuff. I mean, each project, you’d have to have knowledge about ocean processes for deep water or intermediate water. There's just a huge, huge amount of knowledge it takes to really be up to speed on this. So yes, education's important, but I think you're going to really have to try hard to find individual fishermen who have a lot of expertise at least in some sort of narrow focus, whether that be kelp or interaction with the green sand projects or any of these projects. I think we'd be well served by having expert fishermen to deal with this, rather than think that we can go out and canvas the general fishing public.
“Then, just in general the whole subject. Right now, we're at 1.5 degrees Celsius heating. That was supposed to be something we don't pass, and we already went through it one year. We're at close to four parts per million right now of additional CO2. So the rate of increase is going up, our terrestrial sinks are beginning to break down, the boreal forest is burning, the Amazon is burning. I mean, we are losing natural sinks while we're trying to figure out how we're going to goose sinks that we really don't have a whole lot of control over.
“It's not that I'm opposed to this stuff, but I think if you're going to do it, and go through the energy and effort, you should put the carbon into long-term sinks. The whole idea of supporting kelp, which is maybe 10 years — I think it's much less than that — is preposterous. If we're going to concentrate on something, we should concentrate on things that have a chance of making a noticeable difference without a whole lot of biological downsides. Alkalinity enhancement happens to be my favorite one because as you increase alkalinity, it changes the omega, which is the point where aragonite dissolves. I have my favorites, but ultimately, they should be projects that that don't harm existing fisheries, and then also have the potential for a substantial amount of benefit.”
Antonio Arena
Antonio Arena gillnets for salmon in Bristol Bay, Alaska, on the F/V Caribbean Son. In the winters, he operates charter tour boats in the Virgin Islands.
“I've been fishing in Alaska for about 18 years. I'm currently working in the salmon fishery in Bristol Bay. I've also done king crab, Bairdii, and cod in Alaska in previous years. I've commercially fished Dungeness crab in Washington. I do work in charters in the Virgin Islands in the winter, where I do tours around the US Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands. I've also done stuff out in Hawaii on whale watching boats, dolphin sightseeing boats, tugboats, things like that.
“Through all of these different areas and industries that I've worked in, I've talked a good bit with biologists from the University of the Virgin Islands and the Virgin Islands National Park about the effects of climate change on the reefs down there. I spend a considerable amount of time in and under the water and have seen a lot of those effects firsthand. They've affected the tourism industry down there, as well as the charter and commercial fishing industry. I've been in three category 5 hurricanes in the Virgin Islands, one of which was Hurricane Irma in 2017. It was one of the largest and strongest hurricanes in recorded history, with gusts of over 283 miles an hour. Hurricanes are getting bigger. They're getting more frequent. I've talked with a lot of the biologists up here in Alaska about how the increased water temperatures are affecting salmon and different marine life.
“So I agree that climate change is definitely an issue and it needs a solution, because fishermen are experiencing these effects of climate change in huge ways and we've got a lot to lose. We have a lot to lose if climate change continues, but we also have a lot to lose if the solutions to climate change cause damage. Damage can be done in a lot of different ways, including in the research process.
“Fishermen need to be involved in this research process to give up-to-date local knowledge on the marine environments that are currently and in the future going to be used for mCDR. I spend give-or-take 200 days a year on the water, in the water, underwater. When I talk to my peers around the country, nobody knows about mCDR. I've yet to have a discussion with anybody in the fishing industry that I collaborate with or the charter industries from the Virgin Islands to Alaska to Hawaii and across. Nobody's heard of it. I hadn't heard about it until I started getting involved with Sarah Schumann and getting emails and stuff from her. When I first heard about it, it didn't make sense to me. The thought of meddling with the chemistry of the ocean, meddling with the biology of the ocean, it didn't make sense. To a large degree, it still doesn't.
“To answer the question of what action is currently needed, I think that outreach and education is definitely the biggest thing. Helping people understand what's going on, not only with climate change but what these proposed solutions are, is definitely one of the biggest things that needs to be done at this point — so that fishermen can be involved and work along with the well-meaning efforts, and so that the plans are better laid out from the start. Fishermen, fishing communities, working waterfronts — we can all be a huge assistance and a benefit to mCDR to ensure that both the success of carbon capture and the longevity of a healthy marine environment are on the forefront.
“A lot of these solutions got fast-tracked in the beginning, and they kind of got rolled into a green energy solution and there's millions of dollars in funding that got pumped into this, and I feel like a lot of it got moved along pretty fast, as far as the fishing industry perspective is concerned. A lot of the conversations that I've been involved in, the roundtable discussions and stuff like that, reference a lot about how it's still very much in the early stages, which I understand, and the big picture of what's going on is that it is still in the early stages.
“But as far as what I and my peers in the fishing industry know, it's pretty far along to just be hearing about it. The idea that these things are already being tested in certain areas and it's not just an idea or concept means that there is the potential for negative impacts in what’s currently happening. Climate change needs a solution. That's something that everybody I talk with agrees upon. But we can't fall for the idea that there's an easy or singular solution to this. I don't think that it's going to fall on one method of mCDR or another to be to be a solution. It's going to be a collaboration of a lot of different things. Because it's going to be a number of different things in a number of different areas, fishermen across the country need to be involved and they need to have a seat at the table.
“Fishermen have been working on the water and working with nature for hundreds of years, and we have a lot of stake in the game. I'm 41 years old, and I hope to be fishing for the next 25 or 30 years, which means that when I get to the end of my career, I'm going to be facing the repercussions of either climate change or the failure of a solution. So I'm personally very invested in seeing something like this work, but it has to be done properly. It has to be done the right way.
“Something that I would definitely like to see, as things develop, is an outline to identify and define the acceptable limits of damage to the environment. Not only the environment, but the ecosystem of the affected areas and the industries in those areas. Not just the fishing industry, but a lot of the support industries too, and the communities, and how an effect from one area can affect a different area downstream. Everything in the ocean's moving, so if you do a research project in one area and there's negative effects, it's not just affecting that one area. It's going to catch in the currents and it's going to end up somewhere else and affect that area, as well.
“Outlining what the acceptable limits are for these different research projects, at what point they're going to decide, “Okay, this didn't work and we need to stop,” what those parameters are, who's setting those parameters, and who's quantifying those parameters — these are all things that I, as a fisherman, want to know. Not only if these things are happening in my community or around my community, but anywhere in the ocean, because it's all connected. As the technology improves for things like this, and we uncover new innovative solutions to climate change, the ability to do damage also increases, and the cost of doing this grows exponentially. Being a green solution does not exempt these techniques from the due process and research that needs to happen to make sure that it's done properly.
“Something else I'd like to touch on that I haven't seen in anybody's presentation so far — and I talked a little bit about this in in some of the panels that I've been on previously — is market perception. As fishermen, the fisheries market is one of the biggest hurdles that we deal with. Along with catching the fish, we got to sell it, and how much money we can sell it for. Market perception is very, very fickle, and it's not always based on fact.
“I've kind of come up with this theoretical situation in my head to explain this, and I'll use Bristol Bay as an example. In theory, if you use ocean alkalinity, and you dump chemicals in the ocean to change the pH, and it works amazingly well, and you single-handedly cure climate change with ocean alkalinity, and you never hurt a single marine organism throughout the entire process, and you put out a report raving about the success of how you have cured climate change and never hurt a single marine organism by dumping all these chemicals in the ocean in Bristol Bay, all the market's going to hear is that you dumped chemicals in the ocean in Bristol Bay, and that's where their salmon comes from, and they don't want to buy salmon from Bristol Bay anymore, because it's got chemicals on it, and you will completely crash the entire salmon market for Bristol Bay. You never hurt a single salmon in that process, but the market perception is those fish have chemicals on them and ‘I don't want to buy them anymore.’
“That's an extreme example, I understand that. But that market perception and what's put out to the public can be damaged even by promoting positive and good information That’s something that needs to be very carefully handled and kept an eye on, as we move through these processes and stuff starts being tested. Even if you're not hurting the fish, you can you can severely hurt the market.
“I'll say one more thing, too, about trust. Trust is going to be a big hurdle with fishermen. I'll speak for myself on this one. I definitely have a lot of trust issues, when it comes to research and to science. I've seen different things, different research projects, get swayed one direction or another to suit the person that's funding the research. In all due respect to researchers, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to be disrespectful at anybody, but when you've got opposing sides of a certain issue, and they're both doing their own research and that research comes out completely different on this side versus this side, one of them's being pushed one direction and one's being pushed another. Which for me, personally, causes a lot of trust issues, when it comes to stuff like that.
“Education and educating myself on those issues is a big element of that, to know what parts of it to trust and what parts of it not to. But that's going to be a big hurdle with a lot of fishermen, as these things move forward and the research information starts coming out, is whether people are going to trust those numbers, whether they're going to trust the data, whether they're going to trust the research or not. Outreach and education are going to are going to play a huge role in getting fishermen's trust as this information starts coming out more and more, and the testing starts coming out more and more.”
Katie Almeida
Katie Almeida is the Senior Representative of Government Relations & Sustainability at the Town Dock in Narraganset, RI. In this role, Katie tracks fishery management changes for the Town Dock, sits on various fishery advisory panels and is a board member of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA).
“Everyone gave excellent answers already, and coming up last, I don't want to repeat all of them. But I definitely think everyone hit on some really important points and made some good suggestions. From my perspective, I had a lot of experience with offshore wind, when offshore wind first started coming around, about eight years ago, into the ports — specifically in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I would say that this up-and-coming industry can really learn from the offshore wind experience, with their outreach — and lack of outreach — and working with — and lack of working with — the fishing industry. [The mCDR community can] learn from those mistakes and not make the same ones, in hopes to have a better relationship with the [fishing] industry.
“I would say that it needs to start yesterday. I first heard about [the LOC-NESS ocean alkalinity enhancement] project, I think it was in the fall or last summer. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to the public meeting that was in Rhode Island that Shaye mentioned, which I know was a bummer for me, because I really need to put this on my radar, because it seems to be the next up-and-coming industry. I think the [fishing] industry needs to be at the table from the beginning in order to have participation, to have a say in how this is rolled out, but also having a seat at the table and having this [mCDR] industry listening to the fishing industry. I also think we need a way to track that the [fishing] industry's information is being received and implemented, because we just didn't have that with offshore wind.
“I also think that — and it seems to be going this way, at least on the East Coast; I can't say any in any other region — that we need to start small with this. We need to start small, research the effects. First of all, does it even work? Second of all, what are the effects — biological and ecological? And then go from there.
“I'd hate to see a tradeoff. That's what I often felt with offshore wind, is that we're trading one industry for another. Now it seems that we have another industry coming up behind offshore wind, and we could potentially see that same pathway being followed.
“I also agree that it's not going to be one solution that's going to solve this problem. It's going to be a few different solutions that we're going to have to use and depend on, which is unfortunate, because I don't feel like we concentrate enough on our own behavior of reducing our consumption. I just feel like oftentimes, that's kind of left last and the environment takes the brunt of things, because it's easier to control than it is to say ‘Hey I don't think you need that second toy or something like that.’ It's tough, but education is going to be huge, and education is going to be needed, both with the public and the fishing industry. We saw some conflicts with that with offshore wind, and like I said, there's a lot to learn from that process, so I hope this new industry can take that and run with it and learn from that.
“As for outreach for the industry, you have quite a few of us on the panel so far, and you have some people who are not on the panel that be more than willing to help you with how to reach out to those groups and how to reach the masses the best. No one way is going to be the way to do it. No one mailing list, because everyone's on different ones. But one good one is to go through the councils, get on their mailing list. [Go through] the states, get on their mailing list. People need to be involved soon, especially before these you know bigger projects get rolled out.”
