Boat International - February 2016

Highly commended – McDonald’s

Global fast food chain

For – its work to ensure that the hake or pollock in a Filet-O-Fish or McFish sandwich

comes from a fishery certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. Its restaurants in

39 European countries, the US and Canada already display the blue MSClabel

Highly commended – Caroline Bennett

Former fund manager and founder of restaurant Moshi Moshi

For – her campaigns to protect fish stocks and encourage consumers

to eat under-used parts of fish in an effort to reduce waste

B

orn and raised in Oceanside, California, and a

graduate of the University of Hawaii, where he honed

his culinary skills, Rob Ruiz is one of the best sushi

chefs in San Diego. He is also committed to the sustainability

of the fish he serves and to the whole marine environment,

hence his project to conserve the vaquita porpoise that get

caught in gillnets. “Our fishing practices have such a negative

impact,” he says. “At first I didn’t know that I was contributing

to the problem by serving shrimp from the Gulf so now I’m

doing everything I can to fix that.”

Thevaquitais“toMexicolikethepandaistoChina”,he

says.“Itisfacingextinctionasaresultofbeingcaughtinthe

gillnets used to catch shrimp in the Gulf of California, which

is then imported into the US.”

Rob has been working with scientists from the Southwest

Fisheries Science Centre, part of the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency responsible

for the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere, the

Mexican government and NGOs such as the World Wildlife

Fund Mexico and Pro-Natura, as well as directly with

fishermen to try to encourage them to use gear that would not

endanger the vaquita. In April 2015, President Enrique Peña

NietoofMexicobannedtheuseofgillnetsfromthenorthern

Gulf of California until April 2017, during which time

fishermen will be encouraged to learn to fish by other, more

vaquita-friendly means.

His concern is that it may be too late. “There are only close

to 70 individual creatures left and, of those, probably only

half are female, so there is also the question of whether there

is enough genetic diversity left in their gene pool for them

to propagate and repopulate the species now that we have the

gillnet ban,” he says. “So we need people to know about

the issue and understand the problem. And we have to find

a way to educate the fishermen.”

To this end Ruiz has also raised tens of thousands of

dollars by holding events at the restaurant in aid of vaquita

conservation. It goes without saying that the fish he serves

at the Land & Water Company is sustainable, favouring, for

instance, octopus that has been diver-caught in Spanish

waters, line-caught albacore tuna from Hawaii and Selva

shrimp, the first shrimp product to receive the green “Best

Choice” recommendation from Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Winner – Restaurateur/chef*

ROB RUI Z

Sushi chef and owner of the Land & Water Company

For – his campaign to conserve the endangered vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California

and to promote the use of shrimp caught without the use of entangling gillnets

THE OCEAN AWARDS 2016

*Criteria – the restaurant group, chef or restaurateur who has made

the most outstanding commitment to ocean conservation

http://www.boatinternational.com | February 2016

JUDGE #7 CHRIS GORELL BARNES
“As Homer said: ‘The sea is the source of all’,” says Gorell Barnes, a new media entrepreneur and angel investor. “It always makes me feel inspired. I kite surf, swim, dive... But the sea
has been raped and pillaged and forgotten, and it needs protecting. I’ve been a fly fisherman since I was about eight years old, on the west coast of Scotland. So over the years I’ve seen
the decline in fish stocks in the lochs and rivers. They used to be full of salmon and sea trout, and now there’s nothing.”
But it was as executive producer of the 2009 film The End of the Line, based on Charles Clover’s book of that name, he says, when he was alerted to just how precarious the health
of the world’s oceans had become – “that this was the biggest problem in the world” – and he felt he had to do something. So Gorell Barnes, Clover and George Duield went on to
co-found Blue Marine Foundation. “We know what we have to do – to make the ocean healthy again we have to protect large areas of it – and we have 30 years left to do it.”
A year earlier he had founded Adjust Your Set, a content marketing agency, where he remains CEO.