Explore the alliance between fishermen and environmentalists that is reshaping the industry and safeguarding marine life.
On the latest episode of Rising Tide the Ocean Podcast, host David Helvarg and co-host Vicki Nichols Goldstein sit down with James Workman and Amanda Leland, co-authors of Sea Change – Unlikely Allies and a Success Story of Oceanic Proportions — a book that makes a convincing case that empowering fishermen to work together, even as they compete, can create miracles.
Workman brings the instincts of an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur to the conversation, having already explored humanity's most elemental struggles in his earlier work, Heart of Dryness. Leland came to the sea the way many do — through a grandfather and a fishing line at age five — and never left. Today she serves as Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, the international nonprofit working to align healthy communities and economies with the hard realities of a changing climate.
Together, they dig into the market-based system known as catch share fishing: what it is, how it's reshaping the destructive race toward overfishing in U.S. waters, and why it may be one of the most promising tools we have for getting this right on a global scale. They also explore the human cost baked into commercial fishing — still one of the deadliest jobs on earth — and how catch shares are changing those odds. And they explain their choice to tell this sweeping story through the life of one rugged Gulf Coast fisherman named Buddy, a narrative anchor that grounds the policy and the science in salt, sweat and consequence.
All of it plays out against the backdrop of a rapidly warming, rapidly changing ocean — and what that means for the millions of people whose dinner plates depend on getting this right.
A story of hope, hard-won transformation and new challenges. Dive in and take an audio bite.
Additional Resources
Sea Change Book — the captivating, deeply-human tale of how fishermen—along with some unlikely allies—helped carry out the biggest conservation success story you've never heard of.
Blue Frontier / Substack — Building the solution-based citizen movement needed to protect our ocean, coasts and communities, both human and wild.
Inland Ocean Coalition — Building land-to-sea stewardship - the inland voice for ocean protection
Fluid Studios — Thinking radically different about the collective good, our planet, & the future.
