Healthy mangroves build a resilient community in the Philippines' Palawan

The Swinomish tribe in Washington state is combining traditional knowledge and science to combat the effects of climate change and improve the health of its land, water, and people. In recent years, their salmon harvest has diminished due to warming waters, but they’ve instituted salmon recovery efforts by restoring tidelands and channels and planting trees along stream beds to cool the waters. Their focus on ecosystem and community health could be a model for other Indigenous tribes looking to create their own climate plans.

The Hā'ena Community-Based Subsistence Fishing Area (co-managed by a local Native Hawaiian nonprofit and the state) uses traditional fishing rules to restrict over-extraction along a mile of Kauaʻi's nearshore waters. Early scientific surveys and community testimony suggest fish populations, species diversity, and biomass are recovering after a decade of implementation.

Aquaponics, a soilless method of farming that combines aquaculture and hydroponic techniques, has provided an affordable and adaptable method for growing traditional cultural Mvskoke foods, such as tobacco, pumpkins, corn, pinto beans, honeysuckle, and minara. Grant funding has enabled tribal members to use aquaponic systems to produce crops and fortify food systems against climate change.

Through a co-management system, which has successfully rehabilitated degraded watersheds, the 2015 Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes-Montana Water Rights Compact has restored tribal sovereignty over their waters. This has brought bull trout back to their native streams and reconnected tribal members to traditional lifeways while maintaining water access for existing agricultural users.

In partnership with Indigenous-led fisheries, researchers in British Columbia deployed an artificial intelligence system to automate the counting of Pacific salmon during their migration. The AI-based tool, which analyzes underwater video, can identify some species of fish with 90 percent accuracy, and Indigenous stewards who participated in the pilot project said not having to count salmon manually freed them up for other important projects.

The Grand Coulee, a 500-foot-tall dam on the Columbia River, nearly eradicated the salmon population that the Colville Tribes relied on, but the Indigenous community initiated a restoration effort to save the fish. They released by hand 100 adult Chinook salmon and scientists were able to confirm that the species was spawning on the upper part of the dam for the first time in 80 years.

By setting aside an area of the Ngao River to be off limits for fishing, several villages in Thailand have seen a revitalization of large barb and carp in their waters. Compared to non-protected stretches of the river, reserves saw more than twice the total number of fish, and catches outside of that protected area have also significantly increased. “These small, community-based reserves can be a really effective management strategy for sustaining their own resources and conserving fish,” says a researcher at the Global Water Center.

A collective of fishers have adopted sustainable fishing practices to catch spiny lobsters in Maria Elena Bay in Mexico, while also protecting the species. To keep future lobster populations healthy, fishers will measure the tails of their catch and if it’s too small, they will toss them back to sea. Because of their efforts, lobster numbers have risen over the years, though they haven’t reached the levels seen in the 1980s.

As arctic sea ice continues to melt at alarming rates due to climate change, new concerns about increased exposure of these virgin waters to the ravages of commercial fishing arise. Taking lessons from the population collapse of fish populations in the Bering Straight due to lack of regulation and data, international leaders from nations along the Arctic Circle are working together to protect these new territories and hopefully preserve capacities for the future.

Despite humanity's shared need for healthy oceans and marine biodiversity to support life as we know it, there is no central regulatory body able to protect the massive, critical swaths of ocean beyond any one country's marine borders, where pollution and climate change are proving disastrous to the ecosystem. But as the effects of the changing oceans become more prevalent to those on land, a few determined groups are slowly bringing together various governing bodies to create reserves and pass key legislation to hopefully give our oceans - and our planet - a chance.