The SOA Peru campaign on deep-sea mining aimed to position Peru in favor of a moratorium on deep-sea mining. It emphasized Peru's non-membership in the UNCLOS and highlighted that the Minister of Environment committed at Our Ocean 2023 to evaluate Peru's stance. Throughout the campaign, signature collection via Change.org, social media activations, and participation in events such as fairs were conducted. Additionally, an awareness video featuring public figures, influencers, and actors garnered over 46.9 thousand views. One of the final political actions involved consulting the position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Congress of Peru, resulting in the procurement of a formal response document establishing Peru's stance in favor of a moratorium.

Life on Planet A, a sustainability podcast by Heidi Dumesich developed an episode with the objective of uncovering the lesser-known narratives of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the global entity responsible for regulating deep sea mining. The episode offers an in-depth exploration of deep sea mining and the intricate negotiations that encompass it, featuring guest speaker Emily Tewes from SOA. It highlights the compelling accounts of nations advocating for a moratorium on deep sea mining.

Gonçalo Carvalho, the Executive Coordinator of Sciaena, an NGO dedicated to promoting a sustainable marine environment, conducted a workshop on deep sea mining in Azores, Portugal.

Passionate about promoting gender equality in the seafood sector, Cameron Moore contributes to a range of programming at the nonprofit Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE) with an intersectional and holistic approach. Recognizing the interconnected nature of climate change, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism, Cameron believes it is essential to address these fundamental issues in conservation conversations. Through this fellowship, they intend to produce an engaging video series that complements SAGE's upcoming podcast, focusing on Cameron's personal "What the Heck Moments" in challenging and reshaping outdated thinking within the seafood industry. The video series will explore how climate change has exacerbated conditions that perpetuate the unequal distribution of social capital, and how this plays out specifically for minorities (non-white, cis-, het-) in fisheries and aquaculture communities in the Gulf of Mexico and northeast coast of the US.

Hurricanes consistently threaten Florida fishing communities, dealing millions in damage annually. Despite this fact there exists limited a) understanding and communication of the short and long-term social and economic impacts of hurricanes and b) efforts to address these challenges. This project, led by Hugh Cipparone, a Fishery Finance and Policy Analyst for the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders' Alliance, aims to address the above-mentioned gap by undertaking two key initiatives. These are fishermen-led research on and communication around the social and economic impacts of hurricanes and a workshop improving record-keeping for fishermen to improve the receipt and targeting of disaster relief in the hurricane’s wake.

This research project, led by Meredith Pratt, a PhD student in Integrative and Conservation Biology at the University of Central Florida, aims to understand the potential consequences of rising sea surface temperatures on coastal fish communities and fisheries. Using multi-decadal fisheries and environmental data, the study will examine the latitudinal range shifts of marine fishes and investigate the potential drivers behind these shifts over time. The findings from this research will have practical implications, informing the design of conservation and management strategies that promote the sustainability of coastal ecosystems, and increasing our understanding of the effects of climate change on coastal fish communities.

Nicky Roberts—a subject matter expert in seafood supply chains and climate resilience, in collaboration with the nonprofit Eating with the Ecosystem—is developing an industry action plan to foster climate-resilient seafood supply chains in New England. Their previous collaboration yielded the forthcoming publication Climate Winners: Adapting to Species Shifts in New England, which entailed meeting with 30 seafood suppliers of all shapes and sizes to understand their willingness to incorporate some of those winners species into their chain, with the end goal to create recommendations for policymakers. What they uncovered is a 'knowledge to action gap' with preparing for resilience, in part due to fisher's distrust of industry resource managers and lack of perceived demand coming from consumers. Nicky plans to leverage this publication into a larger "action plan" for the New England seafood supply chain, that will be informed by and shared with industry partners and stakeholders through collaborative sessions and panel discussions virtually and at important industry gatherings.

Driven by the devastation caused by purple urchins, which have destroyed 95% of California's kelp forests in the last 5 years, Max Diamond, an environmentally conscious chef with Michelin star restaurant training, founded Salty Gold Uni to achieve "restorative consumption." Max aims to innovate seafood consumption and production by introducing sea urchin (uni) butter, focusing on the overabundant and underutilized purple sea urchin. Uni butter is created from blending the harvest from multiple urchins and can upcycle smaller urchins deemed unfit for the market, meaning that the removal of urchins can be less discriminatory and more efficient, maximizing the environmental impact of kelp forest restoration. With previous support from SOA in launching his product, Max is now focused on entering the local retail market and scaling; through the fellowship he hopes to continue to form new partnerships in the climate-resilient fisheries ecosystem and hone in on quantifying and communicating environmental impact.

In the last decade, climate change-induced stressors and disease has had a detrimental impact on California (CA) kelp forests. In northern CA, over 90% of kelp forests have been impacted and in the Monterey-Carmel Peninsula area, over 70% of kelp forests have been impacted. As kelp is NOAA-designated Essential Fish Habitat and a state-managed fishery, its restoration is critical. While the restoration literature highlights the crucial role of community involvement in effective ecological restoration, there remains limited understanding on how to effectively leverage community involvement and leadership. Ali Boutros - a Coastal Science & Policy Masters Student at UC Santa Cruz - will address this knowledge gap by performing a comparative case study of two community-led kelp restoration efforts in CA. She will synthesize important elements and lessons learned from these efforts. Her findings will provide valuable insights that will inform the development of California's Kelp Restoration & Management Plan, and complement existing and robust kelp restoration initiatives at The Nature Conservancy.