Yoshitaka Ota

Yoshitaka Ota is a social anthropologist, specializing in indigenous fisheries, climate change risk, global ocean governance, sustainable fishing business solutions, and coastal management and research communication. He is currently employed as the Nereus Program Director (Policy)[1] and as a Research Assistant Professor for the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.

Yoshitaka Ota
Alma materUniversity College London
Scientific career
FieldsAnthropology, marine policy
InstitutionsNereus Program
University of British Columbia
Changing Ocean Research Unit
University of Washington

Background

Ota completed his B.Sc. (1995), M.Sc. (1998), and Ph.D. (2006) in Anthropology at the University College London. In 2000-2001, he completed 18 months of fieldwork in Palau, Micronesia in support of his Ph.D. research.[2] Between 2003 and 2005, Ota was employed as a research assistant in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent, conducting research on artisanal fishing. From 2005 to 2009, he was a research associate at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, working on several projects related to fisheries management. From 2009 to 2011, he was a Policy Research Fellow in the Ocean Policy Research Foundation in Tokyo, Japan.[3]

Current Activities

Since 2011, Ota has been Director (Policy) at the Nereus Program, an interdisciplinary ocean research initiative between the non-profit Nippon Foundation and the University of British Columbia.

In January 2016, a study[4] on the impacts of climate change on First Nations fisheries in British Columbia received significant media attention.[5][6][7] In November of that year, he was quoted by the Nikkei Asian Review in a piece on fish consumption, saying "Aquaculture could potentially cover the future gap created in our diet due to fish stock loss. [However, the] aquacultured fish that are increasing in volume, such as catfish or tilapia, are not the species preferred for consumption by all countries. Therefore it won't fill the gap unless we change our consumption preferences."[8]

Ota lead a study[9] in 2016 on global seafood consumption by coastal indigenous peoples, which involved building a database of more than 1,900 indigenous communities and finding that coastal indigenous peoples consume nearly four times more seafood per capita than the global average. The study attracted attention in the Washington Post,[10] CBC News,[11] and Newsweek.[12]

Select media coverage

Select publications
  • Kittinger, J. N., Teh, L. C. L., Allison, E. H., Bennett, N. J., Crowder, L. B., Finkbeiner, E. M., Hicks. C., Scarton, C. G., Nakamura, K., Ota, Y., Young, J., Alifano, A., Apel, A., Arbib, A. Bishop, L., Boyle, M., Cisneros-Montemayor, A. M., Hunter, P., Cornu, E. L., Levine, M., Jones, R. S., Koehn, Z., Marschke, M., Mason, J. G., Micheli, F., McClenachan, L., Opal, C., Peacey, J., Peckham, S. H., Schemmel, E., Solis-Rivera, V., Swartz, W., Wilhelm, T. A., 2017. Committing to socially responsible seafood. Science, 356(6341): 912-913.
  • Bennett, N. J., Teh, L., Ota, Y., Christie, P., Ayers, A., Day, J.C., Franks, P., Gill, D., Gruby, R. L., Kittinger, J. N., 2017, An appeal for a code of conduct for marine conservation. Marine Policy, 81: 411-418,
  • Swartz. W. Schiller, L. Sumaila, R. Ota. Y. (2017). Searching for market-based sustainability pathways: challenges and opportunities for Japan’s seafood eco-labels. Marine Policy.
  • Cisneros, A. Weatherdon, L. Pauly, D. Ota. Y. (2016). A Global Estimate of Seafood Consumption by Coastal Indigenous Peoples. PLOS ONE.
  • Cheung W., Jones M., Lam V., Miller D., Ota Y., Teh L., Sumaila U., 2016. Transform high seas management to build climate resilience in marine seafood supply.Fish and Fisheries.
  • Weatherdon L., Ota Y., Jones M., Close D., Cheung W., 2016. Projected Scenarios for Coastal First Nations’ Fisheries Catch Potential under Climate Change: Management Challenges and Opportunities. PLoS ONE.
  • Tanaka T., Ota Y., 2015. Reviving the Seto Inland Sea, Japan: Applying the Principles of Satoumi for Marine Ranching Project in Okayama. Marine Productivity: Perturbations and Resilience of Socio-ecosystems, pages 291-294.
  • Merrie, A.; Dunn, D.C.; Metian, M.; Boustany, A.M.; Takei, Y.; Elferink, A.O.; Ota, Y.; Christensen, V.; Halpin, P.N.; Österblom, H. (2014). "An ocean of surprises – Trends in human use, unexpected dynamics and governance challenges in areas beyond national jurisdiction". Global Environmental Change. 27: 19–31. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.04.012. hdl:1874/306748.
  • Hanich Q.A., Ota Y., 2013, Moving beyond rights-based management: a transparent approach to distributing the conservation burden and benefit in tuna fisheries. Humanities and the Arts - Papers, pages 135-170.
  • Österblom, H.; Merrie, A.; Metian, M.; Boonstra, W.J.; Blenckner, R.; Watson, J.R.; Rykaczewski, R.R.; Ota, Y.; Sarmiento, J.L.; Christensen, V.; Schlüter, M.; Birnbaum, S.; Gustavsson, B.G.; Humborg, C.; Mörth, C-M.; Müeller-Karulis, B.; Tomczak, M.T.; Troell, M.; Folke, C. (2013). "Modeling social-ecological scenarios in marine systems". BioScience. 63 (9): 735–744. doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.9.9.

References
  1. "People". Nereus Program. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  2. "CV". Yoshitaka Ota. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  3. "CV". Yoshitaka Ota. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  4. Weatherdon, Lauren; Ota, Yoshitaka; Jones, Miranda C.; Close, David A.; Cheung, William W.L. (13 January 2016). "Projected Scenarios for Coastal First Nations' Fisheries Catch Potential under Climate Change: Management Challenges and Opportunities". PLOS One. 11 (1): e0145285. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0145285. PMC 4711888. PMID 26761439.
  5. Slaughter, Graham (13 January 2016). "Net loss: First Nations fisheries threatened by climate change, study says". CTV News. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  6. "Climate change could cut First Nations fisheries' catch in half". 14 January 2016. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  7. Fears, Darryl (13 January 2016). "Scientists say climate change is threatening the lifeblood of Canada's native people". Washington Post. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  8. Iwamoto, Kentaro (3 November 2016). "Emptying seas, mounting tensions in fish-hungry Asia". Nikkei Asian Review (20161103 Small catch, big conflicts). Nikkei Inc. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  9. Cisneros-Montemayor, Andres; Pauly, Daniel; Weatherdon, Lauren; Yoshitaka, Ota (5 December 2016). "A Global Estimate of Seafood Consumption by Coastal Indigenous Peoples". PLOS One. 11 (12): e0166681. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166681. PMC 5137875. PMID 27918581.
  10. Fears, Darryl (2 December 2016). "Indigenous peoples of the world's coastlines are losing their fisheries — and their way of life". Washington Post. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
  11. "Coastal Indigenous people eat 15 times more seafood than non-Indigenous, study reveals". CBC News. 3 December 2016. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
  12. Ota, Yoshitaka; Cisneros-Montemayor, Andres (30 January 2017). "What Seafood Consumption Can Tell Us About Environmental Sustainability". Newsweek. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
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