I assume I’m not saying anything new around the fact that this has been a very crazy year… that affected everything in my professional and personal life… not as much as on what I do, but also on how I do my job.
a computer based consultant with a outdoor routine
Let’s start by being clear that I’m well, I’m healthy… which is an incredible privilege, as I personally knew quite a few fisheries colleagues outside the Pacific that are not alive anymore.
Personally, I’m incredibly thankful to my clients since I found my self with way more work than I ever expected for someone that is normally involved in operational projects... and this is soo good...
At the moment I’m working on:
An FAO study on the identification Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) and Key Data Elements (KDEs) along the seafood value chain (for both wild capture and aquaculture)
An FAO study on Current technologies for recording information on-board deep-sea fishing vessels
The 2020 update of the FFA IUU quantification study with MRAG
Writing an Inspection manual for officers in west African flag states
Continuing with my role as Offshore Fisheries Advisor for MIMRA (RMI)
Providing technical support to PEW and Stanford University
A transparency enhancement projects with WWF and a major NZ fishing company
Support to FFA on PSM, CDS and IUU NPOAs
A contract with UNPD supporting the potential creation of Joint Management Area in the Indian Ocean
Plus 3 proposals for different jobs on the social side of fishing that are on the pipeline
Working from home, sitting in front of a computer with innumerable zoom calls and writing technical documents… is not what I normally do (nor what I do best). Normally my work plan is calendar-based: 20 days in some country, a couple of weeks home, 1 month on another country, home… and so on… not 10 jobs at once, doing small bits every day.
So I really miss my old reality... my personal and professional life are every intertwined, so my present life with its routine it gets repetitive and lonely sometimes.
Last time I was out of NZ was in February... so these 8 months have been my longest period at home in the last 20 years! And the longest I have not been on a fishing boat since I was 18 years old!!!
On the other side... it was very useful to reset things at home with my family, have my veggie garden very productive, and furthermore, my running, swimming, surfing and cycling distance logging has been excellent!
So yeah… but I’m very conscious on how privileged I am, and that as many in rich countries I can afford to evaluate about how COVID has impacted our lives, yet for an immense (and mostly invisible to us) majority of people in the world, shitty or no jobs and hunger was, is and will continue to be their only reality.
And on that note, I salute with my full respect my colleagues at the World Food Programme for their totally deserved recognition with the Nobel price