Name

Richard Lilley

Location

Cardiff, UK

What was your ‘eureka’ moment for getting into sustainability?

Prior to returning to full time education I was working as a PADI Divemaster in Thailand. Here I witnessed first-hand the destruction of coastal ecosystems and the chronic overfishing that was occurring in the region. I felt I needed to better understand what was driving this exploitation and therefore enrolled on a Tropical Marine Ecology course at Stockholm University. It was here that I was first introduced to seagrass ecosystems (the overlooked cousins of mangrove forests and coral reefs) and their role in East-African fisheries. Wanting to engage with these ecosystems further I undertook a MRes at Swansea University in 2011-2012 researching North Atlantic seagrass meadows as a nursery habitat and subsequently an MSc at Cardiff University in 2012-2013 where I considered Caribbean seagrass ecosystems contribution to fisheries. Since October 2013 I have been undertaking a PhD considering seagrass ecosystems in Mediterranean Sea and their role in food security provision.

What have you been doing on sustainability since?

Currently I am writing up my PhD, which I hope will be used to help inform small-scale fisheries management. At the same time I am expanding Project Seagrass (a charity I co-founded in 2013 with my academic supervisor and a fellow student) to work in Scotland where we are also applying for charitable status. We have had much success in Wales, with a permanent citizen-science monitoring project underway at Porthdinllaen in north Wales and several outreach activities with school and university student groups interested in marine ecology. We were voted one of the Top 5 ITV ‘Peoples Projects’ in Wales.

What’s your vision for reaching a sustainable future?

In the marine realm, the three biggest obstacles we have to overcome are without doubt overfishing, climate change, and marine pollution. My own personal work is linked to overfishing and so I can only really speak with any authority on that subject. Currently only 69% of marine fisheries are biologically sustainable, which is down from 90% in 1974, and some regions are doing much worse than others, for instance the Mediterranean and Black Sea in 59% overfished. These are the trends that need to change if we are going to ensure food security for all people in all places.

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