Senior Policy Advisor

Steven Adolf is a Dutch economist and researcher with an Incurable passion for the ocean (thalassophile), specialized on governance and management policies of sustainable fisheries and protecting the ocean biodiversity. He works as a senior consultant for Accountability.Fish on projects around reforming regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) and the of the High Seas Treaty (BBNJ). He is a publisher and a writer. His latest book ‘Tuna Wars. Powers around the fish we love to conserve” (2019 Springer Nature) describes the history of industrial tuna fisheries from antiquity to modern economic battles around sustainability. He has a deep knowledge and experience in sustainable fishery management, governance and matters of eco-labelling, on international fishery and environmental ocean policies, and on global value chains. He lives in between Amsterdam in The Netherlands and the Andalucian coast of Cádiz where the bluefin tuna population is still caught by the millennia old traditional tuna-fisheries with trap nets (almadraba). This fishery is still flourishing thanks to management that saved the population from total collapse, living proof that we can guide a fish away from the tragedy of the commons.