Fisheries Development Oversight Committee

Francisco Aldon has been CEO of MarinTrust since 2020. He is an active member of the various governing committees for the MarinTrust program, leading the development of the standards relevant to the production and further transformation of marine ingredients. Francisco is based in London, United Kingdom and has more than 15 years of professional experience in the food sector specifically in the production of marine ingredients such as fishmeal and fish oil. Graduated in Fisheries Engineering from UNALM, Peru with a Master of Science – Marine Ecology and Environmental Management from Queen Mary University of London. Frequent speaker at different international conferences on certification for responsible sourcing and production practices of marine ingredients as well as traceability in the aquaculture supply chain.

Francisco is also a member of the GDST Supervisory Board and a member of the Technical Committee for the development of the GSA Seafood Processing Standard.

Bradley Soule has been living or working on the sea throughout his life, with a professional focus on the conservation of fishery resources for future generations. He grew up on the shores of Chesapeake Bay in the U.S. sailing and doing volunteer outreach for conservation organizations. He took this marine interest into the U.S. Coast Guard where he served on a variety of ships, including as a captain, and specialized in fisheries compliance and management in waters from Alaska to Hawaii to supporting developing countries around the world. Bradley was INTERPOL’s first Criminal Intelligence Officer focused on fisheries crime, helping establish international intelligence operations and capacity building focused on compliance in fisheries. After leaving INTERPOL, Bradley brought his understanding of maritime risks and compliance to the organization that would become OceanMind, an organization he co-founded that is driving change through supporting governments as well as through the private sector by helping buyers to encourage transparent and legal supply chains.

Dr Emily McGregor is an environmental scientist with expertise in fisheries science and seafood certification.

Emily has a PhD from the University of Cape Town where she applied her research to support the implementation of ecosystem based fisheries management in South Africa's sardine fishery. Emily worked at the Marine Stewardship Council focussing on the implementation and revision of the MSC's fisheries standard. More recently Emily held the role of sustainability manager for a global aquaculture company where she developed an interest in improving aquaculture feed systems.

Emily takes a people-centered approach to solving complex problems, like fisheries management. She believes certification is an essential tool to help everyone to contribute to making a positive difference in our oceans.

Emily works at the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) as Fisheries Assessment Manager.

Jose Peiro Crespo is a marine biologist with more than 15 years of experience working in fisheries. During his career, he has worked as a fisheries observer, marine researcher, quality control auditor for aquaculture farms, EIA consultant for offshore windfarms, and fisheries and aquaculture consultant. He currently runs his own marine consultancy, Naunet Fisheries Consultants, where he has overall responsibility for the planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation of all the projects. Jose works for the fishing industry, NGOs, government bodies and other marine stakeholders conducting fisheries assessments, providing advice on the sustainable use of marine resources and developing initiatives to improve living conditions in coastal communities in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America.

Pedro is a fisheries scientist with over twenty years of experience working on fish population dynamics, recreational and commercial fisheries governance, and seafood sustainability standards. He currently heads the science, data and analysis programme of Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s (SFP) Monitoring and Evaluation Unit. SFP is a non for profit focused on engaging and catalyzing global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks globally and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming. In recent years, part of Pedro’s work has been focused on research and data analysis related to SFP’s Target 75 initiative, which aims at ensuring 75% of world production in key sectors is – at a minimum – either sustainable (i.e., certified by the MSC program, or green-listed in SFP’s Metrics tool) or making regular, verifiable improvements. Pedro is the project leader of the Fishery Improvement Projects Database (FIP-DB), which is maintained by the Hilborn lab at the University of Washington (UW) and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP). Pedro is also a permanent member of the ICES Working Group on Recreational Fisheries Surveys (WGRFS) and in the data committee of the Certifications and Ratings collaboration.

Sophie Des Clers is an independent scientific expert in fisheries management systems. She holds a PhD in Biometrics and an MSc in Public Policy, and has over 30 years' experience in the formulation, monitoring, and evaluation of fisheries and aquaculture projects to build management capacity in the public and the private sector. Sophie is trained in databases, applied statistics, population dynamics, economics, law and public policy. Her past research and consultancy projects have taken her to fishing ports around the EU, UK, Norway, Africa, the North Sea, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and the Caribbean.

Sophie is a qualified MSC auditor (v2.0) and member of the MSC peer review college. She also has delivered MSC auditors’ training workshops in French speaking countries. Since 1998, Sophie has been involved as Team lead or Team member in numerous MSC assessments and pre-assessments responsible for Principle 3 (Governance and management) including herring, blue whiting, sardine, cod, haddock, saithe, sole, lobster, shrimp and whelks, and tuna and billfish fisheries.

Søren Anker Pedersen is chief biologist at Marine Ingredients Denmark since 2015. He has a wide practical experience in marine ecology, covering more than 20 years of research in Greenland, Norwegian and Danish waters. His research includes zooplankton studies, recruitment processes for fish and shrimp, stock assessments of fish, shrimp and scallops, ecosystem modeling, as well as the effects of climate, ocean currents and fishing on the evolution of marine ecosystems. He was Professional Officer at ICES for 8 years e.g. as coordinator for the EMPAS project "Environmentally sound fisheries management in protected areas" and the ICES Training Programme. His Ph.D. thesis “Mortality on northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) and species interactions on the offshore West Greenland shrimp grounds” is from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1995.  

Executive Director and Founder of CeDePesca, Ernesto Godelman MSc is a former Technical Coordinator of the National Directorate of Fisheries in Argentina, former MSC representative for Latin America, and former SFP director for South and Central America. His current position helps to connect seafood supply chains interested in sustainable procurement, with fisheries improvement projects for industrial and small scale fisheries (FIPs). Ernesto is involved with 14 such projects around the world, and with improvements projects for marine ingredients fisheries such as Peruvian anchovy and Panama small pelagics.