The Humboldt Current along South America’s western coast has engendered very high biodiversity of fish, marine mammals, seabirds, and more. Extending from southern Chile to the Galápagos Islands off of Ecuador, this cold, nutrient-rich current also creates the conditions for the most productive fisheries in the world currently responsible for about 20% of seafood consumed worldwide.

 

Along Chile’s extensive 8,385 km-long coastline, due to mismanagement and illegal fishing, almost 60% of the nation’s fisheries are currently overexploited or collapsed. 

 

It is in this worrisome context that Costa Humboldt was founded in 2012 to conserve the biological and cultural biodiversity of Chile's coastal marine areas.

 

The non-profit organization seeks comprehensive and collaborative solutions to the economic, social and environmental challenges affecting the coast. Their work involves all sectors of society, from government to the private sector, but it is grounded principally in partnerships with local communities. For example, in Costa Humboldt’s work with indigenous communities in southern Chile, they provide tools and training on how to sustainably manage the places they have fished for generations. Yet, their projects also consider national and regional scales of the issues, taking aim at achieving resilient coastal marine ecosystems that are capable of hosting diverse lifestyles.

How do you achieve conservation and sustainable management of natural resources in harmony with the unique cultural attributes of different areas? That is the is overarching question that frames their work, which encompasses five main areas: fisheries, ecosystem management, coastal marine spatial-planning, climate change, and public policies and regulation.

During its 12 years of existence, among Costa Humboldt’s accomplishments are pioneering conservaiton program to protect the rocky reef fish, publishing dozens of scientific reports and papers, devising 8 management plans for Coastal and Marine Spaces of Indigenous People (ECMPO), and developing and affecting public policies at international and national levels.

“It is no longer possible to see our seas as a faithful and inexhaustible supplier of resources. That vision has changed drastically, mainly because of the strong and pronounced changes that the oceans are undergoing,” says Luciano Hiriart-Bertrand,  founder and CEO of Costa Humboldt, and a marine biologist with a masters degree from the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Costa Humboldt views marine ecosystems themselves as places of collaboration, capable of sustaining the existence of ancient forms of life and, at the same time, making room for the cultural and economic activities of the present era, and thus making possible a new equilibrium between natural and cultural systems.