From climate change and melting ice caps to islands of floating garbage, we are increasingly fouling the world’s oceans, once the perfectly, chemically, thermally balanced womb of all earthly life.

The oceans are the world’s largest ecosystem, home to 80% of the planet’s biodiversity, almost 80% of the world’s marine fish stocks are now fully exploited, overexploited or depleted, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Join CIC Halifax June 5 – to hear from two local experts – Fred Kingston, Executive Director of the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, and Katie Schleit, Senior Fisheries Advisor with Oceans North – about the challenges and the responses to this critical issue.

Fred Kingston will provide an update on negotiations underway now in the United Nations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to address the protection of biodiversity in the high seas.

Katie Schleit will address ocean conservation and sustainable management.

Register by emailing pbennett@ns.sympatico.ca

Speaker’s Biography

FRED KINGSTON is Executive Secretary of the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO).

Since January 2014, Fred has served as the chief administrative officer for the NAFO and representative in the international arena. Fred is a Canadian who had worked for the European Commission for over 25 years at the EU Delegation in Ottawa Canada. His responsibilities at the Delegation included trade, agriculture, food safety and fisheries. He has also been involved with NAFO for many years, participating as a delegate from the EU. and serving as Chair of NAFO’s Committee on Finance and Administration for 10 years (1998 to 2007). Fred is a lawyer, qualified to practice law in Canada (Ontario). He has a BA from the University of Toronto (Trinity College) and an LL.B. from the University of Windsor. He also has a graduate degree in international and comparative law (LL.M. (Magna Cum Laude)) from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium and a graduate diploma in European law from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

KATIE SCHLEIT is Senior Fisheries Advisor with Oceans North. Halifax, NS. With expertise in fisheries management and policy, Katie Schleit focuses on rebuilding fish populations while considering the needs of people and the ecosystem. Katie has worked in the NGO and public sector for over a decade, collaborating with government, fishermen, scientists and the public on ocean conservation and sustainable management. Before joining Oceans North, she led marine campaigns at the Ecology Action Centre and previously worked at the Pew Charitable Trusts and U.S. Peace Corps. She holds a master’s degree in marine affairs from the University of Washington where her research included working with a community in the Philippines to develop a marine protected area network management plan. She is based in the Halifax office.