Hi, My name is Judith Guzman. I am a 19-year-old freshman majoring in Spanish and psychology. I love fashion, journaling, and love the aspect of gaining perspective. I live in Boston Massachusetts and my parents come from the Dominican Republic. When I think of sustainability I think of managing and supporting to sustain something. Sustainability has three branches; environmental, economic, and social. I went abroad my sophomore year of high school to Eleuthera, Bahamas. On that trip abroad I learned a lot about sustainability. One of the common themes was trying to enforce sustainable fishing practices. I learned the importance of all three branches. For example, when trying to create sustainability in Bahamian fisheries fishermen economically rely on the fish they catch for a living. socially and culturally, aquatic organisms like conch and grouper are incorporated into many food dishes. Environmentally, the overfishing of the ocean commons has caused a decrease in population, and organisms need to be given time to recover. Nonetheless, another factor that influenced sustainable fisheries is climate change. I remember researching with my peers at the Island School conch. We were studying how ocean acidification affects the populations of conch and the development of conch shells. This ocean acidification was caused by anthropogenic climate change, with humans releasing CO2 into the atmosphere and the ocean absorbing this CO2 and becoming more acidic. This makes fisheries less sustainable because there are fewer conch to be collected and can lead to population decline and endangerment.
