“You’ll know,” says Kydd Pollock, fisheries science manager for The Nature Conservancy and research leader for the Fishing for Science program at Palmyra Atoll.He had substantial experience with a form of hand line: He tagged more than 2,500 sharks at Palmyra using the method.

On the next Fishing for Science trip in February of this year, a scientific angler caught a bluefin trevally that had been tagged on February 6, 2020, at liberty for 753 days.Giant trevally caught and tagged on a Fishing for Science trip in February 2022.

© Kydd Pollock / TNC My fishing partner, Kawika Auld, a master angler from Hawaii, is already by the side of the boat, gloves on and ready to go.After 10 days, we had tagged more than 240 trevally, more than any previous Fishing for Science trip.

I recently had a chance to check in with two of the authors, Steve Wood and Jon Fisher, environmental scientists with The Nature Conservancy and The Pew Charitable Trusts, respectively, for a wide-ranging discussion on the challenges of turning science into practice and why their paper is more timely than ever – especially as scientists struggle to help inform meaningful change in a world facing increasingly urgent challenges.