Swimming, water polo, surfing, and sailing are what Kieran Kelleher has in mind for leisure pursuit. Marketing, management, control and surveillance of the marine fisheries environment, meanwhile, are what he does for a living.

Drawn to the sea, Kelleher – currently a World Bank fisheries expert – is a marine nomad who has worked in some 60 countries on many regional and global marine fisheries initiatives.

He took up biology, specializing in fish physiology and diseases, at University College Cork in Ireland. After some years of fisheries research on oysters and pike, he took up his MBA at Trinity College, Dublin.

Kelleher then pursued commercial fishing and worked as a diver off the west coast of Ireland before becoming a United Nations volunteer in the Central African Republic, where he worked on village fish farming.

“The economic importance of fisheries is substantially underestimated,” Kelleher argued. “GDP (gross domestic product) values consider only the harvesting of fish, but for each job in harvesting there are another two jobs in processing and distribution. The final sale value of the fish may be more than five times the value at first sale.”

Fast forward to a few years later, Kelleher served as Papua New Guinea’s chief economic adviser on fisheries for seven years working on foreign fishing agreements, traditional fishing rights, the economics of the key fisheries and international fisheries treaties.

He then spent the next several years in the Horn of Africa where he managed a fishermen’s cooperative and became a fisheries economic adviser in Mozambique for five years.

“Small-scale fisheries is not only an economic activity but a valuable way of life,” Kelleher said. “However it has to adapt to modern realities while retaining the best of the past … the cultural and spiritual values (that) can support responsible fisheries and stewardship of the natural resources.”

In 1995, he returned to Irish shores as an independent fisheries consultant for governments, international agencies and the private sector in both developed and developing countries.

“I left my career as a consultant to joint the World Bank in 2005,” Kelleher said.

“I am the voice of the Bank on fisheries matters,” Kelleher said. “I advise many of the Bank’s team leaders on the fisheries components of their programs.”

He is currently in charge of the global lender’s Global Program on Fisheries (PROFISH), which aims to integrate sustainable fisheries into the bank’s lending policies.

“Our focus will be on the social, political and economic dimensions of fisheries governance, rather than on the fish and the ecosystems,” Kelleher said of the bank’s fisheries initiatives. “Transparency and equity in the allocation of access to fish resources will be high on our agenda.”

With the growing threats of climate change, overfishing and bureaucratic resistance to reform, marine fisheries remains one of the most threatened human life support systems.

“The crisis in fisheries is not restricted to developing countries – the fisheries of some developed countries are severely depleted, subsidies commonly support overfishing and fleet overcapacity while trade issues, illegal fishing and foreign fishing agreements involve countries at both ends of the development spectrum,” he said.

It seems like Kelleher won’t be retreating to a cruise anytime soon.