Email:
rod [at] consult-poseidon [dot] com
Rod Cappell
Director
Rod Cappell is a Director of Poseidon with over 30 years of experience providing strategic, technical and economic advisory services across the fisheries, aquaculture and blue economy sectors. Rod holds a BSc in Marine Biology from the University of Liverpool, an MSc in Marine Resource Development from Heriot-Watt and a Post-Graduate Qualification in Applied Environmental Economics from Imperial College London. His work spans policy development, programme evaluation, sustainability assessments and investment appraisal for public institutions, international organisations, NGOs and private sector clients.
Rod has led multidisciplinary teams on complex assignments addressing sustainable fisheries management, marine spatial planning, seafood value chains, and the transition to low-carbon and circular production systems. His has extensive experience working with European institutions, national governments and international agencies, contributing to flagship initiatives such as the EU Blue Economy Observatory and major evaluations of fisheries and maritime funding programmes. Further afield, Rod has supported sustainable resource management and sector development projects across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.
Rod chairs AquacultureNI, the representative body for Northern Ireland’s aquaculture producers. He is also a certified Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Team Leader and Management Systems Auditor, with long-standing experience supporting fishery sustainability assessments and Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs). His technical strengths lie in combining economic analysis with environmental and governance perspectives to deliver practical, evidence-based advice for policy makers and industry stakeholders.
Rod’s work has included:
Ireland: Climate Action in Fishing. Modelling the impact of fuel efficiency and decarbonisation measures across the Irish fishing fleet (BIM, 2026).
UK: Human Rights Impact Assessments and Action Plans for the UK Nephrops & Scallop Supply Chains. Identification of the salient risks of the two fisheries utilising stakeholder engagement and desk-based research, combined with evaluation of the likelihood of said risks, and their potential mitigations (Seafish, 2025 - 2026).
UK: Assessment of UK Industry Practices and scale of Decapod and Cephalopod Supply Chains. Investigation into the UK live supply chains of decapods and cephalopods, as well as supported the development of a conversion metric to enable approximate quantification of the number of animals traded live (Defra, 2025 - 2026).
EU: Assessing the Impact of Seafood Imports on EU Self-sufficiency (European Parliament, 2025).
Vietnam: Managing plastic waste streams from shrimp farms (GIZ, DE, 2025).
Ireland: Design of Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for fishing gear (Eunomia/DECC, 2024).
UK: Social Research on Fisher Perspectives on ALDFG (Defra, 2024).
EU: Horizontal Evaluation of EU Sustainable Fishery Partnership Agreements with third countries (DG MARE, 2021).