Roger Fleming, Co-Founder And Attorney, Blue Planet Strategies

Roger is co-founder of Blue Planet Strategies and brings 20 years of experience as one of the nation’s leading ocean law attorneys and campaign strategists. Roger is a native New Yorker and graduated with honors from Ithaca College, Cornell University, and Vermont Law School. During his career he has worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Conservation Law Foundation, and taught Ocean and Coastal Law at the University of Maine School of Law. Most recently, he was an Attorney at Earthjustice where he was instrumental in re-establishing and expanding their Ocean Law Program. He has represented conservationists and fishermen in cases and campaigns that have resulted in protections for thousands of square miles of critical ocean habitat, the marine forage base, valuable commercial and recreational fish species, and historic fishing communities. Among the successful campaigns and cases he has helped lead the establishment of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the first annual catch limits for the New England groundfish fishery, the first ecosystem-based catch limits for Atlantic herring and menhaden, conservation-based reforms of the Maine aquaculture industry, measures to reopen the St. Croix River to river herring, and initiation of cases to protect the North Atlantic right whale.