Yoshitaka Ota is a social anthropologist, specializing in indigenous fisheries, climate change risk, global ocean governance, sustainable fishing business solutions, and coastal management and research communication.

He is currently employed as the Nereus Program Director (Policy)[1] and as a Research Assistant Professor for the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.

From 2005 to 2009, he was a research associate at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, working on several projects related to fisheries management.

[3] Since 2011, Ota has been director (policy) at the Nereus Program, an interdisciplinary ocean research initiative between the non-profit Nippon Foundation and the University of British Columbia.

In January 2016, a study[4] on the impacts of climate change on First Nations fisheries in British Columbia received significant media attention.