The Sea Around Us Project is a Fisheries Centre partnership with the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, which started in July 1999 and is led by Daniel Pauly. The project is devoted to the study and documentation of the impact of fisheries on marine ecosystems, and to the identification and implementation of policies that will reduce this impact.

The project's name was prompted by Dr. Martha Piper, the President of UBC, who, at the launching of the then unnamed Sea Around Us Project, referred to Rachel Carson as a pioneer of marine conservation. Rachel Carson's third book, "The Sea Around Us" was first published in 1951. (A beautiful, 50 year commemorative edition, with a foreword by Carl Safina, is
available from Oxford University Press)