New Zealand fishing boats. Photo by QFSE Media, Wikimedia Commons.
Pelagic-oceanic fish commonly caught in warmer waters, such as skipjack tuna and blue mackerel, have been increasing in New Zealand’s waters since the 1950s, while cold-water species such as southern bluefin tuna display strong reductions in overall catch from the 1970s onwards, new research has found.
Prof. Dirk Zeller at St. Catherine’s College.
By Shannon Barrie – Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean
St. Catherine’s College, located adjacent to the University of Western Australia, recently organized a Faculty and Industry Dinner for their students and selected guests. The event brought together a diverse group of speakers, each possessing unique insights into nature conservation and environmental issues. Among the renowned speakers were John Curtin Distinguished Professor Kingsley Dixon, as well as experts from government, industry and civil society. Adding to the speaking roster was Professor Dirk Zeller, the Director of the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean.
Swirling school of anchovies. Photo by Cliff, Wikimedia Commons.
Over 120 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent could be sequestered every year by 2050 by applying a market-based solution (MBS) to global fisheries that would allow fishers to decide whether – at certain times – it is more profitable to go fish or to remain at port.
Whiting is among the demersal fish found in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean. Photo by Borut Furlan, taken from the website of our sister project FishBase.
Fish that live on or near the seafloor -known as demersal or groundfish- barely feel the impact of marine heatwaves, according to new research that highlights the need to keep seas from warming further.
Mimic surgeonfish. Reference photo by Rickard Zerpe, Wikimedia Commons.
The world’s waterbodies are filled with predatory fish feeding on other animals from zooplankton to squid and other fish, while “vegetarian” or herbivore fish are rare, new research has found.
Fishermen in Belize. Reference photo by Laslovarga, Wikimedia Commons.
The most commercially important marine species in Belize show signs of overexploitation, according to a recent report co-authored by members of the Sea Around Us.
In over 30 years of continuous operation and development, FishBase has become one of the largest and most extensively accessed online public resources in the history of scientific research. A new study reveals it is also one of the most highly cited databases.
Reference image of dead fish washed ashore during a golden algae toxic bloom. Photo by Michael Hooper, USGS.
Climate change-induced droughts and fish kills affect larger fish more severely than smaller individuals, according to new research.
In a paper published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from Leiden University, Sportvisserij Zuidwest Nederland and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia compared evidence from drought-induced fish kills in the Netherlands, fisheries management literature and multiple physiological studies. They confirmed that when water gets warmer and deoxygenated, larger and older individuals within a species tend to die in greater numbers than their smaller and younger counterparts.
Africa Museum in Tervuren. Photo by Jean Housen, Wikimedia Commons.
The Sea Around Us partner, FishBase, is the largest global information system on fishes. It provides encyclopaedical information on all described fishes and includes many tools for scientists in a large array of ichthyological disciplines. With about 700,000 visits per month, it is the most successful database on any group of living organisms.
SeaLifeBase complements the success of FishBase and has become an important platform for information on non-fish marine organisms.
Small-scale fisheries catches in Socotra, an archipelago that belongs to Yemen and is located off the north-eastern tip of Africa in the western Indian Ocean, reached an all-time high of 12,000 tonnes in 2000, declined to about 3,300 tonnes by 2014 and then slightly increased to 3,700 tonnes by 2019.
Black and white snapper in the Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Derek Keats, Wikimedia Commons
Warmer water than that to which a fish is used to becomes an aggressor of sorts that impacts internal biochemical processes and forces the fish to stop growing at a smaller size than it would normally do in optimal habitat conditions, new research shows.
Since 1999, the Sea Around Us – under the leadership of Dr. Daniel Pauly – has been the purveyor of fisheries catch data and associated indicators that have allowed researchers, NGOs, government agencies, and intergovernmental organizations, among others, to conduct a variety of studies that support efforts to protect our global ocean and the marine biodiversity that lives within it.
To celebrate World Oceans Day 2023, we prepared a short, guided tour through our database to help you quickly familiarize yourself with its main features.
Sardines at the Rameswaram fishing port in India. Image by Rudolph A. Furtado, Wikimedia Commons
Indian Ocean marine fisheries catches have been consistently rising since the 1950s, a recent study by researchers with the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean initiative at the University of Western Australia shows. This contrasts with global trends.
University of Crete Heraklion Campus. Image by the University of Crete.
The University of Crete announced that the Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, has been granted an honorary doctorate from the Department of Biology, School of Applied Sciences and Technology.
Atlantic horse mackerel. Photo by Kulac, Wikimedia Commons.
Contrary to what is stated in biology textbooks, the growth of fish doesn’t slow down when and because they start spawning. In fact, their growth accelerates after they reproduce, according to a new article published in Science.
Yellowfin tuna fishing in Seychelles. Photo by Joe Laurence, Seychelles News Agency, Wikimedia Commons.
Researchers at the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean, based at the University of Western Australia, are urging the European Union to fully support the ban on drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs) in the Indian Ocean tuna fisheries declared by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) on February 5th, 2023.
The Sea Around Us, together with the French Embassy in Canada, the University of Montpellier, FRB-CESAB: Centre de Synthèse et d’Analyse sur la Biodiversité and Rutgers University, is hosting the conference Fish biodiversity facing global change.
The event, which will take place on April 6, 2023, from 2-3 pm, at the University of British Columbia’s Michael Smith Labs Theatre, will present activities of the FISHGLOB consortium which has collected and combined a unique data set of scientific bottom trawl surveys conducted regularly during the last decades across the planet.
Los Roques National Park in Venezuela. Photo by …your local connection, Flickr.
A new Paper Park Index (PPI) developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Sea Around Us initiative helped identify 49 marine protected areas (MPAs) across the world where enough fishing takes place to contravene the protection status officially assigned to such sites.
Three leading environmental thinkers discuss the global fight for ocean justice, in a world grappling with the impacts of overfishing and climate change. They will also discuss the Tyler Prize Laureates‘ call to end fishing on the high seas – as well as reflect on the Tyler Prize, which is this year celebrating its 50th Anniversary.
Join us for this special in-person and online conversation at the University of Southern California (USC) – home of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumaila. Photo by Kim Bellavance.
The 2023 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, often described as the ‘Nobel Prize for the Environment’, has been awarded to two courageous Canadian ocean fisheries experts: ecologist Daniel Pauly and economist Rashid Sumaila.
What is the difference between marine protected areas that actually work and paper parks?
With the premise in mind, the Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, offered a keynote presentation at the Fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5), held in Vancouver from February 3 to February 9, 2023.
Daniel Pauly presenting before the European Parliament, January 24, 2023. Photo by Anton Kuech, Twitter
The Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, and Project Manager, Dr. Maria ‘Deng’ Palomares, participated in a session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries on January 24, 2023, to answer questions related to the report Role and impact of China on world fisheries and aquaculture.
Bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas). Photo by amanderson2, Wikimedia Commons
Nearly two-thirds of coral reef shark and ray species worldwide are threatened with extinction, a new study in Nature Communications co-authored by the Sea Around Us’ Maria ‘Deng’ Palomares shows.
Photo by Keith Holmes | Hakai Institute.
The Sea Around Us is pleased to be a co-organizer of the event Braiding Knowledge Systems for Transforming Governance, taking place in Downtown Vancouver on February 2, 2023, just one day before the start of the Fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5).
Mekong giant catfish. Photo by Tambe, Wikimedia Commons.
The Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, and research assistant Elaine Chu are the editors of a recent edition of the Fisheries Centre Research Reports titled “Marine and Freshwater Miscellanea IV.”
Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Photo by Ian Gratton, Flickr.
Cybium, the International Journal of Ichthyology, recently dedicated a full issue to the aquatic biodiversity and fisheries of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (SPM), the last French territory in North America, located south-east of Newfoundland, and whose Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is completely surrounded by the EEZ of Eastern Canada.
IMPAC5 keynote speakers Hinano Teavai-Murphy, Ruth Mthembu, and Daniel Pauly.
The Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, is among the speakers that will be giving keynote presentations at the Fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5) being held in Vancouver, Canada on February 3-9, 2023.
Following a recent meeting in Toulouse, the EcoScope Project coordinator, Athanassios Tsikliras of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, visited Vancouver in mid-November with the goal of strengthening the collaboration between the project and its UBC partners.
EcoScope is an initiative that aims to promote an effective and efficient, ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management.
The Sea Around Us is pleased to announce that the marine fisheries catch data and derived indicators on its database have been updated to the year 2019.
After months of intensive work, we can now proudly say that time series with 70 years’ worth of data (1950-2019) are available for free viewing or downloading on www.seaaroundus.org.
Tilapia in a fish farm. Photo by Aqua Mechanical, Flickr.
Trends in global aquaculture growth rates reveal that the 101 million tonnes of farmed fish intergovernmental bodies expect countries to produce by 2030 may be unrealistic.
Continue reading
Black Snapper (or black and white snapper), Macolor niger at Gota Sorayer, Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Derek Keats, Wikimedia Commons.
In a recent piece published in the journal PLOS Biology, the Sea Around Us alumna and NYU professor Jennifer Jacquet, and our principal investigator, Daniel Pauly, ponder the idea of wild fish and invertebrates being considered more like wild animals and less like tradable commodities.
Sockeye salmon in the Adams River 2022. Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud.
On October 16, 2022, most of the Sea Around Us team travelled to Salmon Arm, in south-central British Columbia, to witness spawning sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) in the Adams River.
Penang Hill vampire crab (Geosesarma faustum). Photo by Alex Tilley.
By Daniel Pauly
In early September 2022, I found myself on the island of Penang, Malaysia, where WorldFish, an international research center focusing on tropical fish culture, is headquartered. WorldFish is the new name of the International Centre for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), previously located in Manila, the Philippines, of which I was a staff member from 1979 to 1994, and a consultant for five more years. The occasion was the annual meeting of the FishBase Consortium, whose members ensure that FishBase and related databases and products remain up to date and relevant to multiple constituencies worldwide.
Veronica Relano.
The Sea Around Us PhD candidate Veronica Relano is among the 10 members of the University of British Columbia’s delegation travelling to Egypt to attend the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27).
Knowledge provided by local stakeholders such as non-governmental organizations, academics, civil servants, journalists, and fishers can be valuable for evaluating the effectiveness of countries’ marine protected areas (MPAs).
A crucial globally agreed framework to protect the world’s oceans and fisheries is on course to fail, according to a new study led by the University of Portsmouth with collaborators from the Sea Around Us initiative and DIATOM Consulting.
Trilobites- extinct marine arthropods that roamed the world’s oceans from about 520 million years ago until they went extinct 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period – may have grown in a similar fashion and reached ages that match those of extant crustaceans, a new study has found.
Lake whitefish. Photo by Marco Verch, Flickr.
A physiological explanation and an evolutionary explanation related to the moment fish become sexually active – and spawn for the first time – have turned out to be two sides of the same coin, new research has found.
Sea Around Us data users interested in learning how to perform stock assessments using the CMSY methodology now have access to a suite of free video tutorials.
On June 9, 2022, in the midst of what is known now as World Oceans Week, the Sea Around Us hosted a successful event to present The Ocean’s Whistleblower, the English version of Dr. Daniel Pauly’s biography – initially released in French under the title Daniel Pauly : un océan de combats.
A Chinese version of Gasping Fish and Panting Squids: Oxygen, Temperature and the Growth of Water-Breathing Animals, the book where Dr. Daniel Pauly develops his Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT), is now available to readers worldwide.
New research has pinpointed four high-traffic areas in the Pacific Ocean that should be considered of high priority if conservation efforts focused on large pelagic fishes such as tuna, blue marlin and swordfish are to be successful.
A few years ago, while waiting for a connecting flight at Houston Airport, the Sea Around Us PI Daniel Pauly challenged Simon Fraser University resource & environmental management professor Anne Salomon to put clam gardens in a global context by mapping them along with similar Indigenous maricultural innovations around the world.
Research produced by current and past members of the Sea Around Us has been included in what
is being described as “a definitive volume on large marine ecosystems.”
The book, titled Ocean
sustainability: Assessing and managing the world’s large marine ecosystems,
presents best assessment and management practices based on examples from 37
years of published peer-reviewed papers on large marine ecosystems or LMEs.
Common seadragon. Photo by Melanie Warren.
Despite their odd shape, which makes them resemble a tuft of seaweed, common and leafy seadragons grow in the same fashion as other bony fish, new research has found.
The inconspicuous sea sponges are Earth’s oldest multicellular animals and have filtered the oceans for nearly 900 million years, long before the first plants appeared on land. New research appearing in the journal Fisheries Bulletin, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, indicates that their growth depends on their oxygen supply in a manner similar to more complex animals such as fish.
A view from the north on the Marine Protected Area of Capo Carbonara and the island of Cavoli in Sardinia, Italy. Photo by dronepicr, Flickr.
Conserving marine biodiversity, avoiding species extinction and maintaining food security from wild capture fisheries can all be achieved simultaneously if a global, non-regionalized approach to marine spatial management is undertaken by the signatories of IUCN Resolution 50, which calls for the protection of 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030.
Silver-cheeked
toadfish Lagocephalus
sceleratus, a poisonous invasive
species thriving in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea since the mid-2000s after it
crossed the Suez Canal from the Red Sea, is now reaching monstrous sizes around
the Greek islands near the Turkish coast.
By Daniel Pauly.
Jeffrey Hutchings, a friend, colleague and mentor to many at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, passed away in late January 2022 at 63 years of age. His eulogy in the Globe and Mail emphasized that he “firmly believed in the value of ensuring that public-policy decisions are guided by unbiased research.”[1]
Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is among the fish species maturing and spawning earlier in the “spring” reproductive season, due to higher water temperature. Photo by GRID-Arendal, Flickr.
Fisheries managers and researchers may now predict how early fish will spawn in response to warming waters due to climate change, both in the oceans and in freshwaters.
A consistent metabolic ratio found across 133 Chinese marine and freshwater fish species provides new evidence in support of the idea that fish become sexually active – and spawn for the first time – in response to growth-induced respiratory stress.
