New Zealand Fishing Boats

Overfishing and climate change impacts on New Zealand’s fish populations were hidden – until now

New Zealand Fishing Boats

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.

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Prof. Dirk Zeller at St. Catherine's College.

Empowering future leaders and exploring nature conservation at St. Catherine’s College

Prof. Dirk Zeller at St. Catherine's College.

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.

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Whiting atop a jellyfish. Whiting is among the demersal fish found in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean.

Groundfish barely feel the impact of marine heatwaves – showing there’s still time to act on climate change

Whiting atop a jellyfish. Whiting is among the demersal fish found in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean.

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.

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Dead Fish Washed Ashore during Golden Alga Toxic Bloom

Large fish more vulnerable to climate change-induced fish kills

Dead Fish Washed Ashore during Golden Alga Toxic Bloom

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.

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Africa Museum in Tervuren

International FishBase and SeaLifeBase Symposium – 2023

Africa Museum in Tervuren

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.

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Marina World Oceans Day

Explore the Sea Around Us database – in two minutes

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.

Yellowfin tuna fishing Seychelles

Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean researchers urge the EU to support ban on drifting fish aggregating devices

Yellowfin tuna fishing Seychelles

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.

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FISHGLOB consortium members at UBC on April 3, 2023.

Fish biodiversity facing global change – Sea Around Us co-organizes FISHGLOB conference

Fish biodiversity facing global change – Sea Around Us co-organizes FISHGLOB conference

 

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.

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Crystalline waters in Los Roques National Park in Venezuela

Paper Park Index helps identify 49 unprotected marine protected areas

Crystalline waters in Los Roques National Park in Venezuela

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.

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Event - Vanishing Fish The Fight for Global Ocean Justice

Event – Vanishing Fish: The Fight for Global Ocean Justice

Event - Vanishing Fish The Fight for Global Ocean Justice

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.

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Daniel Pauly presenting before the European Parliament, January 24, 2023

Sea Around Us presents report findings at the European Parliament

Daniel Pauly presenting before the European Parliament, January 24, 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.

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Saint Pierre et Miquelon

Researchers push for Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to embrace the sea once again

Saint Pierre et Miquelon

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.

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Deng Palomares and Athanassios Tsikliras in Vancouver 2022

EcoScope coordinator visits the Sea Around Us at UBC


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.

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Black Snapper (or black and white snapper), Macolor niger at Gota Sorayer, Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Derek Keats, Wikimedia Commons.

What if we stopped thinking of fish as commodities?

Black Snapper (or black and white snapper), Macolor niger at Gota Sorayer, Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Derek Keats, Wikimedia Commons.

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.

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Penang Hill vampire crab

A fisheries scientist in Penang, Malaysia

Penang Hill vampire crab

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.

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Local stakeholder involvement key to understanding protection level of MPAs

Local stakeholder involvement key to understanding protection level of MPAs

Local stakeholder involvement key to understanding protection level of MPAs
Red pencil urchin at the Papahānaumokuākea MPA. Photo by James Watt, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service – Pacific Region, Wikimedia Commons.

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).

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Trilobites’ growth may have resembled that of modern marine crustaceans

Trilobites’ growth may have resembled that of modern marine crustaceans

Trilobites’ growth may have resembled that of modern marine crustaceans

A Triarthrus eatoni trilobite, 11 mm long, found in the Frankfort Shale, New York, USA. Photo by Dwergenpaartje, Wikimedia Commons.

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.

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New sea garden story map showcases Indigenous mariculture practices across the Pacific

New sea garden story map showcases Indigenous mariculture practices across the Pacific

New sea garden story map showcases Indigenous mariculture practices across the Pacific

Clam garden in the Broughton Archipelago, British Columbia, Canada. Photo by John Harper, courtesy of Simon Fraser University.

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.

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Turquoise water Arabian Sea diving spot

Sea Around Us research included in ‘definitive volume on large marine ecosystems’

Turquoise water Arabian Sea diving spot
Arabian Sea. Photo by Naveen Gollapalli, Wikimedia Commons.

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.


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Sea sponges need oxygen, as fish and people do

Sea sponges need oxygen, as fish and people do

Sea sponges need oxygen, as fish and people do

Wool sponge. Photo by Mark Butler.

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.

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Protecting 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030 would barely impact fisheries

Protecting 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030 would barely impact fisheries

Protecting 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030 would barely impact fisheries

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.

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JAHutchings_Jan_2017 (1)

Jeffrey Hutchings


Jeffrey Hutchings. Photo by Alexfern, Wikimedia Commons.

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]


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