Developing countries that are dependent on fisheries for food and livelihoods may be the hardest hit, while many developed countries could see revenue increases. Image: Tuna for sale at Auki market, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands. Photo by Filip Milovac., WorldFish, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The following is work being done by Sea Around Us partners the Nereus Program and OceanCanada

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Global fisheries stand to lose approximately $10 billion of their annual revenue by 2050 if climate change continues unchecked, and countries that are most dependent on fisheries for food will be the hardest hit, finds new UBC research. Continue reading →

Here we look back at a paper published in the summer of 2015:

By: The PEW Charitable Trusts

Tourist fishing is big business in The Bahamas, but exactly how big was not known until now.

Scientists with the Sea Around Us— a scientific initiative at the University of British Columbia supported by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts—conducted a catch reconstruction, reviewing a range of data sources to estimate unreported catch. They found that recreational anglers landed about 8,000 metric tons a year over the past 60 years—approximately half of all fish caught in the country. This more accurate estimate may allow the government to better protect the local food supply.

“We depend heavily on tourism, but it can be a double-edged sword,” says Nicola Smith, a marine ecologist from Nassau and a doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “You could get into serious ethical issues if the majority of the natural resource needed for sustenance is diverted for tourism and not being closely monitored.”

In The Bahamas, no one is keeping regular count of all the fish that tourists catch at sea or eat in restaurants. The government tracks only large-scale commercial catch, a common practice in many countries because commercial fishing is often considered more important to the local and national economies and because small-scale operations can be difficult to monitor. This limitation largely excludes categories such as artisanal, recreational, subsistence, and illegal fishing, as well as discards—fish that are caught and thrown away—and masks the true extent of fishing worldwide.

“The government is not systematically counting any of it, despite its importance for tourism,” Smith says. “The legislation to monitor and regulate recreational fishing has lagged behind the advertising.”

As the lead author of the Sea Around Us study, co-authored by Dirk Zeller of UBC, Smith is looking at the bigger picture. Her analysis worked to “reconstruct” the catch by all fisheries sectors in The Bahamas from 1950 through 2010 as part of a global project focused on identifying total fish catch, including previously uncounted data from many countries and spanning several decades.

Catch reconstruction is based on the idea that some catch information exists outside official fishery statistics and that it can be pulled together to produce a more complete picture of the catch. In the case of The Bahamas, Smith estimated catch by subsistence fishers using population data and a conservative assumption of per-capita consumption. She estimated how much fish the tourists were landing by combining catch limits with data from government tourism surveys.

Another category of catch proved especially difficult to estimate: small-scale commercial fishing. Fishermen in this sector sell much of their catch directly to restaurants rather than to processing plants, which are monitored by the government. Smith interviewed fishers and hotel purchasing managers and found that it was common for artisanal fishers to moor at a dock to sell fish directly to a hotel restaurant. It remains unclear what proportion of the country’s entire catch can be attributed to this practice. For this study, the researchers conducted a survey to estimate per-visitor fish consumption, then calculated total catch using hotel room occupancy data.

An exciting symposium will take place this fall looking at the health of Canadian fisheries.

Oceana Canada is hosting a science symposium in Ottawa on October 26, 2016, titled Rebuilding Abundance: Restoring Canada’s Fisheries for Long-Term Prosperity.

At the event Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us, Daniel Pauly, will be giving the keynote address. He believes Oceana can play a central role in helping Canada maintain sustainable fisheries.

“Oceana has helped other countries rebuild their stocks,” said Pauly. “And they have an excellent record of making fisheries data more transparent and available to the public,” he added.

Canada is making more money from its seafood industry than ever before, but it depends on a small number of stocks. There is growing evidence that with the right policy, management and enforcement measures in place, Canada can rebuild its fisheries and communities for long-term prosperity.

A fisherman departs from Fisherman’s Cove located at the South East of Halifax Harbour.

The symposium will address these important questions:

1. What are the opportunities for recovery and growth of our fisheries?
2. What policy changes will best support healthy fisheries and oceans?
3. What reforms are needed to increase abundance and ensure the fair and equitable distribution of resources?

“As Oceana staff have done in other countries where they are active, they will work to make the information on Canadian stocks transparent, and then focus on having them rebuilt, so that we can have greater abundance and higher catches,” Pauly said.

To learn more and register for the symposium, click here.