Senegal’s missing fish: What reconstructing fish catch can teach us about our oceans

By: The Pew Charitable Trusts

Industrial fishing is big business. Official global statistics show that approximately 80 million tonnes of marine fish are caught commercially each year. Scientists, as they uncover the extent of small-scale fishing, now believe this amount may actually be much larger.

Fisheries scientists have long recognized the importance of thorough, accurate catch data in understanding the pressures on target species. However, most countries currently focus their data collection efforts on industrial fishing, in part because it can be difficult to count small-scale operations. This largely overlooks artisanal and subsistence fishing, not to mention discarded fish and illegal fishing, which also mask the total extent of fishing worldwide.

One promising approach to better understanding the big picture of fishing around the world is “catch reconstruction,” which offers catch estimates using an array of sources and methods.  This concept was developed by the Sea Around Us, a partnership between The Pew Charitable Trusts and the University of British Columbia.

“It’s like putting together a 500-piece puzzle to get a more complete picture of a fishery’s catch data,” said Daniel Pauly, principal investigator for Sea Around Us and professor at the University of British Columbia. “Over time, the estimates reveal themselves and you have data where once there were none.”

These estimates are not a substitute for the global data reported by countries to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Rather, they are a supplement that can indicate important trends and provide guidance on how best to improve data collection.

The danger in underreporting fish catch is that country officials don’t have access to the data needed to help them manage their fisheries effectively, including the ability to set accurate fishing quotas.

“It’s like managing your bank account,” said Pauly. “You have to know how much you have left before you can withdraw more. In some developing countries, the actual total catch can be 200 percent higher than what is being reported.”

In Senegal, on the west coast of Africa, small-scale fishing accounts for most of the domestic fish catch in the country.  Staying focused on industrial fishing paints an incomplete picture of fish catch for FAO. For example, the official data indicate the catch has been steady since about 1995, but the reconstructed data suggest it is decreasing.

 

VIDEO – Reconstructing the Catch

 

After the reconstruction was completed in Senegal, government officials met with Sea Around Us scientists to discuss ways to update their reporting and account for previously missing data. With a clearer picture of their fisheries activities, officials may be able to improve management, for example by excluding foreign fishing vessels that might be affecting artisanal fisheries.

A global catch reconstruction will be completed in early 2015, with estimates from 1950 to 2010 broken down by year and type of fish for more than 250 countries and territories. This research is led by the Sea Around Us project of the University of British Columbia and supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

For more information about catch reconstruction, visit “Sea Around Us: Taking Stock of Fish, Oceans, and People,” which details a December 15, 2014 interview with Daniel Pauly.

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Daniel Pauly talks to Juliet Eilperin about the future of oceans and fisheries

Daniel Pauly talking to Juliet Eilperin in Washington, D.C.

Daniel Pauly and Juliet Eilperin in Washington, D.C.

On December 15, in Washington D.C., The Pew Charitable Trusts hosted a conversation between Sea Around Us’ Daniel Pauly and Juliet Eilperin, a White House correspondent for The Washington Post. The event marked a 15-year partnership between Pew and Sea Around Us.

Before her role as White House correspondent, Eilperin spent eight years as the national reporter for environmental science, policy and politics. At the event, she talked to Pauly about his research, and his contributions to science, and his critical approach to the exploitation of fisheries across the globe.

After his conversation with Eilperin, Pauly took questions from audience members about academic fisheries research, aquaculture and warming oceans.

If you missed the event, you can watch a the full video here

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Dayna Szule – Finance Clerk

Szule_Dayna_picAs the Finance Clerk for the Sea Around Us, Dayna’s role includes setting up project grants, reconciling monthly ledgers, monitoring all grant expenditures and preparing external and internal financial grant reports. Previously with the UBC Botanical Garden, Dayna joined the Sea Around Us in July 2014 to focus and develop a financial skill set within the University. In her spare time, she can be found identifying plant species in a forest somewhere or playing golf or football.

 

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Maria Ho – Administrative Assistant

MH headshot 2Maria joined the Sea Around Us in 2014, and coordinates schedules, travels, project activities and provides administrative support to Dr. Daniel Pauly and Dr. Dirk Zeller.

Maria has worked for the Faculty of Medicine at BC Children’s Hospital for about 10 years, and prior to that, for the UBC Sauder of School of Business and UBC ITServices.  She is passionate about topics related to the environment, international fishing practices and salmon-farming.  In her spare time, she is an accomplished musician, performer and recording artist who also loves photography, graphic design, traveling and physical fitness.

Sea Around Us, Oceana organize workshop for the National Symposium of Fisheries

Sea Around Us and Oceana have organized a workshop on Philippine fisheries as part of the National Symposium of Fisheries. The workshop will be held at the Luxent Hotel, Quezon City, Philippines on November 4-5.

The workshop will acquaint Philippine fisheries practitioners with the catch reconstruction work (Palomares and Pauly 2014) recently published as a Fisheries Centre Research Report at the University of British Columbia.

One of the primary objectives of the workshop is to provide practitioners with alternative terminology — including industrial fisheries, artisanal fisheries, subsistence fisheries and recreational fisheries — to help clarify current issues within the Philippine’s marine fisheries.

This session will also involve brainstorming exercises to inspire a re-thinking of data collection methods and create a preliminary work plan to implement these methods.

“We would like to be able to inspire a re-thinking of the Philippine fisheries catch statistics collection system, which has not been improved on since it was put in place in the 1960s,” said Maria Palomares, a senior research fellow at Sea Around Us. “We hope that the workshop will provide enough evidence that such a re-thinking is necessary to establish a solid and implementable catch statistics collection system.”

The workshop will also help introduce Philippine fisheries practitioners with Oceana, who have recently set up an office in the Philippines.

For more information on the symposium, visit http://bit.ly/1pbfm4M.