New data on reported and unreported marine catches now available online

Researchers with UBC’s Sea Around Us project have launched a new web platform at www.seaaroundus.org that provides the first comprehensive coverage of both reported and unreported fish caught by every country in the world.

It reveals that official catch reports considerably underestimate actual catches around the world. For example, researchers found there was considerable unreported foreign fishing between 1950 and the early 1970s on Canada’s East coast. In fact, more than half of fish caught were unreported at one point. Much of this ‘catch’ consisted of so-called discards.

UBC professor Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller plan to publish a global estimate of fisheries catch in a peer-reviewed paper.

“The new Sea Around Us data have significant global scope and are long awaited by many groups worldwide,” said Zeller, senior researcher and project manager for Sea Around Us. “Accurate estimates are important for policy makers and fisheries managers to make economical and sustainable decisions about our fishing policies and fisheries management.”

The new data combine estimates of unreported catches — determined through extensive literature searches, consultation with local experts, and calculation of discarded fish — with officially reported data for small and large-scale fisheries for every country. The data emerged from a decade-long catch reconstruction project.

“We know these data will have major global impacts and now they are accessible in a visual, simplified and comprehensive way,” Pauly said.

Accurate catch data provide important insights into fisheries, fish populations and underlying ecosystems, and such data can have economic impacts.

The Sea Around Us is currently funded by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. This is the first time the project has released new data in over five years. It can be accessed at www.seaaroundus.org

BACKGROUND

About UBC’S Sea Around Us
The Sea Around Us was initiated in 1999, and aims to provide integrated analyses of the impacts of fisheries on marine ecosystems, and to devise policies that can mitigate and reverse harmful trends while ensuring the social and economic benefits of sustainable fisheries. Sea Around Us has assembled global databases of catches, distributions of fished marine species, countries’ fishing access agreements, ex-vessel prices, marine protected areas and other data – all available online.

Sea Around Us is a long-standing collaboration between the University of British
Columbia and The Pew Charitable Trusts, and since 2014 is supported by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

About The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
Founded in 1988, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation is dedicated to transforming lives and strengthening communities by fostering innovation, creating knowledge and promoting social progress. The Sea Around Us program is another example of how the Foundation supports the use data and technology to inform conservation priorities and actions.

View this press release on UBC News here

Daniel Pauly wins prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award

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The Sea Around Us’ principal investigator Daniel Pauly is a winner of the prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award for “Excellence in Science.”

Pauly accepted the award on May 14 at the eighth annual awards ceremony at the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington D.C.

The awards team noted Pauly has become a world leader in identifying overfishing as a threat to marine ecosystems and global food security — and that he’s an outspoken advocate for taking corrective action.

“Since I am a marine biologist and fisheries scientist, this means that throughout my career, I have tried to create concepts, models, software and databases that enable colleagues to do their work more effectively,” Pauly said in his acceptance speech.

The Peter Benchley Ocean Awards acknowledge outstanding achievement, and the only major awards program dedicated to recognizing excellence in marine conservation solutions across a wide range of sectors.

Other winners this year included The Economist, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Sea Around Us collaborates with West Africa on catch reconstructions

Senegal-Mbour picture2

Sea Around Us recently announced its collaboration with West African countries on catch reconstructions through the West African Regional Marine and Coastal Conservation Partnership (PRCM).

Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us, said his team is keen to work with stakeholders in the coastal zone in the order to ensure catch reconstruction data is accurate.

“We want to ensure our data reflects reality,” Pauly said. “In order for this to be successful, there needs to be a joint effort with all stakeholders.”

Other reasons behind the collaboration are to help formulate policies, to assist in the design of fisheries data acquisition schemes that can be implemented locally, and to facilitate research partnerships.

For more information click here

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.