The Sea Around Us initiative turned 25 years old in July 2024.
To mark this milestone, the team produced a large poster highlighting some of the research accomplishments that turned the project into a reputable voice when it comes to fisheries data, and fish population management and conservation.
Daniel Pauly at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, September 2024. Photo by Valentina Ruiz-Leotaud.
In the heat of summer in central Greece, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki hosted the 22nd FishBase and SeaLifeBase Symposium.
Titled “Fishes in Changing Ecosystems,” the two-day event started on September 2, 2024, with a full day dedicated to some of the overarching themes the Sea Around Us team is doing research on.
Bottom trawling in the North Sea . Image by Ifremer.
The 4 billion tonnes of marine organisms that global fisheries extracted from the ocean between 1960 and 2018 resulted in the depletion of over 560 million tonnes of essential nutrients vital to ecosystem health, new research has found.
As of 2025, about 75 per cent of the Sea Around Us team is comprised of women and in the past 25 years, of the over 200 people from more than 40 countries who have worked for the project, 59 per cent have been women.
Crystal clear water in the Maldives. Photo by wardyboy400, Wikimedia Commons.
The Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia and ProtectedSeas Navigator, a free, interactive map of marine regulatory information worldwide, have partnered to expand users’ access to marine protected area (MPA) information.