Category: New Research

Hoi An fish market in Vietnam.

The nutritional toll of climate change on communities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Hoi An fish market in Vietnam.

Hoi An fish market in Vietnam. Image by Jean-Marie Hullot, Flickr.


Fish populations and the humans that depend on them for food will continue to feel the brunt of warming waters from climate change.

A recent study by researchers at the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean, based at the University of Western Australia, the Changing Ocean Research Unit at the University of British Columbia and the University of Miami, shows that even with strong climate mitigation efforts, maximum catch potential is expected to fall by 58–92 per cent in the Pacific Islands and 65–86 per cent in Southeast Asia by the mid to end of the 21st century. These losses will likely result in fisheries failing to meet key micronutrient requirements in these regions’ coastal populations.

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Measuring Baltic herring.

Taking seriously the explanations on shrinking fish in a warming world

Measuring Baltic herring.

Measuring Baltic herring. Photo by Aleksey Kusnetsov, Wikimedia Commons.

As climate change continues to warm and deoxygenate ocean water, the size of fish, aquatic molluscs and crustaceans is showing a concerning reduction pattern. This pattern manifests a life history in which the animals exposed to rising temperatures grow fast when they are young but mature at smaller sizes than before and their final body sizes are also smaller than they used to be.

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Farming Atlantic Salmon in Tasmania

Global North’s growing appetite for farmed salmon imperils communities’ access to local fish

Farming Atlantic Salmon in Tasmania

Farming Atlantic Salmon in Tasmania. Photo by Arthur Chapman, Flickr.

The growing appetite for expensive farmed salmon can leave coastal communities struggling to access affordable local fish like sardines and anchovies, new research published in Science Advances shows.

The paper, co-authored by researchers with Oceana and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, exposes the global aquaculture sector’s growing dependence on wild, small pelagic fishes which are frequently caught, processed, and ‘reduced’ to fishmeal and fish oil. Almost the entirety of the production of fishmeal and fish oil, that is, 87 per cent and 74 per cent respectively, is used to feed farmed fish.

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Marine and Freshwater Miscellanea

Sea Around Us produces new ‘miscellanea’ report

Marine and Freshwater Miscellanea

The Sea Around Us PI, Dr. Daniel Pauly, and communications officer, Valentina Ruiz-Leotaud, have produced a new Fisheries Centre Research Report titled Marine and Freshwater Miscellanea V.

As its four predecessors, this document presents a diverse range of topics that offer substantial contributions to the field of fisheries science and which, if not published as an FCRR, might have remained stored away in individual researchers’ desks or computers.

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Small-scale fisheries at sunset in Malaysia.

Leading scientists redefine the notion of ‘sustainability’ to save the ocean

Small-scale fisheries at sunset in Malaysia.

Small-scale fisheries in Malaysia. Photo by Jamie Oliver – WorldFish, Flickr.

A week before Brussels’ Ocean Week and a few months before the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, a group of researchers published the results of an unprecedented scientific effort: they redefine the concept of ‘sustainable fishing’ and propose eleven ‘golden rules’ that radically challenge the flawed notion that currently prevails in fisheries management.

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