Daniel Pauly at the DocumenTerre Film Festival in Montignac-Lascaux , November 2025. Photo by DocumenTerre.
The 16th edition of the DocumenTerre Film Festival, which takes place on an annual basis in Montignac-Lascaux in southwestern France, had, this year, a special focus on the oceans.
Image from City of Shells by Mike Sakas.
Pearls, aphrodisiac concoctions, and Asian sauces. When we, ‘moderns,’ think about oysters, we rarely connect them to the substrate of a city.
Hong Kong and its Pearl River Delta area, as it turns out, have been built both structurally and socio-culturally atop what used to be extensive oyster reefs. However, these ecosystems have been decimated by dredging for lime and mega-city development.
Fisherman casting net at sunset in Mandalay. Photo by Pyae Phyo Aung, Pexels.
Official statistics from most coastal countries only account for a fraction of what their fisheries catch, the Sea Around Us data and analyses have demonstrated.
As we observe World Fisheries Day 2025, which aims to highlight the importance of promoting sustainable fish stocks and the rights of small-scale fishing communities, it is crucial to remember that without comprehensive data, managing sustainable fisheries is akin to flying blind.
Fred Le Manach, Daniel Pauly, Claire Nouvian and Didier Gascuel. Photo by Steve Fiehl© for BLOOM.
The Sea Around Us PI, Dr. Daniel Pauly, together with our advisory board member and founder of BLOOM, Claire Nouvian, advisory board member, Dr. Rashid Sumaila, and long-time collaborators, Dr. Didier Gascuel and Dr. Frédéric Le Manach, are among the scientists, activists, public servants, and students whose portraits are on display along the streets of Paris as part of the Biennale Photoclimat.
Tiger Shark. Image by Kevin Bryant, Flickr.
By Daniel Pauly.
From August 17 to 23, I was in the village of Alpbach in the Austrian Alps, which is, since September 1945 (!), home to an annual gathering of scientists, politicians and other personalities whose mission is to think about European unity, and to make it stronger.
The ‘European Forum Alpbach’ (EFA), as this event is now called, also includes a week during which about 500 people (selected from over 7000 applicants) from European and other countries – PhD students, postdocs, NGO leaders and others – join different seminars to study various topics pertinent to European economic or scientific policies.