In thinking about February as Valentine’s Month, we invited our social media followers to “swipe right for healthy oceans.”
In a series of four posts showcasing country snapshots and designed to mimic a dating app interface, we presented how the Sea Around Us‘ fisheries data help us explore what ocean health looks like in different parts of the world. Each post highlights key strengths and challenges, grounded in catch reconstructions, stock assessments, and nutrition data.
Labour and human rights abuses, overfishing, unreported, unregulated and illegal fishing, all spurred by subsidies provided to distant-water fishing fleets, are some of the most pervasive practices linked to the global seafood industry.
Witnessing and reporting on all of this are fisheries observers. Often scientists – marine biologists or ecologists –, fisheries observers are tasked by national frameworks, regional bodies, or international fisheries organizations with gathering information that supports sustainable fisheries management. Some are hired by the fishing companies they monitor.
The Marion Dufresne off the “port” of Crozet. East Island in the background. Photo by Dimitri Damasceno, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
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.