Every year, on November 21st, World Fisheries Day is observed.
Launched in 1997 at a World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers meeting, which led to the creation of the World Fisheries Forum, this day is meant to bring awareness to the urgent need for sustainable fishing practices and measures.
While pursuing her PhD studies with Sea Around Us, Veronica Relano-Ecija, engaged in an artistic project to raise awareness about climate change and sea-level rise.
Under the campaign slogan of ‘Planet vs. Plastics,’ Earth Day 2024 is focused on environmental activists’ commitment to end plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, demanding a 60 per cent reduction in the production of all plastics by 2040.
Even though the Sea Around Us research doesn’t focus on ocean pollution, there is an evident connection between fisheries and the littering of our oceans.
To illustrate this connection, the above video presents some of the alarming figures related to gear abandoned at sea, which remains in the oceans and often continues to capture fish and other marine animals in a process commonly referred to as ‘ghost fishing’.
As the French city of Nice begins preparations to host the high-level 2025 United Nations Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14 (conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources), over 100 non-governmental organizations, academic units, celebrities, and civil society collectives have joined forces to launch the Citizens’ Coalition for the Protection of the Ocean.
Snappy, a snapper living in tropical waters, is the protagonist of a video created to observe World Water Day 2024.
Through his story and in very simple terms, we explain how warmer water than that to which fish are used becomes an aggressor of sorts that impacts internal biochemical processes and forces the fish to stop growing at a smaller size than it would normally do in optimal habitat conditions and move poleward.