Category: New & Notable

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Sea Around Us co-organizes event with Pulitzer Prize-winner Ian Urbina

The Sea Around Us has joined forces with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, UBC’s School of Journalism, the Global Reporting Centre, and Trace Foundation to host an event titled The Outlaw Ocean: A conversation with Ian Urbina.

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier, is Urbina’s most recent book and across its 540 pages, the New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.

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New assessment method reveals many fish stocks are in urgent need of sustainable management

New assessment method reveals many fish stocks are in urgent need of sustainable management

The white stumpnose stock in southern Africa was amongst those assessed for the first time. The species has been red-listed by IUCN. Image by Brian Gratwicke, Flickr.

A newly developed method for assessing how abundant fish populations are and how fishing is affecting them revealed that several fish stocks across oceans are far below internationally agreed minimum levels and in urgent need of sustainable management.

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Popular fish in China would increase in value if they were caught with larger meshes

Popular fish in China would increase in value if caught with larger meshes

Popular fish in China would increase in value if they were caught with larger meshes

Largehead hairtail. Public domain photo.

Fish that are highly valued by Chinese consumers, such as largehead hairtail, would grow in value and in the amounts that are caught if industrial fisheries increased the mesh size of their nets.

New research by the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries found that trawlers operating in China’s coastal waters are overfishing 21 economically important species because the mesh size is so small that, together with large, desirable fish, undersized fish are also getting caught. This means that fish are being taken out before they are able to reproduce.

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China’s Bohai Sea left with only tiny fish

China’s Bohai Sea left with only tiny fish

China’s Bohai Sea left with only tiny fish

Japanase sardinella. Image by Totti, Wikimedia Commons.

Smaller fish and invertebrates, such as gazami crab or Japanese sardinella, are replacing larger, more commercially valuable fish such as largehead hairtail in the Bohai Sea in northeastern China.

A new study by scientists with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries shows that industrial fisheries have severely affected food webs in the Bohai Sea, with organisms that occupy lower levels in the food web becoming more common than larger predators.

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