Category: New & Notable

Sea Around Us attends meeting to support conservation assessment for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean

A senior researcher with the Sea Around Us recently attended a three-day meeting earlier this month to discuss conservation of biodiversity with Antarctic experts in Monaco.

Deng Palomares, who recently worked on an Antarctic report for the Sea Around Us, said the meeting was an important step in identifying and assuring that Antarctic research focuses on the gaps in current data.

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“It was a very successful endeavour seeing that the experts who participated in the assessment came from a multidisciplinary background,” Palomares said. “One of the most significant contributions of those three days is the engagement promised by these experts to continue their work in the Antarctic.”

Co-organized by the Government of the Principality of Monaco, the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, SCAR, and Monash University, the meeting was meant to assess whether the conservation of the biodiversity of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean is meeting the targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020.

The meeting also aimed to provide guidance for action that can effectively help deliver further conservation successes for the regions. Another goal was to identify key areas for work and indicators to help guide that work, which resulted in the Antarctica and the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020: The Monaco Assessment.

“The initial expert assessment indicates a biodiversity outlook for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean which is no better than that for the rest of the globe,” said professor Steven Chown of Monash University, who co-organized the meeting.

HSH Prince Albert II of Manaco, who closed the meeting June 10, emphasized that activity in the Antarctic region — including not only fishing and tourism, but also some scientific activities — has drastically increased.

“I am convinced that common action from all countries and parties, can improve the situation for the better,” HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco noted. “I can assure you that my Government and my Foundation will make every effort possible to ensure that science continues to prevail in this land with international cooperation”

Organizers and attendees left feeling hopeful that there will be effective action over the next five years to dramatically improve the state of biodiversity in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

You can read more on The Monaco Assessment here

 

New research reveals population trends for world seabirds

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A Rhinoceros Auklet (seabird) eating sandlance (Photo: Daniel Donnecke)

New Sea Around Us research has found drastic decline in the monitored portion of the global seabird population.

The paper, published in PLoS ONE, reports that the monitored portion of the global seabird population decreased overall by 69.7 per cent between 1950 and 2010.

According to Michelle Paleczny, a lead author of the paper, and recent graduate of the zoology program at UBC, these findings likely reflect a global trend because of the large and representative sample. A decline this drastic can cause changes in island and marine ecosystems in which seabirds play a variety of vital roles.

“Decline in seabird abundance stands to disrupt natural processes in island and marine ecosystems in which seabirds play an important role — by acting as predators, scavengers, cross-ecosystem nutrient subsidizers, and ecosystem engineers,” Paleczny says.

In order to investigate global patterns of seabird population data, the researchers assembled a global database of seabird population size records and applied multivariate autoregressive state-space (MARSS) modeling to estimate the global path of all seabird populations with sufficient data. They obtained data from primary sources including journal articles, books, and unpublished reports.

Several human activities are known to threaten seabird populations, including entanglement in fishing gear, overfishing of food sources, climate change, pollution, disturbance, direct exploitation, development, energy production, and introduced species. Seabird populations are strongly affected by threats to marine and coastal ecosystems, and can indicate  the status of marine ecosystem health.

“Knowing this information helps us to measure and assess the overall effect that human activities and threats have had on seabirds and marine ecosystems over time,” Paleczny explains.

You can read the full report here

New data on reported and unreported marine catches now available online

Researchers with UBC’s Sea Around Us project have launched a new web platform at www.seaaroundus.org that provides the first comprehensive coverage of both reported and unreported fish caught by every country in the world.

It reveals that official catch reports considerably underestimate actual catches around the world. For example, researchers found there was considerable unreported foreign fishing between 1950 and the early 1970s on Canada’s East coast. In fact, more than half of fish caught were unreported at one point. Much of this ‘catch’ consisted of so-called discards.

UBC professor Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller plan to publish a global estimate of fisheries catch in a peer-reviewed paper.

“The new Sea Around Us data have significant global scope and are long awaited by many groups worldwide,” said Zeller, senior researcher and project manager for Sea Around Us. “Accurate estimates are important for policy makers and fisheries managers to make economical and sustainable decisions about our fishing policies and fisheries management.”

The new data combine estimates of unreported catches — determined through extensive literature searches, consultation with local experts, and calculation of discarded fish — with officially reported data for small and large-scale fisheries for every country. The data emerged from a decade-long catch reconstruction project.

“We know these data will have major global impacts and now they are accessible in a visual, simplified and comprehensive way,” Pauly said.

Accurate catch data provide important insights into fisheries, fish populations and underlying ecosystems, and such data can have economic impacts.

The Sea Around Us is currently funded by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. This is the first time the project has released new data in over five years. It can be accessed at www.seaaroundus.org

BACKGROUND

About UBC’S Sea Around Us
The Sea Around Us was initiated in 1999, and aims to provide integrated analyses of the impacts of fisheries on marine ecosystems, and to devise policies that can mitigate and reverse harmful trends while ensuring the social and economic benefits of sustainable fisheries. Sea Around Us has assembled global databases of catches, distributions of fished marine species, countries’ fishing access agreements, ex-vessel prices, marine protected areas and other data – all available online.

Sea Around Us is a long-standing collaboration between the University of British
Columbia and The Pew Charitable Trusts, and since 2014 is supported by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

About The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
Founded in 1988, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation is dedicated to transforming lives and strengthening communities by fostering innovation, creating knowledge and promoting social progress. The Sea Around Us program is another example of how the Foundation supports the use data and technology to inform conservation priorities and actions.

View this press release on UBC News here

Daniel Pauly wins prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award

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The Sea Around Us’ principal investigator Daniel Pauly is a winner of the prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award for “Excellence in Science.”

Pauly accepted the award on May 14 at the eighth annual awards ceremony at the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington D.C.

The awards team noted Pauly has become a world leader in identifying overfishing as a threat to marine ecosystems and global food security — and that he’s an outspoken advocate for taking corrective action.

“Since I am a marine biologist and fisheries scientist, this means that throughout my career, I have tried to create concepts, models, software and databases that enable colleagues to do their work more effectively,” Pauly said in his acceptance speech.

The Peter Benchley Ocean Awards acknowledge outstanding achievement, and the only major awards program dedicated to recognizing excellence in marine conservation solutions across a wide range of sectors.

Other winners this year included The Economist, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Sea Around Us collaborates with West Africa on catch reconstructions

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Sea Around Us recently announced its collaboration with West African countries on catch reconstructions through the West African Regional Marine and Coastal Conservation Partnership (PRCM).

Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us, said his team is keen to work with stakeholders in the coastal zone in the order to ensure catch reconstruction data is accurate.

“We want to ensure our data reflects reality,” Pauly said. “In order for this to be successful, there needs to be a joint effort with all stakeholders.”

Other reasons behind the collaboration are to help formulate policies, to assist in the design of fisheries data acquisition schemes that can be implemented locally, and to facilitate research partnerships.

For more information click here