Rainer Froese. Image from FishBase.
Long-time Sea Around Us collaborator, Dr Rainer Froese, has just received the Ocean Award in the Science category for his contributions to marine conservation and ocean health through the development of novel fish stock assessment methods particularly suited for data-poor contexts.
Froese is being recognized for his work on the ‘CMSY’ method for the assessment of fish stocks using time series of catch data; the Length-Based Bayesian Biomass Estimation (or LBB) method for assessing the status of a stock from length-frequency data from commercial catches; and the Abundance Maximum Sustainable Yields (or AMSY) method for estimating stock status purely from a time series of catch per unit of effort data.
These methods, which have been successfully applied in southern Europe, Turkey, West Africa, India and China, are now spreading beyond regions where courses on their use have been held, notably by the Sea Around Us team, which is currently applying LBB, AMSY and especially CMSY to assess the status of the exploited fish and invertebrate populations in the waters of all maritime countries in the world. Thus, we want to congratulate Dr Froese for this important recognition to his scientific contribution and we want to thank him for providing us with a major set of tools.
The Ocean Awards are organized by UK-based Blue Marine Foundation and BOAT International and have been granted since 2015. The selection of the winner is done by a 10-judge panel whose members chose the individual or research team that has made an original scientific contribution about the ocean this year.
Together with Dr Froese, the 2020 nominees in the science category include also long-time Sea Around Us collaborator Dr Rashid Sumaila, from the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries; Dr Steve Simpson, from the University of Exeter; Dr Malin Pinksy, from Rutgers University, and Dr Sasha Tetu, from Macquarie University.
Read also: Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller win Ocean Award.