Tag: catch reconstructions

Dr. Daniel Pauly (Photo from http://cars.fisheries.org/

Daniel Pauly awarded the 2016 Albert Ier Grand Medal

Photo: M. dagnino – Institut océanographique.

Photo: M. dagnino – Institut océanographique.

Just a day after World Fisheries Day, Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, was awarded the 2016 Albert Ier Grand Medal in the Science category during a ceremony held at the Maison des Océans in Paris.

The Albert Ier Grand Medal is the most prestigious prize given by the Oceanographic Institute to great names of the marine world. It takes the form of a medal in gilded bronze bearing the embossed profile of Prince Albert Ist, a pioneer of modern oceanography and founder of the Institute.

Dr. Pauly is acknowledged as one of the greatest specialists of marine resources and the effects of overfishing in the world.

Besides attending the gala, Dr. Pauly is set to participate in the conference “Only One Ocean: Issues and Solutions,” which was organized by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Institute also with the idea of honouring him.

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Sea Around Us discusses future during annual retreat

sea-around-us-november-2016

Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud.

The setting was ideal: The ocean on one side, the forest on the other.

There wasn’t a sound to be heard except that of a few seagulls, a sea lion somewhere, the waves lashing back and forth, and the enthusiastic team of the Sea Around Us talking about plans and projects for the coming years.

It was all part of the Sea Around Us’ annual retreat, which took place on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast on November 4th-6th, 2016.

Leaders Daniel Pauly, Dirk Zeller, and Deng Palomares traveled with associated faculty, staff, and students with the idea of updating everyone on everything: from finances to exciting new initiatives and potential new directions.

Photo by Deng Palomares.

Photo by Deng Palomares.

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Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries

Sea Around Us’ new Atlas reveals why the ocean is giving us 1.2 million MT less of fish every year

Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries

Global marine fisheries catches have been declining, on average, by 1.2 million metric tons every year since 1996 and FAO knew very little about this.

Fortunately, the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries has just been released and it explains, in detail and country-by-country, the reasons behind this unprecedented phenomenon, its consequences when it comes to food security and the steps that can be taken to ease the dire situation. Continue reading →

A perfect storm: Climate Change and Overfishing

The Sea Around Us has been featured in the IRIN news network, with an extensive story outlining how overfishing and climate change are warping our marine ecosystems. Within the story, Executive Director and Senior Scientist Dr. Dirk Zeller provides analysis of how the Sea Around Us data is helping to better understand the crisis.

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boatsonbeachgreatimage

By Jared Ferrie

Oceans have absorbed more than 93 percent of the heat generated by human activity since the 1970s, according to a report published this month by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Continue reading →

Google Earth reveals unreported fishing

Screen shot 2012-09-19 at 1.24.15 PMIn the Persian Gulf, large, semi-permanent fish traps take advantage of tidal differences to catch a wide variety of marine species. These traps, called fish weirs, have been used around the world for thousands of years, but only recently have researchers quantified what they catch using imagery captured from space.

In a new study published today in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, Sea Around Us Project researchers used satellite imagery from Google Earth to estimate that there were 1,900 fishing weirs along the coast of the Persian Gulf during 2005 and that they caught approximately 31,000 tonnes of fish that year. This catch is almost six times larger than the official amount (5,260 tonnes) reported by the seven countries in the region to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

This study highlights the utility of Google Earth and other remote sensing tools for validating catch statistics and fisheries operations in general.

You can find out more about the study here:
Press release from the University of British Columbia,
Web feature summarizing the study from The Pew Charitable Trusts,
Journal article published in ICES Journal of Marine Science.

Al-Abdulrazzak D and Pauly D (2013) Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches. ICES Journal of Marine Science. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fst178