The Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean under the lead of Professor Dirk Zeller is looking for outstanding international PhD candidates interested in conducting ‘big-data’ research on fisheries and fisheries conservation issues at the ocean-basin scale. If this is of interest to you, then consider applying for an international PhD Scholarship at the University of Western Australia in Perth. The current round of applications closes on April 6, 2018 and is for international candidates only.
Fishermen holding a net between boat and beach at Pinda, Mozambique. Photo by Stig Nygaard, Wikimedia Commons.
Countries’ improvements to their fisheries statistics have been contributing to the false impression that humanity is getting more and more fish from the ocean when, in reality, global marine catches have been declining on average by around 1.2 million tonnes per year since 1996.
Following a successful festival season, the film An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch is now available for free viewing.
Besides being premiered on Earth Day 2017 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and on the Smithsonian Channel, the documentary had a full-house screening at the University of British Columbia and at 11 different international film festivals. It was also recognized in different categories at the Blue Ocean Film Festival, the Indie Fest Film Awards, the International Ocean Film Festival, the Impact Docs Awards, and the American Conservation Film Festival.
A group of marine biologists led by the world’s top fisheries scientist, Daniel Pauly, are calling for stronger action to conserve and protect fisheries resources in the Philippines.
Pauly is the Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us at the University of British Columbia and a co-founder of FishBase.org. Together with his team, he produced global, multi-year analyses of fish catches, which have helped the public understand the sad plight of the oceans – particularly the fact that fish populations all over the world are plummeting.
Fishing boats huddling together waiting for a storm to pass. Koh Samui Island,Thailand. Photo by Chris Bird, Flickr.
Fish catches by Thailand’s distant-water fleet fishing throughout the Indo-Pacific are almost seven times higher than what the country reports to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a new study by the Sea Around Us reveals.
In 2014 alone, the Asian country caught 3.7 million tonnes of fish outside its Exclusive Economic Zone but reported only 247,000 tonnes. This figure, although substantial, represents a decline from peak numbers reached in the mid-1990s when the more relaxed rules of Thailand’s neighbours allowed for massive catches of over 7 million tonnes per year. Back then, as much as 80 per cent of the catch was unreported and much of it likely obtained illegally, the study reveals.