Jellyfish fisheries research awarded by the Vancouver Aquarium

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 was a great day for the Sea Around Us’ postdoctoral fellow Lucas Brotz.

During the celebration of the 22nd Annual Coastal Ocean Awards, the Vancouver Aquarium presented Lucas with the Michael A. Bigg Award for student research “for his exceptional contributions to the understanding of jellyfish in waters around the world.” Specifically, judges were impressed with his global catch reconstruction of jellyfish as food for humans.

For Lucas, this honour closes with a flourish a decade’s worth of work under Daniel Pauly’s guidance and, at the same time, opens up new opportunities to continue exploring the almost uncharted world of jellyfish.

LISTEN to Lucas explaining the “shocking findings” regarding the amounts of jellyfish people eat worldwide.

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ON VIDEO: Daniel Pauly and the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries

The Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory 120 was packed and people on social media were frantically asking about how to join the Facebook Live stream.

For over an hour, the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, presented the methods and findings in the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries, which he published in late 2016 together with Dirk Zeller.

For those who could not be in attendance, the IOF’s communications department prepared series of videos that capture the highlights from Pauly’s presentation.

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IOF Seminar Series: Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries

On February 17, 2016 the Sea Around Us‘ Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller will be sharing their views on the importance of the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries, the first book to provide accurate, country-by-country fishery data.

Their presentation is part of the IOF Seminar Series held every Friday at the Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory 120, located at the University of British Columbia 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver. Continue reading

VIDEO: How much is fished in your country’s waters?

Photo by Alper Çuğun, Flickr.

Trawl nets, drift nets, longlines, etc. have allowed fleets across the world to turn their fishing operations into massive extractive activities.

In several countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones, such expansion has led to depleted fish stocks. Some of those countries, however, have enough capital to buy access to other countries’ waters, extract their resources and sell them across continents. “They are just exporting the problem,” the Sea Around Us Senior Scientist Dirk Zeller has said.

WATCH THE VIDEO TUTORIAL

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Can Brexit save the UK’s seas?

Photo by Chris Allen for Geograph, licenced under CC.

Photo by Chris Allen for Geograph, licensed under CC.

The British press was all over them.

The day after they received the Ocean Award in the Science category, the Sea Around Us leaders, Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller, were bombarded with questions regarding their findings on declining fish stocks and their catch reconstruction research method.

Talking to the BBC, Pauly explained that the decline is due to overfishing. He also said that, in most countries, real catch numbers are 50 per cent higher than what is actually reported by official bodies, while in Europe the figure shrinks to about 30 per cent. “What is not counted (in Europe) is the fish that is discarded -and quite a big amount of fish is being discarded-, and about 10 per cent that is caught illegally and is not counted,” he said.

The next question was expected: Can the UK design and implement better fishery policies once it leaves the European Union?

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