Bighead carp gill rakers

Toward a one-day conference devoted to the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory

Bighead carp gill rakers

Bighead carp gill rakers. Photo by Invasive Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, Flickr.

At the last annual meeting of the FishBase Consortium, held 5-7 September 2023 in Tervuren, Belgium, it was decided that the next FishBase/SeaLifeBase Symposium, traditionally held before the FishBase Consortium meeting, to be held in early September 2024 in Thessaloniki, Greece, would last two days, with the first devoted to a session on the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory, or GOLT.

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Ageeba - Mediterranean coast -Egypt

Egyptian Mediterranean fisheries in urgent need of better management

Ageeba - Mediterranean coast -Egypt

Ageeba beach on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Photo by Aya Gallab, Wikimedia Commons.

Egyptian fisheries need to be better managed to secure the overall health of the Mediterranean Sea’s marine living resources, new research has found.

In a recent paper in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management, researchers with the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport reconstructed Egypt’s marine fisheries catches from the Mediterranean in the last 100 years and found strong evidence of resource overexploitation. Such overexploitation has pushed fishers to go farther and deeper, increasingly resorting to species lower in the food chain.

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New Zealand Fishing Boats

Overfishing and climate change impacts on New Zealand’s fish populations were hidden – until now

New Zealand Fishing Boats

New Zealand fishing boats. Photo by QFSE Media, Wikimedia Commons.

Pelagic-oceanic fish commonly caught in warmer waters, such as skipjack tuna and blue mackerel, have been increasing in New Zealand’s waters since the 1950s, while cold-water species such as southern bluefin tuna display strong reductions in overall catch from the 1970s onwards, new research has found.

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Dead Fish Washed Ashore during Golden Alga Toxic Bloom

Large fish more vulnerable to climate change-induced fish kills

Dead Fish Washed Ashore during Golden Alga Toxic Bloom

Reference image of dead fish washed ashore during a golden algae toxic bloom. Photo by Michael Hooper, USGS.

Climate change-induced droughts and fish kills affect larger fish more severely than smaller individuals, according to new research.

In a paper published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from Leiden University, Sportvisserij Zuidwest Nederland and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia compared evidence from drought-induced fish kills in the Netherlands, fisheries management literature and multiple physiological studies. They confirmed that when water gets warmer and deoxygenated, larger and older individuals within a species tend to die in greater numbers than their smaller and younger counterparts.

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