Tag: data

Developing love for fishery data

Ar’ash Tavakolie

Ar’ash Tavakolie

At some point in his life after having been in Vancouver for a few years and being done with his Ph.D. at UBC, Ar’ash Tavakolie really wanted to join an organization working to make the world a better place.

He wanted, of course, to put his engineering and machine-learning skills to good use, so he was looking for a place where data processing and knowledge creation were the focal points. That is how he landed, a decade ago, at the Sea Around Us. “The fact that it was in marine conservation also encouraged me. I felt I could pay my dues to the environment,” he says with a smile.

Ar’ash loves that, through the collaborative work he was doing with the Sea Around Us team, he was able to help spread the word about how much countries are (over)fishing and the dangerous situation in which fisheries are putting the world’s fish stocks.

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Fishermen in Żejtun, Malta. Photo by Ramon Casha, Flickr.

In less than two minutes, learn why fish catches are declining

Fishermen in Żejtun, Malta. Photo by Ramon Casha, Flickr.

Fishermen in Żejtun, Malta. Photo by Ramon Casha, Flickr.

As the Sea Around Us team revealed in its 2016 Nature Communications paper, fish catches have been declining, on average, by 1.2 million metric tons per year since 1996.

This decline has resulted in lower per capita seafood availability and threatened food security in poor, developing countries. In fact, a group of scientists, among them the Sea Around Us Executive Director Dirk Zeller, has predicted that 11% of the global population could face micronutrient and fatty-acid deficiencies driven by fish declines over the coming decades.

That is 845 million people living with extremely low levels of iron, zinc or vitamin A.
“Considering nutrients found only in foods derived from animals, such as vitamin B12, and DHA omega-3 fatty acids (almost exclusively derived from meat consumption), we calculate that 1.39 billion people worldwide (19% of the global population) are vulnerable to deficiencies because fish make up more than 20% of their intake of these foods by weight,” the group has written.

There are many reasons why fish stocks are declining worldwide. However, and as the Sea Around Us principal investigator Daniel Pauly summarizes in the below video, at the root of the problem lies indiscriminate human activity.

Daniel Pauly on the importance of the Albert Ier Grand Medal

As we mentioned in a previous post, last November Sea Around Us principal investigator Dr. Daniel Pauly was conferred the 2016 Albert Ier Grand Medal in the Science category.

In a ceremony held at the Maison des Océans in Paris, Pauly was handed the award by Albert II, Prince of Monaco, and M. Robert Calcagno, General Director of the Institute Océanographique.

Feeling hugely proud and very pleased by the honour, he said that the importance of the distinction is that it helps bring attention to the urgent issues affecting the world’s oceans.

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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Ensuring better fisheries management in West Africa


This week, the Sea Around Us Project’s Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, and one of our PhD students, Dyhia Belhabib, attended the Regional Marine and Coastal Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, where representatives from eight West African countries gathered to discuss the status of fisheries in the region and their future. Their goal was to engage the countries in tackling unreported fishing.

By working with researchers at the Sea Around Us Project to assess their fisheries from 1950 to 2010, these countries have identified the extent of unreported fishing in their waters – which is often as much as double what is officially reported.

“Fishing operations in West Africa have been catching much more than anyone previously realised and reported,” says Dyhia Belhabib. “The research we are conducting in partnership with West African countries gives them the first complete historical picture of their fisheries.”

In response, some countries in the region have started to take steps to address the gaps and improve fisheries management. In Senegal, the government has developed a fisheries commission and signed an agreement to improve the current reporting and management of its fisheries.

“This joint research is shedding new light on the true extent of past fishing in West Africa,” says Daniel Pauly. “Our hope is that these countries will now adopt the results and use them to contribute to better fisheries management in the future.”

You can read the complete press release in English and French here.