The Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, and associated faculty, Dr. Rashid Sumaila, both based at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, feature in a new film aimed at supporting a critical World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on fishing subsidies, as the international community races to lock the deal in place before it expires in 2024.
Tag: fisheries
Egyptian Mediterranean fisheries in urgent need of better management

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.
Groundfish barely feel the impact of marine heatwaves – showing there’s still time to act on climate change

Whiting is among the demersal fish found in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean. Photo by Borut Furlan, taken from the website of our sister project FishBase.
Fish that live on or near the seafloor -known as demersal or groundfish- barely feel the impact of marine heatwaves, according to new research that highlights the need to keep seas from warming further.
Large fish more vulnerable to climate change-induced fish kills

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.
Keep growing – Fish’s growth is not reduced by spawning

Atlantic horse mackerel. Photo by Kulac, Wikimedia Commons.
Contrary to what is stated in biology textbooks, the growth of fish doesn’t slow down when and because they start spawning. In fact, their growth accelerates after they reproduce, according to a new article published in Science.