Text and photos by Madeline Cashion.
This summer/fall I spoke at three marine research conferences hosted in three very different cities. I was presenting the first chapter of my thesis, for which I analyzed the quality of official fisheries catch statistics for sharks, skates, and rays in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Over half of the species in this group of fishes are at risk of extinction in the region, with overfishing being their greatest threat.
Looking for an exciting PhD or postdoc opportunity?
Scholarships (for PhD) and fellowships (postdoc) are available for scientists who wish to work at the University of Western Australia with the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean. These outstanding opportunities are available via the Forrest Research Foundation, which supports marine projects.
The deadlines for the next round is October 31, 2017.
Leading insurers from around the world have committed to take action on pirate fishing, an unlawful practice that costs the global economy tens of billions of dollars in losses every year and contributes to overfishing and the destruction of vital marine habitats and ecosystems.
According to a press release by Oceana, two dozen companies including Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, AXA, Generali, Hanseatic Underwriters and The Shipowners’ Club have co-sponsored the world’s first insurance industry statement on sustainable marine insurance.
Not only An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch made headlines when it premiered on Earth Day 2017 at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, but it has also been collecting awards in different parts of the globe.
This 40-minute long documentary directed by Alison Barrat from the Khaled Sultan Living Oceans Foundation follows the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, as he and his colleagues piece together a more realistic true picture of the amount of fish we have taken from our oceans and the speed at which we are running out of fish.
Nature published, both in its print and online editions, a brief feature on the Sea Around Us’ paper “Global marine fisheries discards: a synthesis of reconstructed data,” which appeared in Fish & Fisheries last June.
According to the research, conducted by Dirk Zeller, Tim Cashion, Deng Palomares and Daniel Pauly, industrial fishing fleets have been dumping nearly 10 million tonnes of good fish back into the ocean every year for the past 10 years.