As many of our readers know by now, the Sea Around Us’ website hosts a publicly accessible database that covers the fisheries of all maritime countries and territories of the world, from 1950 to 2014, and is regularly updated.
This database is founded on the reconstructions of countries’ historical catch data that are generated by over 300 scientists from around the world. Continue reading
Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary. Photo by NOAA’s National Ocean Service, Flickr.
Highly protected marine reserves can help mitigate against the impacts of climate change, a study by a team of international scientists has concluded.
Scientists say reserves can help marine ecosystems counter fight five key impacts of climate change: ocean acidification; sea-level rise; increased intensity of storms; shifts in species distribution, and decreased productivity and oxygen availability.
Starting in the summer of 2017, Dr. Dirk Zeller will be leading the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean as Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Western Australia.
While continuing with the project’s global approach towards the study of the impact of fisheries on the marine ecosystems of the world, the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean will focus on issues affecting this particular region and surrounding areas, and how those issues need to be taken into account when addressing global ocean conservation.
On April 28, 2017, the Sea Around Us organized the first Canadian screening of the film An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.
The event attracted dozens of people from the Lower Mainland’s environmental community, as well as UBC students, faculty and staff.
Researching and reporting on overfishing and underreported fish catches is not an easy task.
Nevertheless, for the past 18 years, the Sea Around Us has taken on this mission and nowadays its global reconstructed catch data has become a point of reference for scientists, conservation practitioners, fishers, and fisheries managers across the world.
But getting this information and the associated implications to the general public, and inspiring people to take action on it, is a whole different story. Fortunately, filmmaker Alison Barrat, from the Khaled Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, understood how important it is to spread the word about the true amount of fish we are taking out of our oceans and, with the support of the Smithsonian Channel, Rare and the Sea Around Us, produced and directed the documentary An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch.