Tag: policy

Cautious fish evolve out of marine reserves

Photo by Matana_and_Jes, Flickr

Photo by Matana_and_Jes, Flickr

New research supports the creation of more marine reserves in the world’s oceans because, the authors say, fish can evolve to be more cautious and stay away from fishing nets.

The research suggests that by creating additional “no-take” areas, some fish will stay within marine reserves where they are protected from fishing. While other fish will move around the ocean, these less mobile fish will continue to live in the protected areas, pass this behaviour on to their offspring, and contribute to future generations, increasing the overall stock.

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The looming extinction of the Maui dolphin

Maui’s dolphin. Photo by New Zealand Department of Conservation, Flickr

The world’s rarest and smallest known subspecies of dolphin, the Maui dolphin, is about to go extinct. Its population is down to 60 individuals from 2,000 in the 1970s.

Journalist Christopher Pala just launched a series of articles focusing on the reasons behind the disappearance of this subspecies of the Hector’s dolphin and the actions governments are taking (or not) to stop the death toll from rising.

Follow this link to read the first article of the series in Science.

Why did FAO choose to ignore the existence and trends of the reconstructed catch data?

Marine Policy recently published “Comments on FAOs State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA 2016),” authored by the Sea Around Us leaders Drs. Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller.

Both scientists expressed their concern over the implications for resource management and global food security of ignoring information aimed at filling the gaps that exist in the data reported by countries to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

They divide their observations into a few main points:

Can Brexit save the UK’s seas?

Photo by Chris Allen for Geograph, licenced under CC.

Photo by Chris Allen for Geograph, licensed under CC.

The British press was all over them.

The day after they received the Ocean Award in the Science category, the Sea Around Us leaders, Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller, were bombarded with questions regarding their findings on declining fish stocks and their catch reconstruction research method.

Talking to the BBC, Pauly explained that the decline is due to overfishing. He also said that, in most countries, real catch numbers are 50 per cent higher than what is actually reported by official bodies, while in Europe the figure shrinks to about 30 per cent. “What is not counted (in Europe) is the fish that is discarded -and quite a big amount of fish is being discarded-, and about 10 per cent that is caught illegally and is not counted,” he said.

The next question was expected: Can the UK design and implement better fishery policies once it leaves the European Union?

WATCH THE VIDEO

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Sea Around Us updates real catch numbers

The Sea Around Us team is pleased to announce that the marine fisheries catch data and derived indicators on its website have been updated from 2010 to include information from 2011, 2012, and 2013.

This means that time series with 64 years’ worth of data (1950-2013) are available for free on www.seaaroundus.org, as is our catch mapping tool.

The documentation of data, methods, and assumptions made for this update will be presented for each country and territory in early 2017, after a further update to 2014 has been completed.

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