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Archives for November 2015

November 2015

Ask an Expert: Will oceans be adequately discussed at COP21?

| Policy Forum, Climate Change, Law and Governance

From November 20 to December 11, leaders from more than 195 countries will meet in Paris to discuss the future of the planet. But will oceans be on the agenda?

COP21, the “Conference of Parties”, is the 21st United Nations Conference on Climate Change. It is being hyped as the most important climate event since COP15 in Copenhagen, which produced the Copenhagen Accord — a political agreement that was deemed by many to be unsuccessful. Here Yoshitaka Ota, Nereus Director (Policy), and William Cheung, Nereus Director (Science), discuss whether these negotiations will be successful, what’s at stake for the future of the world’s oceans, and what else can be done to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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Collaboration with Stockholm Resilience Centre on global fish biomass distribution model

| Latest News

Colleen Petrik, Senior Nereus Fellow at Princeton, visited the Stockholm Resilience Centre at the University of Stockholm from October 26 to 30 to collaborate with former Nereus Fellow James Watson. While with the Nereus Program, Watson developed a simulation model of global fish biomass distribution. This model demonstrated that the ability of fish to swim towards high food and growth environments had a drastic effect on the spatial distribution of fish biomass, especially that of top predators.

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Nereus at IMBER IMBIZO IV in Trieste, Italy

| Latest News

The fourth Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) IMBIZO (a Zulu word meaning ‘meeting or gathering’) workshop took place at the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia and Geofisica (OGS) in Trieste, Italy, from October 26 to 30th, 2015. The meeting gathered scientists and researchers from all over the world to discuss how we integrate knowledge of marine and human systems, and address multiple scales and stressors.

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Fish alter migration patterns as global waters warm

| Latest News

Water spills from the edge of a giant, melting iceberg on the cover of the November 2015 issue of Science.

The special issue focused on the effects of climate change on our ocean systems, and highlighted research by Dr. William Cheung, an Associate Professor with the Changing Ocean Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, and Director (Science) of the Nereus Program. The journal used a map Dr. Cheung and his team created that describes the effects of changing water temperatures on fish species migration.

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Warming Oceans and Rising Tides: Coastal Adaptation in Northwest BC, Canada

| Latest News

Vicky Lam, Fisheries Economist and Senior Research Fellow (UBC), was invited by the Fraser Basin Council to give a presentation on the impacts of climate change on fisheries on the coast of northwest British Columbia, Canada. She attended the one day workshop titled “Warming Oceans and Rising Tides: Coastal Adaptation in Northwest BC”, in Prince Rupert on October 21.

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Are we adapting to climate change, or resigning to it?

| Policy Forum, Climate Change, Fisheries

by Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor

In A Sand County Almanac, the landmark book on wilderness, ecology, and conservation, we are offered a short anecdote regarding a changing environment:

“I had a bird dog named Gus. When Gus couldn’t find pheasants he worked up an enthusiasm for Sora rails and meadowlarks. This whipped-up zeal for unsatisfactory substitutes masked his failure to find the real thing. It assuaged his inner frustration.” – Aldo Leopold (1949).

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THE NEREUS PROGRAM

The Nereus Program strives to explore a broad range of perspectives and scientific opinions on ocean sustainability, and to create an inclusive community of researchers and other marine professionals. This principle is founded on the Nippon Foundation’s vision of global capacity building to ensure that our oceans’ legacy is preserved and potential is protected for future generations.

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