More than 10% of the global population could face nutrition deficiencies in the coming decades due to fish catch declines, says a new Nature commentary published today co-authored by Nereus Director of Science William Cheung.
Richard Caddell, Nereus Fellow at Utrecht, has had his chapter “Uncharted Waters: Strategic Environmental Assessment in the UK Offshore Area” published in The Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive.
This chapter is part of the first concerted survey of the EU legislation concerning strategic environmental assessment (SEA). SEA involves a series of environmental review processes to assess the projected impact of major developmental or infrastructure projects and allows decision-makers to consider the implications of pursuing such projects in a more coherent and integrated manner. Nevertheless, the legal requirements of SEA have been to date little explored, especially in a marine context.
In our current eco-friendly world, where climate change makes front-page news and the killing of a lion launches thousands of Facebook posts, how can a porpoise be nearing extinction and most of the world not even know of its existence?
The vaquita is going extinct at an alarming rate, from an estimated 600 individuals in 1996 to 60 in 2016, states a report presented to Mexico’s Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources earlier this month. It’s the world’s smallest marine mammal, with a maximum length of only 1.5 meters (4.9 feet). And with its dark eye patches and mouth that seems to curl up into a smile even after death, the vaquita is not missing out on the cute factor.
Fish don’t respect borders. With 1982’s United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal nations were given the right to manage fisheries within their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) – the area that extends, generally, up to 200 nautical miles. But of course, fish don’t adhere to imaginary lines in the ocean.
By Wilf Swartz, Nereus Program Manager/Research Associate
Japanese call it shun (旬), the seasonality of food. It refers to the time of year when a specific type of food is at its peak, either in terms of harvest or flavour. It is not unique to Japanese culture, as The Byrds reminded us in the mid-1960s with their, now classic, rendition of “Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season).”
Richard Caddell, Nereus Fellow at Utrecht, has contributed a chapter entitled “‘Only connect’? Regime interaction and global biodiversity conservation” to the Research Handbook on Biodiversity and Law, to be published June 2016. The chapter looks at a number of different treaties that deal with biodiversity — international agreements that address the conservation of particular species and ecosystems.
OceanCanada Research Director Rashid Sumaila and his collaborators from the UBC Global Fisheries Cluster (Sea Around Us and the Nereus Program) have published an updated estimate of global fisheries subsidies in the international journal Marine Policy. The researchers found that the global fishing industry is being supported by $35 billion yearly in government subsidies, the majority of these, upwards of $20 billion annually, promote increased capacity that can lead to harmful impacts such as overfishing.
Recently published in Fisheries Oceanography by Nereus Alumnus Andre Boustany (Duke University) and Principal Investigator Patrick Halpin (Duke University) was the study “Tuna and swordfish catch in the U.S. northwest Atlantic longline fishery in relation to mesoscale eddies”. This research looks at the effects of different variables on the catch of tuna and swordfish — including mesoscale eddies, which are a type of ocean current, sea surface temperature and fishing gear used.
A new Nereus Program study, funded by the Nippon Foundation, finds that dynamic ocean management, which changes in real time in response to the nature of the ocean and its users, can reduce bycatch — fish and marine species caught accidentally while catching targeted species — without additional costs to fishers.
First Nations fisheries’ catch could decline by nearly 50 per cent by 2050, according to a new study examining the threat of climate change to the food and economic security of indigenous communities along coastal British Columbia, Canada.
“Climate change is likely to lead to declines in herring and salmon, which are among the most important species commercially, culturally, and nutritionally for First Nations,” said Lauren Weatherdon, who conducted the study when she was a UBC graduate student. “This could have large implications for communities who have been harvesting these fish and shellfish for millennia.”
