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Archives for February 2016

February 2016

Hack-a-thon meets design to tackle ocean climate change communication strategies

Controlled chaos is one way to describe a Surya Vanka-led Design Swarm. Controlled chaos that brings great minds together to solve important real world problems would be more accurate. Conceived of by Vanka, a design industry leader and former Director of User Experience at Microsoft, the innovative hack-a-thon meets brainstorm design approach has been traveling the globe tackling issues where solutions are in high demand.

Process versus products: The role of creativity in the working lives of scientists

By Rebecca G. Asch, Senior Nereus Fellow, Princeton University

My mother is an abstract expressionist painter who creates art using oil paints, acrylics, watercolors, and pen and ink. My father has a Masters degree in physics and spent most of his career working as a software engineer. As a result, I have born witness to many conversations about the intersection between art and science throughout my life.

Climate change effects on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

A range of human pressures is threatening the sustainability of marine fisheries. Amongst those, overfishing, partly driven by Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, is a major stressor. Thirty percent of global fish catch goes unreported, found a recent study by Nereus Program collaborator Sea Around Us.

But the relationship between IUU fishing and climate change is a new topic. I speculate that climate change impacts on fisheries may indirectly increase IUU fishing.

Investigating ideal fishing conditions for tuna and swordfish in the U.S. northwest Atlantic ocean

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.

Jellyfish for dinner: Is fishing a viable solution to the increase in jellyfish blooms?

While jellyfish, with their soft, gelatinous bodies, may seem like innocuous creatures, when they occur in large blooms they can often cause detrimental effects. Jellyfish blooms have been observed to clog power plants, cause mass mortality to fish in aquaculture farms, burst fishing nets and even sink a 10 tonne fishing vessel. It is predicted that jellyfish will benefit from climate change and other anthropogenic changes, such as overfishing, eutrophication and coastal development.