By Richard Caddell, Nereus Program Fellow at Utrecht University
It is increasingly evident that profound changes will be necessary to current fishing practices in order to meet future global demand for seafood. Many fisheries are already operating at or beyond their ecological and economic capacity, while climate change and associated processes are projected to have significant impacts upon the future distribution of fish stocks.
Madingley is a General Ecosystem Model and hopes to indirectly represent all forms of life, terrestrial and marine. Nereus Fellow Phil Underwood works with the Madingley model to validate its use as a policy tool in relation to fisheries, ecosystem health, and food security. He is working to better understand the relationship between oceanic ecosystems and human societies.
On March 16, the Nereus Program hosted the last lecture of its 2016/2017 UBC Green College Seminar series with guest speaker Douglas McCauley, Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. His talk, entitled “Managing Marine Wildlife: The Extinction of Fauna in the Ocean” looked at the differences between extinctions on land and in the oceans.
The main focus of the 2017 symposium was small pelagic fisheries, which includes species such as herring, capelin, anchovy, sardine, and mackerel. Small pelagic fisheries provide about 25% of the world catch and are important for the socio-economic well-being of many coastal societies. The symposium sessions contributed to the goal of revitalizing international cooperation to develop frameworks addressing issues such as the impacts of climate and fishing pressure on small pelagic populations.
Nereus Director of Science William Cheung (UBC) was an invited speaker at the Regional Symposium on Climate Change hosted by the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI) March 13 to 16 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Nereus Steering Committee Chair Daniel Pauly (UBC) participated remotely. Cheung presented on the relationship between marine biodiversity and climate change.
Conservation International (CI), The Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) at Arizona State University, and the Nereus Program are pleased to invite applications for a post-doctoral fellow position in sustainable fisheries. The Fellow will support three focal areas for the ASU-CI Knowledge Partnership: Protecting essential natural capital for human well-being; Transitioning to sustainable production; and, Training the next generation of conservation leaders.
We know that fuel use contributes to climate change, but in a vicious circle, climate change could also increase fuel use in fishing. This is due to fish shifting their distributions due to warming waters. With this increased use of fuel and the increasing price, small-scale and artisanal fishers will have a harder time sustaining livelihoods and feeding their families under climate change.
Nearly 4000 people attended the Association of the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) annual conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, from February 27 to March 3, making it the largest conference of the beginning of the year. All fields of ocean science were covered, from freshwater biochemistry to management, from satellite use to DNA and genomics. As well, species at each trophic level, including bacteria, viruses, plankton, fish, and mammals, and all the new models were looked at.
Mangrove forests, made up of shrubs and trees with sprawling roots that grow in salt water, provide many services to humans and marine ecosystems. They sequester carbon, pulling it from the atmosphere, and prevent erosion of coastal areas. Due to their unique characteristics, mangrove forests provide an important source of food and shelter for marine species, including many important fisheries. Mangroves cover 150,000 km² of coastline in tropical and warm temperate regions around the world. Rachel Seary, Nereus Fellow at Cambridge/UNEP-WCMC, is currently conducting research to understand both the direct benefits that mangroves have on communities living and fishing within their vicinity and also the indirect benefits that mangroves may have on coastal fisheries productivity in Bali, Indonesia.
This paper proposes that climate change will alter the effects of pollutants in marine food webs by either directly increasing contaminant exposure (for instance due to receding ice caps), or making organisms more vulnerable to other climate change impacts. It discusses two main classes of contaminants that can affect the health of marine organisms: fat-soluble contaminants known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and protein-binding contaminants such as methylmercury (MeHg).
