Principal Investigator Jack Kittinger and alumnus Elena Finkbeiner are co-authors on a new publication in Coastal Management that investigates how the current COVID-19 pandemic is impacting small-scale and coastal fishing. They call on governments, development organizations, NGOS, researchers, donors and the private sector to rapidly mobilize to help these vulnerable communities that are being severely impacted right now.

Principal Investigator Larry B. Crowder is part of a research team that recently wrote a review on the role of climate change in regard to marine spatial planning (MSP) and its future, published in Nature Sustainability. You can read the abstract and access it here.

Nereus Program Network Director Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor is lead author on a new study published in Natural Resources Forum, “Nature-based marine tourism in the Gulf of California and Baja California Peninsula: Economic benefits and key species”.

Research associate Juan José Alava (UBC) is lead author on a new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science that measures persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and mercury levels in bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Muhammed Oyinlola is lead author with Gabriel Reygondeau, Colette Wabnitz, and William Cheung as co-authors on a new study in Global Change Biology, “Projecting global mariculture diversity under climate change.” In their study, they look at how climate change will affect 85 of the most commonly farmed fish and invertebrates in coastal and open ocean areas.

Nereus research associate Juan José Alava is lead author on a new publication in the journal Marine Policy – “Mitigating cetacean bycatch in coastal Ecuador: Governance challenges for small-scale fisheries”

Nereus director (science) William Cheung (UBC) and Thomas Frölicher (University of Bern) are co-authors on the newly released Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) Summary for Policymakers (SPM). It was approved and presented at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on September 25, 2019.

‘Predicting Future Oceans: Sustainability of Ocean and Human Systems Amidst Global Environmental Change’ is now available. It contains contributions from previous and current Nereus research fellows, associates and Principal Investigators, and covers a diverse span of ocean topics that include marine ecology, biodiversity, economics, fisheries management, seafood supply, climate change and many more.

Nereus research associate Colette Wabnitz (UBC) recently appeared in a Reuters article, ‘Toxic seaweed a menace to Caribbean tourists’.

Nereus director (science) William Cheung (UBC) and research associate Rashid Sumaila (UBC) are co-authors on an article recently published in the journal Marine Policy – ‘Climate change impact on Canada’s Pacific marine ecosystem: The current state of knowledge’. They conducted a literature review to investigate currently known and projected impacts of climate change on Canada’s Pacific marine ecosystem.

Palau’s President Tommy Remengesau Jr. signs a presidential directive that intends to reduce fishing pressure on reefs and promote the consumption of local pelagic seafood, a policy which was advocated for in a Nippon Foundation-UBC Nereus Program research publication last year.

Vatosoa Rakotondrazafy receives the prestigious 2019 Whitley Award from The Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) for her work with traditional small-scale fishing communities throughout Madagascar. Vatosoa previously worked with Nereus Program co-directors Yoshitaka Ota (policy) and William Cheung (science), and program manager/research associate Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor as a Nippon Foundation DOALOS fellow at University of British Columbia in 2015.

Meet Nereus’s new research fellow Frédérique Fardin, who is working toward her Ph.D. researching mangrove forests throughout South East Asia and the Caribbean at the University of Cambridge/UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). You can briefly learn about her background and previous work experience in the Caribbean here.

Nereus Research Associate Colette Wabnitz (University of British Columbia) writes about attending the OceanVisions2019– Climate Summit, ‘Successes in resilience, adaptation, mitigation, and sustainability’ in Atlanta, Georgia on April 1-4th, 2019. She was co-chair of session VI – Integrated Modelling of Human and Climate Impacts on Ocean Systems. Fellow Becca Selden (Wellesley College) and Principal Investigator Malin Pinsky (Rutgers University) also attended.

Nereus’s Vicky Lam, William Cheung, Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor and Oai Li Chen from University of British Columbia (UBC) are all co-authors on an article with Rashid Sumaila recently published in Science Advances, entitled ‘Benefits of the Paris Agreement to ocean life, economies, and people’. The authors investigated how implementing the Paris Agreement could protect top-revenue generating catch globally, impacting fishers’ revenues, seafood workers’ income and household seafood expenditure.

Nereus’s Vicky Lam (University of British Columbia) recently co-authored an article in Regional Studies in Marine Science, entitled ‘Dealing with the effects of ocean acidification on coral reefs in the Indian Ocean and Asia’. They discuss the ecological and socio-economic impacts of ocean acidification (OA) and warming sea surface temperatures on shallow coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific, the region’s current adaptive capacity to OA, as well as potential solutions.

Nereus Fellow Brooke Campbell (University of Wollongong) wrote a blog about leaders among the Pacific Islands coming together to create policies to protect their coastal fisheries and resources for future generations of Pacific Islanders, and how they are monitoring and evaluating the progress of such policies.

Nereus Director of Policy, Yoshitaka Ota, gave the keynote lecture at the 20 year anniversary symposium for Satoumi (Japanese coastal restoration) in the Okayama Prefecture in Japan.

Coastal ecosystems are undergoing complex changes caused by both social and ecological drivers occurring at varying scales and speeds, which ultimately act as either risks or opportunities to coastal social-ecological systems. The assessment of adaptive capacity of coastal ecosystems is crucial in understanding the extent to which they will be able to accept and adapt to these social and biophysical drivers.

Human activities degrade and convert coastal ecosystems through infrastructure development, resource extraction, and tourism, among other anthropogenic activities. There is an urgency to gain a comprehensive understanding of how human activities/stressors impact coastal ecosystems and the ecosystems services they provide us.

Indigenous seafood consumption study featured in the Washington Post, CBC, and Metro News.

Coastal Indigenous people eat, on average, 15 times more seafood per person than non-Indigenous people in the same country, finds a Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program study published today in PLOS ONE.

Traditionally, Indigenous people have resisted research, especially quantitative research that has fed into the imposition of discriminatory socio-economic and political policies to the detriment of Indigenous communities. However, having access to a global database that quantifies fish consumption specifically by Coastal Indigenous peoples around the world, is a critical contribution to Indigenous struggle on a number of fronts.

Spatial differentiation of marine eutrophication damage indicators based on species density” was recently published in Ecological Indicators, co-authored by Nereus Alumnus Miranda Jones (UNEP-WCMC) and Nereus Director of Science William Cheung.

The Nereus Program was created to look at ocean questions that need input from experts on a range of topics from around the world. This past May 30 to June 3, nearly 50 of these experts gathered at the University of British Columbia for the Nereus Program Annual General Meeting.

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in 2013 and 2014, highlighted the vulnerability, impacts and adaptation of marine systems to climate change and ocean acidification.