Nereus member Julia Mason et al., have developed and applied a novel framework to build climate resilient fisheries worldwide. The authors claim this framework is a valuable starting point for critical application of resilience concepts to fisheries socio-ecological systems.
In November 2021, the WTO (World Trade Organization), drafted and agreement on how to tackle harmful fisheries subsidies. Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor et al., provide a constructive critique to make this draft agreement more realistic and specific, and therefore applicable.
Conservation of fish and other marine life migrating from warming ocean waters will be more effective and also protect commercial fisheries if plans are made now to cope with climate change, according to a Rutgers-led study in the journal Science Advances.
The new Blue Paper “The Human Relationship With Our Ocean Planet”, co-authored by Dr. Yoshitaka Ota, commissioned by the Ocean Panel urges us to recognize the ocean’s role in not just providing material goods, but different forms of wellbeing including cultural identity, knowledge & sense of place and belonging.
Solène Guggisberg was awarded the Gerard J. Mangone Prize 2019 for her article “The EU’s Regulation on the Sustainable Management of External Fishing Fleets: International and European Law perspectives”.
Nereus Network members Katherine Seto and Quentin Hanich co-authored a new ground-breaking study “Illuminating dark fishing fleets in North Korea”, shedding light on illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by Chinese fleets.
Principal Investigator Quentin Hanich co-authored a new paper that looks at how openness and accessible information can be used in negotiating and developing international fisheries conservation and management measures, to help ensure their future sustainability.
You can now watch a series of presentations given by Nereus Program research fellows describing their work in Nereus Program’s “Predicting Future Oceans” book. It is an encapsulation of a decade’s worth of ocean research done by Nereus Program, made freely available for the public to watch on YouTube.
Director (science) William Cheung is a co-author on a new publication in ICES Journal of Marine Science, “Bioenergetic influence on the historical development and decline of industrial fisheries.”
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.
Congratulations to Daniel Dunn and The Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean System (MiCO) for recently winning the Ocean Awards 2020 Innovation Award from Blue Marine Foundation for their work on migratory marine species, making it easier to work with data.
William Cheung and Thomas Frölicher recently published a study in Nature Scientific Reports showing the impact marine heatwaves have on fish stock biogeography and biomass in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.
Congratulations to Nereus research fellow Guillermo Ortuño Crespo for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation! Here you can read the summary he wrote about his research, as well as his future directions.
ASU-CI Nexus is hiring a Post-Doctoral Fellow in sustainable oceans to help assess the global prevalence of human rights abuses in the seafood sector, with a focus on wild-capture fisheries. There is a May 1, 2020 deadline, and you can read the full description and access the application portal here.
Seeking a highly motivated postdoc at Memorial University to join a team investigating ecosystem dynamics in Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Arctic. Details and contact information within.
The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) awarded Guillermo Ortuño Crespo the runner-up prize for seafood sustainability, for his proposal “Dynamic Habitat Predictions of Two Bycaught Oceanic Shark Species.”
Julia Mason is lead author with Larry Crowder as a co-author on a new study published in Biological Conservation, “Fishers’ solutions for hammerhead shark conservation in Peru.”
Nereus Program director of science William Cheung (UBC) was recently announced as a recipient of the prestigious UBC Killam Research Fellowship for outstanding faculty research.
Director (science) William Cheung is a co-author with others on a new study published in PLoS ONE, “Potential socioeconomic impacts from ocean acidification and climate change effects on Atlantic Canadian Fisheries.”
Director (science) William Cheung and Rashid Sumaila are co-authors on a recent study published in Science Advances, “Escaping the perfect storm of simultaneous climate change impacts on agriculture and marine fisheries.”
Nereus Program director (science) Willam Cheung and research fellow Muhammed Oyinlola are co-authors on a new Institute for the Ocean and Fisheries (UBC) report – “Dynamic Integrated Marine Climate, Biodiversity, Fisheries, Aquaculture and Seafood Market Model (DIVERSE)”. You can read a brief summary and access it here.
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 Program principal investigator Malin Pinsky was the focus of a recent article that appeared in ScienceNews and in ScienceNews for Students – “Malin Pinsky seeks to explain how climate change alters ocean life”.
Malin Pinsky, Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumaila (UBC) all appear in a recent New York Times article about Iceland’s fisheries adapting to shifting fish distributions, entitled “Warming Waters, Moving Fish; How Climate Change is Reshaping Iceland”.
Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor is lead author with co-authors William Cheung, Muhammed Oyinlola, Gerald Singh, Wilf Swartz and Yoshitaka Ota on a new paper in Marine Policy – “Social equity and benefits as the nexus of a transformative Blue Economy: A sectoral review of implications”.
Nereus Program research associate Juan José Alava (UBC) wrote a blog for The Conversation about the rise in mercury concentrations in top marine predators due to climate change and overfishing, and the effect this has on human health, the fishing industry, and marine food webs.
Becca Selden (Wellesley College) and Malin Pinsky (Rutgers University) are co-authors on a new study in ICES Journal of Marine Science – “Coupled changes in biomass and distribution drive trends in availability of fish stocks to US West Coast ports.”
Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC) is a co-author on a new study published in the journal Fisheries Research – “Using harmonized historical catch data to infer the expansion of global tuna fisheries”.
The UN Environmental Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is seeking to fill a Senior Post-Doctoral position working to integrate climate change into marine spatial conservation planning, with a December 8, 2019 application deadline. You can find a link to apply in here.
Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC) and U. Rashid Sumaila (UBC) are co-authors on a new paper in Marine Policy – “Busting myths that hinder an agreement to end harmful fisheries subsidies”. You can read an overview of the paper here, as well as access the original.
School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) master’s student Sallie Lau (University of Washington) wrote a blog about her experience at the recent Nippon Foundation Nereus Science Conference. Both English and Chinese versions are posted here.
School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) master’s student Karin Otsuka (University of Washington) wrote a blog about her experience at the Nippon Foundation Nereus Program Ocean Science Conference in September, as well as her research this past summer in Miyakojima, Okinawa, Japan.
Vicky Lam (UBC) is a co-author with Rashid Sumaila (UBC), Daniel Pauly (UBC) and others on a new study published in the journal Marine Policy – “Updated estimates and analysis of global fisheries subsidies”.
Several Nereus Program participants are co-authors on a new paper just published in Nature Sustainability – “Towards a sustainable and equitable blue economy”. The authors recommend five priority areas to address to ensure a safe and just future global ocean economy.
Nereus research fellow Muhammed Oyinlola (UBC) successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation – ‘Global seafood production from mariculture: current status, trends and its future under climate change’.
Nereus Program director (science) William Cheung and Rashid Sumaila are co-authors on a new paper published in Marine Policy – ‘Evaluating present and future potential of arctic fisheries in Canada’.
Colette Wabnitz (UBC) and Robert Blasiak (Stockholm Resilience Centre) are co-authors on a new paper in the journal Marine Policy – ‘A global assessment of structural change in development funding for 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.
Robert Blasiak (Stockholm Resilience Centre), Colette Wabnitz (UBC) and Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) are all co-authors on a publication in the Marine Policy special issue on Ocean Finance. Their paper resulted from a two-day workshop focused on the transparency of ocean financial resources, which took place at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in December 2018.
The final Nippon Foundation Nereus Ocean Science Conference was recently held at Princeton University in New Jersey. Nereus Program research fellows, principal investigators, alumni, research associates and guests presented their research and reflected on the culmination of a decade of interdisciplinary research, and what the future holds for the oceans and society.
A recent study performed by Nereus researchers showing governance gaps concerning marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) is featured in Science Daily.
Colette Wabnitz (UBC) and Robert Blasiak (Stockholm Resilience Centre) are guest editors this month for a special issue on Ocean Finance in the journal Marine Policy. Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) also contributes with a paper on funding fisheries projects under the climate change regime.
‘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 members Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, Daniel Dunn, and Patrick Halpin are co-authors on a new paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, ‘High-seas fish biodiversity is slipping through the governance net’. They stress the need to include fish biodiversity in negotiations for the new BBNJ treaty at the United Nations General Assembly and close current legal gaps in existing ocean governance frameworks.
Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC) and director (science) William Cheung (UBC) are co-authors on a recent publication that models how changing environmental conditions and climate may influence future Pacific sardine distribution in Northwest Mexico, and what it may mean for marine ecosystems and regional fishers.
An updated summary of Colin Thackray (Harvard University), Elsie Sunderland (Harvard University), et al.’s paper that models how climate change and overfishing are contributing to the bioaccumulation of neurotoxin methylmercury (MeHg) in top ocean predators.
Research fellows Harriet Harden-Davies (University of Wollongong/ANCORS) and Guillermo Ortuño Crespo (Duke University) with Daniel Dunn (Duke University) are co-authors on a policy brief published by IDDRI that aims to strengthen the current high seas management and governance framework to improve marine conservation and sustainability.
Leah Burrows (Science and Technology Communications Officer) of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) wrote an article about Elsie Sunderland’s and Colin Thackray’s recent publication on methylmercury bioaccumulation in marine predators for The Harvard Gazette.
Colin Thackray (Harvard University) and Elsie Sunderland (Harvard University) are co-authors with others on a new publication that models how climate change and overfishing are contributing to the bioaccumulation of neurotoxin methylmercury (MeHg) in top ocean predators, some of which are commonly consumed species of seafood.
Nereus research fellow Harriet Harden-Davies (University of Wollongong/ANCORS) and Rashid Sumaila (UBC) are co-authors on a new paper published in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems that identifies necessary measures to restore ocean health for future generations.
Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) has published the article ‘The roles of nongovernmental actors in improving compliance with fisheries regulations’ in the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law.
Nereus research fellow Kisei Tanaka (Princeton University) accepted a position as Research Scientist in the Conservation & Science department at Monterey Bay Aquarium, starting in August 2019.
Nereus research fellow Jessica Spijkers’s (Stockholm Resilience Centre – SRC) recent publication on the rise in international fisheries conflicts is the focus of an article in Hakai Magazine – ‘International Fish Fights on the Rise’.
Nereus Principal Investigator Jack Kittinger (Conservation International, Arizona State University) is interviewed by Conservation International for their Human Nature Blog. You can read about his upbringing and inspiration to focus on sustainability and socially responsible seafood.
Nereus research associate Lydia Teh (UBC) writes a blog about her and other Nereus colleagues attending the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research Conference (IMBeR) Future Oceans Open Science Conference in Brest, France.
Nereus Fellow Tyler Eddy will be starting a position in November 2019 as an Associate Research Professor at the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research, Marine Institute, Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
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.
Nereus research fellow Harriet Harden-Davies (Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), University of Wollongong) recently published a short article in the special Oceans edition (Spring 2019) of The Geographer, entitled ‘Sharing benefits from genetic resources and sustaining the high seas’.
Nereus Fellow Zoë Kitchel (Rutgers University) writes about fellows Katy Seto, Julia Mason, Tiff-Annie Kenny, Becca Selden and Harriet Harden-Davies discussing critically important themes concerning equity and interdisciplinarity in relation to how the ocean is studied at the United Nations building, during an Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea.
Lead author Gerald Singh (University of British Columbia – UBC) with other Nereus Program co-authors recently published ‘Climate impacts on the ocean are making the Sustainable Development Goals a moving target travelling away from us’ in the open access journal People and Nature.
Nereus Research Fellow Matilda Petersson (Stockholm Resilience Centre) published the open-access article ‘Transnational partnerships’ strategies in global fisheries governance’ in the journal Interest Groups & Advocacy.
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.
Nereus Program Director (Science) William Cheung (University of British Columbia – UBC) and Research Associates Vicky Lam (UBC) and Colette Wabnitz (UBC) recently published the working paper ‘Future scenarios and projections for fisheries on the high seas under a changing climate’. You can read the abstract and access it here.
Nereus Senior Research fellow Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) recently published the article “The EU’s Regulation on the Sustainable Management of External Fishing Fleets: International and European Law Perspectives” in the International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law. You can read her summary and access it here.
Nereus Research fellow Jessica Spijkers (Stockholm Resilience Centre) is the lead author, with other Nereus colleagues as co-authors, on an upcoming publication concerning the global patterns of international fisheries conflicts, and which countries are primarily involved. You can read a brief preview of the article here.
Nereus Senior Research fellow Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) co-organized a workshop on Transparency in Fisheries Governance that took place in Utrecht on May 20-21st, 2019. Fellow Matilda Petersson (Stockholm Resilience Centre), and Principal Investigators Quentin Hanich (University of Wollongong), Alex Oude Elferink (Utrecht University) and Erik Molenaar (Utrecht University) were also in attendance.
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 Fellow Guillermo Ortuño Crespo (Duke University) received the ‘2019 Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Manuscript’ as the lead author for the paper ‘The Environmental Niche of the Global High Seas Pelagic Longline Fleet’, published in Science Advances.
Nereus Fellow Matilda Petersson (Stockholm Resilience Centre) wrote a blog about her most recent research and publication concerning non-state actor participation in tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) committee meetings, and their influence on decision-making.
Nereus Fellow Matilda Petersson (Stockholm Resilience Centre – SRC) is a co-author with Principal Investigator Henrik Österblom (SRC) on a new publication in Marine Policy, entitled ‘Patterns and trends in non-state actor participation in regional fisheries management organizations’. They investigate participation trends and influence of non-state actors in the global governance of migratory and straddling tuna fish stocks.
Nereus’s Yoshitaka Ota (Director of Policy, University of Washington) and Wilf Swartz (Program Manager, Dalhousie University) are co-authors on a recent article, entitled ‘Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Practices of the Largest Seafood Suppliers in the Wild Capture Fisheries Sector: From Vision to Action’. In it they discuss a framework that identifies and categorizes seafood suppliers’ practices based on their approaches to issues in the wild capture fisheries sector.
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.
Press Release: Nereus Program members Rashid Sumaila, Vicky Lam, William Cheung, Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor, Oai Li Chen, and co-authors published a study in Science Advances today, ‘Climate Target Could Net Additional Billions in Fisheries Revenue’. You can read the press release from UBC and access the article here.
Nereus Fellow Julia Mason recently had a chapter of her thesis published in Fisheries Research, ‘Community-level Effects of Spatial Management in the California Drift Gillnet Fishery’. You can read the abstract here, as well as access the article.
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 Fellow Kisei Tanaka (Princeton University) recently had a paper accepted by ICES Journal of Marine Science in which he and contributing authors use a modeling approach that incorporates environmental factors in assessing commercial fisheries influenced by climate, specifically the American lobster.
Nereus researchers recently published an article in the open access journal PLoS ONE, entitled ‘The role of human rights in implementing socially responsible seafood’. You can read about the human rights violations in the seafood supply chain, reasons that contribute to their ongoing existence, and the authors’ proposals to improve the situation.
Nereus Fellow Julia Mason (Stanford University) will serve as a John A. Knauss fellow in Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey’s office in Washington D.C. starting in February, where she will work on a variety of important ocean and environmental issues and policies for the upcoming 2019 year.
A workshop on ocean finance co-organized by Nereus Program researchers Robert Blasiak (Stockholm Resilience Centre) and Colette Wabnitz (University of British Columbia) took place on December 6-7, 2018 at the Stockholm Resilience Center. Nereus fellow Robert Blasiak writes about the workshop, which included Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) presenting her recent publication on funding coastal and marine fisheries projects under the climate change regime.
Nereus Research Associate Lydia Teh (University of British Columbia) writes a blog about the Bajau Laut in Malaysia and their struggles with fishing and way of life. She discusses the balance between marine biodiversity conservation and the social side of the Bajau Laut communities, to include securing basic rights such as food, shelter, education, and an adequate standard of living.
Nereus Fellow Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht Univeristy) published the article ‘Funding coastal and marine fisheries projects under the climate change regime’ in a special issue of Marine Policy on Funding for Ocean Conservation and Sustainable Fisheries. You can read the description and access the full article here.
Nereus Fellow Julia Mason (Stanford University) recently successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation – ‘Who knows and who decides? Incorporating diverse perspectives in fisheries management’. You can read the abstract for it here.
Nereus Fellow Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) will present her paper entitled “Funding coastal and marine fisheries projects under the climate change regime” at a workshop on Ocean Finance at the Stockholm Resilience Center in Sweden. Her paper examines projects related to fisheries which are financed by the four multilateral funds created within the climate change regime.
Nereus Fellow Presents at the Climate Impacts on Oceanic Top Predators (CLIOTOP) symposium in Taiwan
Nereus Fellow Guillermo Ortuño Crespo (Duke University) attended the Climate Impacts on Oceanic Top Predators (CLIOTOP) symposium in Taiwan, where he presented his research on the spatial ecology of pelagic long liners. Guillermo’s research was recently published in a special collection in Science Advances on high seas fisheries.
Nereus Program Manager and Research Associate Dr. Vicky Lam (University of British Columbia) and Nereus Fellow Muhammed Oyinlola (UBC) participated in a meeting organized by the World Bank and held at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome on October 22-24, 2018. While there, they discussed how marine fisheries in Sub-Saharan Africa are important both economically, and for the millions of people dependent on them for food.
Nereus Program Manager and Research Associate Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor (University of British Columbia) recently co-authored an article titled ‘Managing at Maximum Sustainable Yield does not ensure economic well-being for artisanal fishers’. In the article the authors discuss potential reasons for why it may be difficult for artisanal fishers to escape poverty, even with improved fisheries management and practices.
Nereus Fellow Solène Guggisberg (Utrecht University) writes about Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMO) and the challenges they face managing fish stocks, such as non-members fishing in areas under their management and insufficient sustainable and conservation measures. Some RFMOs, such as the South Pacific RFMO, have adopted measures to address these challenges.
Nereus Senior Research Fellow Solène Guggisberg presented a paper entitled ‘The role of non-governmental actors in fisheries governance – Improving compliance’ at the Transatlantic Maritime Emissions Research Network (TRAMEREN) conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. She discusses how non-governmental actors may be filling in a monitoring and enforcement gap at sea to improve vessels’ compliance with fishing regulations.
Nereus Research Associate Colette Wabnitz (University of British Columbia) attended, and Nereus Fellow Jessica Spijkers (Stockholm Resilience Center) co-facilitated a workshop on fisheries resources and conflict at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at University of California, Santa Barbara. The purpose of the workshop was to better understand exiting types of fisheries conflicts, and which drivers spark different types of conflict and intensities.
Nereus Fellow Katy Seto attended a workshop on October 22-24th in Yokohama, Japan about emerging remote sensing technologies that highlight fishing activities in the Pacific and around the globe. The meetings continued to develop a research collaboration between the University of Wollongong’s ANCORS with Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and Japanese Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA).
Nereus fellow Colin Thackray (Harvard University) discusses how toxic methylmercury (MeHg) bioaccumulates within marine food webs, beginning with phytoplankton and zooplankton. This ultimately leads to some larger marine predators, such as fish, having much higher MeHg concentrations than the surrounding seawater.
Nereus colleague Jack Kittinger (Arizona State University), with Transform Aqorau and Johann Bell, respond in Science’s Policy Forum to a recent article co-authored by Nereus PI Malin Pinsky (Rutgers University). Pinksy et al. discuss how geographic shifts of migratory species due to climate change may potentially lead to conflicts over resources, while Aqorau et al. discuss examples of how good governance is working for migratory species.
Nereus fellow Fernando Gonzalez Taboada from Princeton University writes about how the painting ‘And They Still Say Fish are Expensive!’ by Joaquín Sorolla is still relevant to modern fishing culture and practices, as well as different approaches to predicting future fish abundance in the ocean.
Impacts from climate change will increase the risk of extinction for vulnerable marine species, both locally and globally. But according to a new study from UBC, effective fisheries management may be able to reduce the probability of certain species going extinct by as much as 63%.
University of British Columbia researchers have found that chemical pollutant accumulation in Chinook salmon and southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northeast Coast region will be exacerbated under climate change. This is yet another anthropogenic stressor that threatens the survivability of the both Chinook salmon and southern resident killer whales.
Nereus PI Laurie Chan and Senior Fellow Tiff-Annie Kenny attended the International Society of Exposure Science and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology conference (ISES-ISEE 2018) in Ottawa, Canada on August 26th-30th. The conference’s focus was on environmental health concerns, and included how scientific and local knowledge combine to assess the impact of contaminated fish consumption on First Nations’ health and well-being in Canada.
Marine heatwaves can cause irreversible ecosystem damage and their frequency has doubled since 1982. If average global temperatures rise 3.5°C, we’ll see a jump from just fewer than four marine heat waves a year on average to a startling 122.
New models developed by Nereus researchers may help reduce this threat by giving regulatory agencies a powerful new tool to predict the month-by-month movements of longline fishing fleets on the high seas. The predictions should help determine where and when the boats will enter waters where by-catch risks are greatest.
One hundred and twenty five nations gathered from July 9-13 at the Committee on Fisheries meeting at the Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome, Italy, to examine international fisheries and agriculture issues.
In a Q & A session with Nereus researcher Dr. Richard Caddell, we delve deeper into the policy implications of the projected mass migration of fish towards the poles.
Halibut, sole and other flatfish are household names around the world. But that might not always be the case. New paper finds that climate change will drastically reduce flatfish numbers and alter species distributions by hundreds of kilometers by the end of the century.
The Nassau grouper: an endangered, boldly striped fish that was once plentiful in southern coastal Florida, the Florida Keys, Bermuda, the Yucatan, and the Caribbean Sea. For more than 20 years, conservationists in the Caribbean have been working to protect this endangered species. Climate change now threatens to undo all of it.
Twenty six million tons of seafood, worth $23 billion is illegally caught, unregulated and unreported every year. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, this is a “huge threat to all efforts to bolster sustainable fishing in the world’s oceans.”
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are an admirable set of targets set out to achieve a better world–but how do they interact with each other? Are some more pivotal to the success of all? Possibly.
All the big names in the field were in attendance; the 5 days of presentations crystallized how far we have come in understanding what climate change will mean for ocean systems. But we still have a long way to go before we achieve climate-ready ocean resource management.
I think what inspires me most about this group is that it values a diverse array of approaches to research. We reward the type of disciplinary flexibility and freedom that most academic organizations tend to smother. Nereus lets us be who we want to be, not who they want us to be
As coastal and surface fisheries are depleted and fishers turn to the deep sea to fill their nets, scientists are developing innovative ways to locate and protect undiscovered deep-sea habitats.
The most prevalent seafood supply chain is the shortest one: from the ocean to the plate. And that’s the one we have the least information on. Small-scale fisheries are vital to coastal communities around the world, but their contributions to global harvests are severely underestimated.
What happens to big prey when you fish out all of their big predators? Nereus researchers dig deeper into size-specific diet shifts.
Behind the scenes with a determined group of human rights and fisheries experts working to bring social responsibility to the forefront of sustainable fishing.
Reducing tourist consumption of reef fish is critical for Palau’s ocean sustainability, finds a new Nippon Foundation-UBC Nereus Program study published today in Marine Policy.
It’s fairly common knowledge that tuna is high in methylmercury, a neurotoxin that bioaccumulates in marine food webs. This means that methylmercury magnifies further up the food web – tuna eat smaller fish that eat even smaller fish or plankton — all of which could contain the contaminant.
Climate change is expected to have many impacts on the oceans; one of them is where fish are located in the ocean. Ocean warming is expected to cause fish to shift to different locations that are cooler — generally toward the poles and into deeper waters. But not all fish are moving in the same directions and at the same speeds. This is changing what fish are eating and who are eating them.
Nereus Fellow, Rachel Seary, a PhD Student at the University of Cambridge and the United Nations Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, has just returned from Cambodia, where she conducted a month long fieldwork period aimed at understanding the links between mangroves and fishing community livelihoods.
The authors looked at how food production on land and in the sea will be threatened by climate change and what the future effects on biodiversity, livelihoods and food security will be. They adopted the human development index (HDI) — a global index of life expectancy, education and per capita income. They found that all of the low human development index countries will face declines in both agriculture and fisheries production by 2050.
The rapid development of fisheries in the 1950’s facilitated declines in predator biomass, overexploitation, collapse of fish stocks, and degradation of marine habitats. A new PLOS ONE paper investigates past changes in trophic functioning of marine ecosystems cause by human-induced changes in species assemblages by applying an ecosystem approach to fisheries.
Pacific bluefin tuna are in trouble — they’re at just 2.6% of historic, pre-fishing levels. They have been overfished and this overfishing is still continuing. Due to this dire situation, proper management of the stocks is increasingly important, yet information of the fish’s life history and migration patterns is limited.
Developing nations, which have contributed little to the issue of climate change, are likely to experience reduced livelihood opportunities and emerging dietary nutrient deficiencies as a result of climate change impacts on fisheries.
Fisheries Economics Research Unit (UBC) Research Associate Louise Teh, Nereus Director of Science William Cheung, and OceanCanada Director and Nereus Research Associate (Honourary) Rashid Sumaila recently had a paper (“Scenarios for investigating the future of Canada’s oceans and marine fisheries under environmental and socioeconomic change”) published in Regional Environmental Change…
Indigenous seafood consumption study featured in the Washington Post, CBC, and Metro News.
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.
“Our energy choices have ramifications for many other types of pollutants,” said Elsie Sunderland, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard University and Nereus Program collaborator.
Nereus Fellow at Princeton University Colleen Petrik won the Science Board Best Presentation Award at the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) annual meeting, held in San Diego, from November 2 to 11.
From November 2 to 13, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) held their annual meeting in San Diego, USA. The meeting celebrated the 25th anniversary of PICES with the theme of looking at the past 25 years and imagining the next 25.
This information sheet looks at Japanese seafood imports and locations of forced and child labour.
For the past ten years, Sea Around Us has been constructing a more accurate view of world fishery catches, finding, among other things, that 30% of catch goes unreported.
“Emptying seas, mounting tensions in fish-hungry Asia” was published yesterday by Nikkei Asian Review. It discusses the state and future of oceans and fisheries in Asia, with increasing demand yet overfished stocks, and features insights by Nereus Director of Policy Yoshitaka Ota.
Mexico recently released its budget for 2017, and among the top five largest cuts were environmental protection (down by 37%), culture (-30%), and education (-11%). Political rhetoric aside, these cuts reflect a continuing view of these issues as minor, long-term, or otherwise less important or pressing.
“After climate change, fishing is the biggest impact humans will have on the oceans. But we have very a limited understanding of what happens beyond the horizon.
This chapter explores recent and future impacts of rapid temperature changes in the North Sea, identified as a ‘hot spot’ of climate change, with respect to biological, operational, and economic concerns in fisheries.
Nereus Fellow at Utrecht Richard Caddell acted as the keynote speaker at a fisheries law workshop on September 23 at Tromsø University, Tromsø, Norway.
We know the oceans are quickly changing; we are at a point in time where very different future oceans could be laid out in front of us.
In spring, as the plant buds push up through the ground and the days get warmer and longer, the baby salmon fry hatch out of their eggs and start swimming and feeding. At this time, their food – phytoplankton – should also bloom.
Nereus Program research featured in Wired, NEWS 1130, The Ubyssey, and Conservation magazine.
Nereus Principal Investigator at Utrecht University Erik Molenaar and the Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea (NILOS) hosted a seminar on fishing in the polar regions on September 12 at Utrecht University.
Nereus Fellow at UBC Mathieu Colléter participated in the Day of the Thousandth Fisheries Scientist conference, which took place at Agrocampus Ouest in Rennes, France, on September 16.
This year, the Nereus Program will hold a seminar series with UBC’s Green College on “Adapting to global changes in oceans and fisheries.” This series will consist of seven lectures looking at how ocean changes are affecting environments and people.
Nereus Alumni at ETH Zurich Thomas Fröelicher attended The Royal Society’s meeting on ‘Ocean Ventilation and Deoxygenation in a Warming World’ on September 12 and 13, in London, United Kingdom.
Nereus Program research featured in Global News, CBC Radio Canada, Metro News, and CKNW AM 980.
Global fisheries could lose approximately $10 billion of annual revenues by 2050 if climate change continues at current rates, and countries most dependent on fisheries for food and livelihoods will feel more of the effects, finds new Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program research published today in Scientific Reports.
Jessica Spijkers is a PhD student at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Sweden) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Australia).
Explaining Ocean Warming is a comprehensive report produced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) looking at the impacts of warming on ocean life, ecosystems, and goods and services. The report is the work of 80 scientists from 12 countries, launched during the IUCN World Conservation Congress, September 1-10 in Hawaii. Nereus Program research was contributed to two chapters within the report.
Nereus Program research covered in National Geographic, Reuters, CBC Radio Canada, Metro, LocalXpress, and Sport Fishing.
Closing the high seas to fishing could increase fish catches in coastal waters by 10%, compensating for expected losses due to climate change, finds a new Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program study published in Fish and Fisheries.
The Nereus Scientific & Technical Briefs on Marine Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) series was developed out of a workshop held prior to this year’s 4th International Marine Conservation Congress in St. John’s, Newfoundland (July-August 2016).
Nereus Fellow at University of Cambridge/UNEP-WCMC Rachel Seary attended the 1st FishAdapt conference on climate change adaptation for fisheries and aquaculture, held in Bangkok from August 8 to 10, 2016.
Marine areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction contain ecosystems with marine resources and biodiversity of significant ecological, socioeconomic, and cultural importance. These areas and their resources are subject to increasing impacts from ongoing human activities and global climate change and their associated cumulative and combined effects.
A new source of publicly accessible data on fishing vessel activity is providing unprecedented insight into the scope of fishing in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) and governance gaps therein.
Up until the 1960s, the open-ocean in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) was one of the last frontiers of fisheries exploitation.
Despite their remoteness, the high seas and deep ocean in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) are at the forefront of CO2-induced climate stress, both in their mitigation capacity, and their vulnerabilities.
Nereus Director of Policy Yoshitaka Ota acted as moderator at the International Symposium on Capacity Building for Sustainable Oceans from July 19 to 20 in Tokyo, Japan.
Newly published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy is the paper “Dispute Resolution and Scientific Whaling in the Antarctic: The Story Continues” by Nereus Fellow Richard Caddell, Utrecht University. The paper looks at the implications of judgements by the International Court of Justice against Japanese scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Nereus Alumni and Research Fellow at Duke University Andre Boustany attended the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the North Pacific Ocean (ISC) plenary meeting in Sapporo, Japan, from July 13th to July 18th.
One of the most significant – and increasingly bitter – international disputes of recent years has engaged legal claims over maritime territory in the South China Sea. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (UNCLOS), to which the main protagonists are parties, states are entitled to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) conferring sovereign rights and jurisdiction up to 200 nautical miles of maritime space from their coasts.
It’s important to address the activities of transnational corporations in global fishery reform, argues a new letter co-authored by Nereus Program Principal Investigator Henrik Österblom, Stockholm Resilience Centre, and published in PNAS.
Senior Nereus Fellow at Duke University, Daniel Dunn, acted as a panelist at a COMPASS Capitol Hill briefingon ocean change and implications for fisheries and fishing communities.
“Towards an integrated database on Canadian ocean resources: benefits, current states, and research gaps” was recently published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, authored by Nereus Fellow Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC), Director of Science William Cheung, and OceanCanada Director Rashid Sumaila (Nereus Honorary Research Associate).
Aquaculture, the farming of aquatic species, is gradually becoming an important aspect of solving the challenge of global food security. The supply of seafood from fisheries is declining; fish stocks can only be increased if we reduce our fishing pressures, yet governments continue to subsidize the fishing industry for us to fish more. Hence, the open window we have is aquaculture.
n the lead up to last week’s referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union, immigration often seemed to be at the forefront at the debate. But the fishing industry was also a hot topic, even leading to demonstrations and bitter exchanges on the impact of EU membership, including from boats on the Thames.
For five days, from May 23rd to 27th, and 14 years after the 1st World Fisheries Congress in Athens, Greece, the 7th World Fisheries Congress visited Busan, the second largest city of South Korea.
The Nereus Program organized a workshop with the Center for Ocean Solutions and the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security called “Integrating climate change and small scale fisheries: Impact shocks and responses.”
Nereus Program research and interviews in Vice, the Globe and Mail, and Radio Canada International.
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.
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.
The Nereus Program presented at the Global Fishing Watch Research Workshop on June 6th and 7th at Google’s offices in San Francisco, California, United States.
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.
Paris tends to relate to fisheries through its gourmet cuisine, which every so often includes fish. However, in December 2015, Paris was the epicenter of the renowned United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21), which aimed at setting a target to curb Carbon emissions at a global scale.
Japanese call it shun (?), 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 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.
The paper “Temperature-based targeting in a multispecies fishery under climate change” was recently published in Fisheries Oceanography by Nereus Program Fellow Daniel Dunn (Duke University) and Principal Investigator Patrick Halpin (Duke University). The study looked at whether the bottom temperature of the water, in spring and fall, affected the distribution of Atlantic cod in the USA Northeast compared to other species of fish.
Andre Boustany, Nereus Alumnus (Duke University), attended the ICCAT Advisory Committee Meeting and the Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel Meeting in March. Boustany sits on the advisory panel for both.
Nereus Program research and interviews featured in Vox, Deutschlandfunk, and Toronto Star.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
For three days from January 18th to 20th, Monterey, California, has become an aggregation hotspot for more than 100 of the world’s foremost experts on the conservation and management of the three bluefin tuna species that inhabit our global ocean.
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.
Countries drastically underreport the number of fish caught worldwide, and the numbers obscure a significant decline in the total catch.
Nereus research reported on in the Washington Post, the Vancouver Sun, CTV News, Global News, NPR, Hakai magazine, The Tyee, Times Colonist and Vancouver Observer.
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.
Based on the current trajectory of human-induced impacts on the environment, it is clear that we are pushing the oceans and marine ecosystems to unprecedented limits.
Climate change could affect temperatures all over the world, but what may not be immediately apparent is that climate change will affect ocean temperatures.
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?
New media coverage from Science, BBC News, South China Morning Post, International Business Times, Undercurrent News and more.
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.
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).