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.

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.

By Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, Nereus Program Fellow at Duke University

Due to their wide-ranging swimming behaviors, migratory fish, marine mammal, seabird and sea turtle species experience a variety, and an increasing amount, of anthropogenic pressures over the course of their lives. These threats, including climate change, overfishing, and marine pollution, combined with conservation strategies that largely fail to consider spatial connectivity over the life cycle, are resulting in declining populations worldwide.

Nereus Senior Research Fellow Daniel Dunn (Duke University) attended the workshop “A Conservation Agenda for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction” hosted by the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resource Governance at the University of Cambridge from May 10 to 11.