Category: New & Notable

Sea Around Us Bridges Science and Society

The theme at the 2010 AAAS annual meeting held in San Diego, CA in mid-February was Bridging Science and Society. Sea Around Us members delivered on this theme in three different sessions. Daniel Pauly presented on a panel that showed the growing consensus among fisheries scientists. Although global overfishing is becoming an accepted premise, questions inevitably arose on the future of aquaculture. Pauly explained that it would be wrong to look at gladiator tournaments and vilify sports, when there is curling; similarly, it would be wrong to look at salmon farming and vilify aquaculture, when there are oyster farms.

Metaphors are powerful communication tools. So are 3-D visualizations, especially in a world that is already too big and too fast-paced to keep track of information. Can we help manage the future by allowing people to see it? To address this question, Villy Christensen co-organized a panel on the use of visualizations to bridge science and society for sustainability.

The Sea Around Us Project’s Sherman Lai showed the game-like tool he and Christensen developed to allow users to visualize the real-time effects of their fishing decisions (see photo). Multiple players can watch how their choices would play out on the underwater world using a video game interface that can also display the embedded EcoSim models. These tools, currently used in immersion labs like our own in the Fisheries Centre, are designed to allow managers to experience the results of potential policies. The panel also discussed the potential for these tools online.

Jennifer Jacquet and her other panel members discussed non-regulatory means of enhancing cooperation – namely through reputation and shame. Ralf Sommerfeld, a recent graduate who worked with the Max Planck Institute, presented several of his new game theoretical studies showing that gossip and reputation can lead to increases in overall cooperation. Jacquet proposed we migrate away from guilt-based efforts in conservation (e.g. eco-labels) and toward shame-based strategies, which we can use to motivate large-scale resource users. To show evidence of this in the real world, John Hocevar, head of oceans campaigns for Greenpeace USA, presented Greenpeace work to affect retailer reputation to encourage greater cooperation.

The Sea Around Us members also participated in the COMPASS marine mixer with scientists and journalists and talks on designing and implementing large-scale marine reserves. AAAS was truly a meeting to bridge science and society.

Sea Around Us Heads to AAAS

This week, several members of the Sea Around Us Project head off to the 2010 meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, California. On Saturday, Daniel Pauly is a speaker on the panel Denial, Detente, and Decisions: Fisheries Science at the Crossroads. Also that day, Villy Christensen has co-organized a panel titled Bridging Science and Society for Sustainability: The Role of Visualization, where Sherman Lai will be speaking. Jennifer Jacquet has organized and will speak on the panel Preserving the Global Commons Through Conservation and Cooperation on Sunday. We look forward to reporting back on the results of this big event.

Daniel Pauly Delivers Keynote at Seafood Summit

Daniel Pauly recently gave the keynote address at the 2010 Seafood Summit in Paris. His talk compared industrial fishing to a Ponzi scheme, where instead of extracting a sustainable interest from invested capital, we use up the capital itself, and hope for other ‘investors’. He discussed the three-way expansion of fishing through the 20th century: geographically, by fishing in distant waters and getting access to African, Caribbean and Pacific waters; by fishing in deeper and deeper waters; and a taxonomic expansion. Pauly then addressed aquaculture and its limitations, particularly the double accounting of carnivorous farmed fish. He finished by talking about conservation efforts and the need to include the small-scale fisheries in the developing world in conservation efforts. His full talk is available through the Seafood Summit website.

New Studies Give Shape to Future Jellyfish Research

jellyfish

Jellyfish appear to be on the rise and Sea Around Us Project members Deng Palomares and Daniel Pauly have recently published two studies in the journal Hydrobiologia that help lay the foundation for future jellyfish research. The first paper, co-authored with several other colleagues, provides an overview on the general aspects and shortcomings of jellyfish coverage in the online databases available to ecosystem modelers (i.e. Fishbase, Sealifebase, and Ecopath with Ecosim). The second study looks at the growth of jellyfish and concludes that jellyfish grow at a similar rate to small fishes. Their broad predictions on jellyfish growth might also assist in determining how specific, unstudied species might grow.

MEY=MSY

MEYWhen one considers all the extra value generated in a fishery such as processing, distribution and marketing of fish products, higher fisheries quotas make more sense, according to a new paper titled MEY=MSY by Villy Christensen published in Fish and Fisheries. For more than 50 years, it has been generally accepted that the fishing sector stood to gain from managing fisheries at the effort level producing maximum economic yield (MEY) rather than maximum sustainable yield (MSY), which occurs at a higher effort level. “If operating at the lower MEY level would result in so much higher profit to the individual boats and to the fishing sector while maintaining catches nearly at MSY why don’t they?” asks Christensen in the paper. He explains that MEY was built on the assumption that only the revenue and cost structure for the fishing fleet were considered. Christensen points out that when processing, distribution and marketing of fish products are taken into account, there are more profits to be gained, which in turn makes MSY — and a higher fishing effort — the more appropriate target for fisheries. Read the full paper here.

High Seas Fleet Kept Afloat with Subsidies

The Belise-registered deep sea trawler Chang Xing trawling in in High seas bottom trawlers catch some of the tastiest fish (think Orange roughy, rockfish, and Patagonian toothfish), which are also some of the most vulnerable and overfished species because they grow and mature so slowly. A new study shows that this type of overfishing continues because the  200-strong trawling fleet is kept afloat with government money.

Several members of the Sea Around Us Project led by fisheries economist Rashid Sumaila estimated bottom trawl fleets operating in the high seas, i.e., outside of the Exclusive Economic Zones of maritime countries, receive an estimated US$152 million per year in fisheries subsides, which is 25% of the total landed value of the fish. The profit achieved by this vessel group is normally not more than 10% of landed value, which means that without subsidies, the bulk of the world’s bottom trawl fleet operating in the high seas will be operating at a loss, and unable to fish, thereby reducing the current threat to deep-sea and high seas fish stocks. The study is titled Subsidies to high seas bottom trawl fleets and the sustainability of deep-sea demersal fish stocks and was published online this month in the journal Marine Policy.