Category: New & Notable

Climate Change to Further Degrade Fisheries Resources

A new study out this week shows how the effect of climate change can further impact the economic viability of current fisheries practices.

“Fisheries are already providing fewer fish and making less money than they could if we curbed overfishing,” says Rashid Sumaila, principal investigator of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC, member of the Sea Around Us Project, and lead author of the study. “We could be earning interest, but instead we’re fishing away the capital. Climate change is likely to cause more losses unless we choose to act.”

Partly supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, National Geographic, the World Bank and U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the study is a broad view of the impact of climate change on fisheries and their profitability. It was published online this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Over the last century the ocean has become warmer and more acidic. Other human-led factors, such as pollution and overfishing, have also been hard on marine species. With ocean warming, many species will move further towards the poles and into deeper water.

While fisheries in a few regions, such as the far north, may benefit from climate change, many other regions, particularly those in the tropics, can expect losses in revenues. Regional examples can help inform what could happen globally. For example, the reduction in landings of pelagic fisheries in Peru as a result of changes in sea surface temperature during the 1997-1998 El Niño event caused more than US$26 million of revenue loss.

“Changes in temperature and ocean chemistry directly affect the physiology, growth, reproduction and distribution of these organisms,” says William Cheung, associated faculty of the Sea Around Us Project. “Fish in warmer waters will probably have a smaller body size, be smaller at first maturity, with higher mortality rates and be caught in different areas. These are important factors when we think of how climate change will impact fisheries.”

“This study provides an early glimpse of how climate change might impact the economics of fishing,” says Sam Herrick, a NOAA scientist and co-author. “We must continue to study how climate change, combined with other factors, will affect marine ecosystems and the productivity of fishery resources.”

Biologically, maintaining more abundant populations can help increase fish’s capacity to adapt to environmental change. Curbing overfishing is crucial to making marine systems more robust and ready for changes that are already underway.

“This study highlights the potential negative impacts of climate change on the profitability of fisheries,” said Vicky Lam, UBC graduate student and co-author. “The next generation of scientists must put more effort on exploring ways to minimize the impacts of climate change.”

Fish stocks will also be more robust to climate change if the combined stresses from overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution runoff, land-use transformation, competing aquatic resource uses and other anthropogenic factors are minimized

“We have to remember that the effect of climate change on the marine environment will occur alongside the impacts on land,” says Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us Project and co-author. “It will not be easy to divert resources from one sector to help another sector. This is why a strong governance system is needed – to temper the losses on the sectors that are worst hit.”

“Governments must be anticipatory, rather than reactive,” says Sumaila. “We all need to think more of the future while we act now.”

For more information, see this summary provided by Pew.

Applying Science in Belize: from Taxonomy to Policy

This article was written by research assistant, Sarah Harper, and appears in the July/August 2011 newsletter.

The Sea Around Us project and Oceana team up for a conference to discuss what’s at risk, from a marine biodiversity perspective, if plans go ahead to drill for oil off the coast of Belize. The conference, co-hosted by Daniel Pauly and Deng Palomares, held in Belize City on June 29 and 30th was entitled Too precious to drill: the marine biodiversity of Belize. At the conference marine biologists, taxonomists and economists provided an exhaustive list of reasons the precious and pristine marine environment of Belize could be at risk. With some of the healthiest coral reefs, manatee populations, shark diversity and reef fish spawning aggregations in the Caribbean, Belize would lose a lot from an oil spill1. Tourism and fisheries are particularly at risk as these both rely on a healthy marine environment, and provide jobs, revenue and food to the people of Belize.

Just over a year ago, the International NGO Oceana, which recently opened an office in Belize City, caught wind of plans to develop an offshore oil industry in Belize. Leaked govermnment documents revealed a map of the territorial waters of Belize, a checkerboard of oil exploration consessions. Oceana, the largest international NGO focused solely on ocean conservation, raised the alarm bell and decided that quick action was needed to engage and empower the people of Belize to stand up to the government and protect their precious natural wealth. A campaign was launched with a petition to be signed by the people of Belize demanding a referendum on oil exploration offshore and in protected areas. Oceana met their target with over 10% of the voting population signing the petition (17,000+ signatures), the minimum requirement for a referendum to be called, and continues to raise awareness throughout the country with their colourful campaign bus (see photo) and heavy media engagements.

Further to their in-country efforts to engage the public, Oceana teamed up with the Sea Around Us project to deliver the scientific evidence required for a strong case against offshore drilling in Belize. A conference was set for the end of June 2011 and international scientists selected to share their expertise, including Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor, Dirk Zeller and myself. One of the goals of the conference was to repatriate the knowledge and expertise that had been gleaned from years of scientific study within Belize but that had not necessarily stayed within its borders. Many detailed studies have been conducted on diverse aspects of the Belizean marine environment but have been published abroad. The conference aimed to bring this knowledge back to Belize and use it as a tool to inform and improve decision-making.

Attendance at the two-day conference included fishers, government deligates, the US embasador to Belize, media, NGO’s and citizens of Belize. While the conference was well-attended, the main outlet for disseminating this information to the general public was the media, via breakfast television shows, radio, talk shows, etc.

The conference concluded with a letter to the government of Belize signed by 20 scientists from 10 ten nationaltities and most with years of experience studying the marine environment of Belize. This professional statement re-iterated the importance and value of the marine evironment and the need to protect it from anthropogenic threats, offshore oil drilling in particular.

With the conference concluded, a scientific report just released and a flurry of media exposure, the question remains: to drill or not to drill? The hope is that the government wakes up to an informed public who are now asking the tough questions: who will benefit from offshore oil drilling? Who will pay the price for the high environmental costs associated with this industry?
Perhaps I am biased given my background in marine conservation, but I think that in the waters of Belize, drilling for oil just doesn’t make sense! On the last day of the conference, the scientists and media adventured offshore to Turneffe Atoll, a typical reef for this area known for its excellent diving, snorkeling and sportfishing opportunities. We stopped for lunch at a lodge nestled in amongst the mangroves linning the atoll and heard about the decade long struggle to get the Atoll designated as a marine reserve in order to better preserve its natural beauty. Unfortunately, this Atoll lies within the largest of the oil consessions own by Princess Petroleum Ltd. and likely one of the first areas to be drilled. This Atoll alone brings in 40 million USD annually from flyfishing for bonefish, tarpon and permit. This is money that goes directly into the Belizean economy and to the people of Belize. Conversely, the majority of oil revenue from drilling in the waters adjacent to this popular fishing hole would go mainly to the international investors of the oil companies. Simply looking at the economic picture, drilling for oil would likely not improve the economic situation in Belize and the risk in terms of losses both in fisheries and tourism are huge.

On the biological side, Belize also stands to lose a lot. The conference highlighted over 2,000 marine species of fish, invertebrate and plants, found in the waters of Belize and now documented in FishBase and SeaLifeBase. I was able to experience first hand some of this incredible diversity and abundance of life with a snorkel through the reef at Hol Chan marine reserve, not far from Turneffe Atoll. A glance around the marine reserve revealed a tremendous array of sharks, rays, turtles, reef fish, dolphins, corals, and much more. Belize has arguably the healthiest Antillean manatee population in the world and still has relatively abundant shark populations, including whale sharks. Looking around as I snorkeled through the reef, I could see that an oil spill in the waters of Belize would have an incredibly devastating effect. A catastrophic oil spill, given recent events in the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the world, is quite possible. Drilling for oil offshore is much riskier than onshore, and in a biologically rich and diverse marine environment such as Belize, the risks are too high—in my opinion. An oil spill could wipe everything out and Belize would be left with nothing-no tourism, no fishing!

Throughout the conference, Audrey-Matura Sheppard, VP of Oceana Belize, emphasized the importance of the reef in providing food security and jobs, “Think about Belize without the reef? Where would we be without that?”. The Belize barrier reef, the largest barrier reef system in the northern hemisphere and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a sense of national pride, a source of livelihoods, food security and jobs for the people of Belize. That is definitely worth protecting!

For more information about marine biodiversity in Belize, the conference and its outputs, visit this website.

1 McCrea-Strub, A. and Pauly, D. (2011) Oil and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. Ocean and Coastal Law Journal [in press].

Deep-Sea Fish in Deep Trouble

A team of scientists from around the world, including several members of the Sea Around Us Project, is recommending that most of the deep sea be closed to fishing. In an extensive review paper published in the journal Marine Policy, a team of ecologists, fisheries biologists, economists, and mathematicians make the case that high seas fisheries should be shut down.

Fish from the deep sea, like the Orange roughy shown here (photo credit: Claire Nouvian), make up less than 1% of seafood in the market. But fisheries, especially trawl fisheries, cause a lot of damage to the species themselves as well as the seafloor and animals that live on it, like deep-sea coral, the authors of the paper argue. In addition, high seas trawlers receive an estimated $162 million each year in government handouts, which amounts to 25% the value of the fleet’s catch, according to Rashid Sumaila, an author on the paper and a fisheries economist at UBC.

The study comes just before the United Nations deliberates on deep-sea fisheries on the high seas. In 2006, a proposed UN resolution to ban bottom trawling in the high seas failed due to opposition led by Iceland and Russia.

Read the full press release here, the full study here, and some media coverage in The Washington Post.

Reference: Elliott A. Norse, Sandra Brooke, William W.L. Cheung, Malcolm R. Clark, Ivar Ekeland, Rainer Froese, Kristina M. Gjerde, Richard L. Haedrich, Selina S. Heppell, Telmo Morato, Lance E. Morgan, Daniel Pauly, Rashid Sumaila, Reg Watson. Sustainability of deep-sea fisheries. Marine Policy, 2012; 36 (2): 307.

GOMEX Oil Spill’s Possible Impact on Fisheries

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacted a highly productive area of crucial economic significance within the Gulf of Mexico. The first preliminary estimate of the spill’s impact on commercial fisheries was recently published by the Sea Around Us Project, led by post-doctoral fellow Ashley McCrea-Strub. Trends suggest that more than 20% of the average annual U.S. commercial catch in the Gulf has been affected by postspill fisheries closures, indicating a potential minimum loss in annual landed value of US$247 million. Lucrative shrimp, blue crab, menhaden, and oyster fisheries may be at greatest risk of economic losses. Read the full paper here.
Citation: A. McCrea-Strub, K. Kleisner, U. R. Sumaila, W. Swartz, R. Watson, D. Zeller & D. Pauly (2011): Potential Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on Commercial Fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico, Fisheries, 36:7, 332-336.

European Fisheries Policy Needs Reform

Dr. Rainer Froese, a frequent collaborator of the Sea Around Us Project, explains problems with EU fisheries policy in last week’s issue of Nature. Froese begins:

The fishing industry is less important to Europe’s economy than its sewing-machine manufacturers. Yet it consistently gets to overrule scientific advice and drive fish stocks to the brink of collapse. Without massive subsidies, European fisheries would be bankrupt: the cost of hunting the few remaining fish would exceed the income from selling the catch.

Given the systemic failure of fisheries management as enacted by the ministries of agriculture, Froese believes the management of wild fish would be better if left to the ministers of environment. To read the full text click here.

Citation: Froese, R. 2011. Fishing at the Edge of Collapse: 27 Years of Common Fisheries Policy in Europe. Background material for Froese, R. 2011, Fishery reform slips through the net, Nature 475:7.

Belize: Too Precious To Drill

More than 20 top marine ecologists gathered last week in Belize City to review the status of the country’s marine biodiversity and the potential impacts an oil spill could have on local marine ecology. After the meeting, the participants unanimously agreed that the Belize government should prohibit offshore oil drillings in Belize’s waters, a referendum that will be voted on in late 2011.

Scientists from the University of British Columbia, Boston University, the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution, and Belize itself discussed Belize’s marine assets in a symposium titled: Too Precious for Oil: the Marine Biodiversity of Belize.

Among the scientists’ chief concerns were how an oil spill would affect the region’s biodiversity and economic gains from marine resources and tourism. Belize boasts bottlenose dolphins, the largest number of Antillean manatees in the world, a breeding ground for at least 7 different species of sharks and rays, hundreds of different types of sponges, and fisheries for groupers, snappers, grunts, and other reef fishes. In 1996, UNESCO declared the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System a World Heritage Site.

Scientists are also worried that seismic activity makes drilling especially risky. An earthquake in Belize in 2009 had severe impacts on coral reefs. A spill could result in lost revenues to Belize’s fishing and marine tourism industries.

The event was organized by Oceana Belize and the Sea Around Us project, with funding from the Oak Foundation.
ended with the signing of a letter from all the scientists involved urging the government to consider the incredibly rich and diverse marine environment that exists in Belize, the many benefits (tourism and fisheries) this provides and the risk that oil drilling posses to this incredible natural asset.

The conference drew in around 100 people, but there was a media blitz each day and appearances on national radio, television, news and talk shows. Daniel Pauly made daily media appearances and met with the opposition party and other government officials. He and Sarah Harper appeared on two local talk shows. Andres Cisneros aired on Estereo Amour, Belize’s Spanish radio station.

Check back soon for more progress on this initiative.

Underreporting in Madagascar

Fish catches in Madagascar over the last half-century are double the official reports, and much of that fish is being caught by unregulated traditional fishers or accessed cheaply by foreign fishing vessels. Seafood exports from Madagascar often end up in a European recipe, but are a recipe for political unrest at home, where two-thirds of the population face hunger. These are the findings of a recent study led by the Sea Around Us Project in collaboration with the Madagascar-based conservation organisation Blue Ventures. The research, published online this week in the journal Marine Policy, used existing studies and local knowledge to estimate total fisheries catches between 1950 and 2008. Read the full study here and the press release here.

Photo: Traditional Vezo fisherman and shrimp trawler, southwest Madagascar (photo credit: Blue Ventures).

Atlantic Cod: Past and Present

Post-doctoral research fellow Ashley McCrea Strub and Daniel Pauly report on their recent efforts to help artist Maya Lin on her latest project on shifting baselines. They explain in the newsletter and below:

In February, Dr Pauly was contacted by Maya Lin, esteemed artist and architect best-known for designing the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington D.C. She is creating an exhibit to illustrate severe declines in species due to human exploitation, and asked Daniel if the Sea Around Us could provide ideas and information for a fish species. When considering overfishing and the collapse of fisheries, Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is typically one of the first species that springs to mind. Cod occurs throughout the North Atlantic, along the shores of the first countries to develop industrial fisheries, notably England. The different cod stocks, (e.g., in the North Sea), are generally in parlous states, and those of the Northwestern Atlantic, off the coast of the United States and Canada, are no exception. Indeed, the collapse of eastern Canadian stocks off the coast of Newfoundland in 1992 had devastating economic, social and ecological consequences still visible today.

At the end of the last ice age, nearly 10,000 years ago, the availability and expansion of capelin and herring following the retreat of sea ice provided an abundant food source enabling the proliferation of Atlantic cod in the Northwest Atlantic (Rose 2007). The great abundance of this predator in ecosystems had a dominating influence over the community. Historical records indicate that massive populations of this predominantly bottom-feeding species were targeted by fisheries as early as the 15th century (Hutchings and Myers 1994). Technological advances allowed fisheries for cod to develop from hook-and-line to cod traps in the 1860s, the latter becoming larger and more efficient over time. The traps were then complemented by gill nets, but the key change was the introduction of bottom trawling early in the 20th century in New England as well as during the mid-20th century in Eastern Canada. As the vessels supporting these various domestic operations grew in size and power, distant-water factory trawlers, mostly from Europe, but some from as far as East Asia, were added to the fishery and generated catches in excess of 800,000 tonnes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, Atlantic cod is a relatively long-lived, slow growing species whose productive capacity could not keep up with the increasing rate of mortality due to fishing. As the great majority of spawning adults were packed into ships’ freezers, catches began to decline. By 1975, Canada and the United States declared national jurisdiction over what later became their 200 nautical-mile ‘Exclusive Economic Zones’, indirectly claiming ownership over the dwindling cod stocks and forcing out foreign fleets. The reduction in fishing, and recovery of cod that followed, was short-lived as overly optimistic fishery management measures and excessive subsidization led to record-low levels of biomass and a resultant fishing moratorium on the largest Canadian stocks in 1992. Despite significantly reduced fishing pressure, most stocks of cod in the Northwest Atlantic are still struggling to rebuild, and remain classified as ‘overfished.’

To help Maya Lin with the creation of her art exhibit, we conducted a study to help us better understand the extent of overfishing and the recent state of Atlantic cod off the eastern coast of Canada and the U.S., relative to a time when this species was still the most abundant predator in the region. To begin, information regarding the relative abundance of Atlantic cod from the northern coast of Labrador to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina was obtained from the global fisheries database developed and maintained by the Sea Around Us Project at the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. Using historical spatial distribution data, as well as biological data including preferred depth, latitudinal limits and proximity to critical habitat, the likely geographic distribution of over 1000 commercially fished species, including Atlantic cod, has been defined (Watson et al. 2004; Close et al. 2006). This database enables the production of maps illustrating the relative abundance or likelihood of locating a particular species in a spatial grid of cells measuring 0.5° latitude by 0.5° longitude. Populating such a map to reflect the actual numbers or biomass of fish present in a given area during a specific time period is then possible given suitable data on fish density.

Information regarding the size of the Atlantic cod population in approximately 1850 was gathered from an analysis of mid-19th century logbooks maintained by a handline fleet that fished the Scotian Shelf, the centre of the range of Northwestern Atlantic cod, prior to the industrialization of fishing (Rosenberg et al. 2005). Due to the relatively low level of fishing pressure, this population was assumed, for the purposes of this study, to be relatively close to its unfished maximum at this time. Using detailed, spatially specific logs, Rosenberg et al. (2005) estimated the historical biomass of cod on the eastern and western Scotian Shelf (encompassing an area of over 160,000 km2) as 1.26 million tonnes. Accordingly, the average biomass density of cod on the Scotian Shelf in 1850 was approximately 8 tonnes per km2. In the absence of similar information for other areas, this estimate of average density was assumed to be representative of the entire region considered here. To create a map of the density of cod biomass in 1850, this average density was scaled according to spatially specific estimates of the relative abundance of cod, resulting in values defining the density of cod in each grid cell included in the study region.

To estimate recent biomass, the results of stock assessments conducted by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) were assembled. As stock assessments have not been performed for every Northwestern Atlantic cod stock in the past year, and to avoid uncertainty associated with the most recent assessments, biomass estimates for 2005 were collected for each stock.

This process enabled the production of maps of cod biomass density as well as the approximation of total biomass for the years 1850 and 2005. As estimates of fish population size are typically based partially or wholly on records of catches from previous years, the population considered usually includes those individuals that are vulnerable to fishing gear (e.g., age 3-4+ Northwest Atlantic cod) or sexually-mature individuals (i.e. the spawning stock, age 5-7 in the case of Northwest Atlantic cod). Unless otherwise noted, population size estimates calculated in this study refer to the portion of the Northwest Atlantic cod population vulnerable to fishing.

In addition to the total size of the Northwest Atlantic cod stock during these contrasting time periods, the change in size of an ‘average cod’ since 1850 due to the effects of (over)fishing was also estimated. Calculating average cod size first required biological information describing the rate at which this species grows in length and weight over its lifetime (Sinclair 2001). When used in conjunction with the approximate total mortality rate (due to both natural causes and fishing) during 1850 and 2005, the average length and weight of a cod during each of these time periods was calculated1.

The maps created as a result of this study provide very different pictures of the abundant cod population in the Northwestern Atlantic prior to the onset of industrial-scale fishing in 1850 (Figure 1) and the severely depleted population following decades of intense fishing pressure in 2005 (Figure 2). In 1850, the total biomass of Atlantic cod was approximately 10.2 billion (10.2 x 106) tonnes. By 2005, it was estimated that this biomass had decreased by over 96% to 0.36 x 106 tonnes. Thus, the average density of cod biomass across the study region fell from 8 tonnes/km2 to 0.3 tonnes/km2, 3.5% of the initial value.

Fishing not only reduces population abundance, but also the size of an average fish in the population. Thus, in 1850, the average cod more than 3 years in age would have been about 63 cm in length and weighed 3.0 kg, while the average mature adult was 78 cm and weighed nearly 6 kg. By 2005, the size of an average cod greater than age 3 had fallen to 58 cm and 1.3 kg, and an average mature cod measured 68 cm and weighed 3.6 kg. It is important to note that the ‘average cod’ size in 1850 presented here is conservative and may be an underestimate of the true average size during this time period. This is due to the fact that most studies of Northwest Atlantic cod growth were relatively recent and parameter estimates were based on fish sampled from stocks already affected by many years of fishing. Thus, potential fisheries-induced changes in growth rate were not considered here.

Knowledge of population biomass and average weight enables an approximation of the number of Atlantic cod during each time period. In 1850 the population of Atlantic cod in this region was composed of roughly 3.4 trillion (3,400 x 106) individuals, and had decreased by approximately 92% by 2005 (i.e., to 285 billion or 285 x 106 cod). As younger, smaller individuals tend to be more abundant in a population, particularly in the case of heavily fished populations, merely analyzing the change in abundance of cod masks the true effects of overfishing; biomass was nearly 30 times lower in 2005 relative to 1850, while the abundance of cod was only 12 times lower in 2005 compared to 1850.

At a time when healthy, under-exploited fish stocks appear to be the exception rather than the rule across the globe and the ‘shifting-baselines’ syndrome has become widespread, numbers such as those presented here provide a perspective on the extent of human impacts on species and ecosystems, and of what we have lost. The data and maps generated as a result of this study will be used by Maya Lin to guide the design of her upcoming exhibit, providing an exciting vehicle for the Sea Around Us Project to communicate our work to a broad audience.

References
Close, C., W. Cheung, S. Hodgson, V. Lam, R. Watson and D. Pauly. (2006). Distribution ranges of commercial fishes and invertebrates, p. 27-37 In: Palomares, M.L.D., K.I. Stergiou and D. Pauly (Editors). 2006. Fishes in Databases and Ecosystems. Fisheries Centre Research Reports 14(4).

Hutchings, J.A. and R.A. Myers. (1994). What can be learned from the collapse of a renewable resource? Atlantic Cod, Gadus morhua, of Newfoundland and Labrador. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 51: 2126-2146.

Rose, G. (2007). Cod: An Ecological History of the North American Fisheries. Breakwater Books LTD., St. John’s, Newfoundland. 580 pp.

Rosenberg, A.A., W. J. Bolster, K.E. Alexander, W. B. Leavenworth, A.B. Cooper, and M.G. McKenzie. (2005). The history of ocean resources: modeling cod biomass using historical records. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3: 84-90.

Sinclair, A.F. (2001) Natural mortality of cod (Gadus morhua) in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.ICES Journal of Marine Science 58:1-10.

Watson, R., A. Kitchingman, A. Gelchu, and D. Pauly. (2004). Mapping global fisheries: sharpening our focus. Fish and Fisheries 5: 168-177.

Endnote: Cod were assumed to grow in length according to the von Bertalanffy growth equation, where Linf = 118 cm, K = 0.11 year-1, and t0 = -0.44 yrs. (Sinclair 2001). Total length (cm) was then converted to weight (kg) using the relationship W = 0.0081*L3.03 (www.fishbase.org). The natural mortality rate (M) was assumed to equal 0.2 year-1. Fishing mortality (F) for the entire study region was calculated using the mean F reported by each stock assessment, weighted according to the estimated biomass of each assessed stock, resulting in an estimate of 0.3 year-1 for 2005.

Daniel Pauly’s Surprise Sail on the Eloquent

Deng Palomares reports on the surprise birthday celebration in the newsletter and below:

Our birthday celebrant, Dr Pauly, was born in post-war Paris in May 1946 and to this day carries a French passport (though he wishes to be Canadian sometime in the future). But, he never really lived in Paris, because Daniel’s roller coaster life seems to always involve traveling. In his younger years, these travels were undertaken as a quest for meaning (which at certain points in his life included religion), purpose and education leading to a doctorate from the Institute für Meereskunde in Kiel, Germany. This degree started Daniel’s journey to far and distant lands, e.g., Indonesia (GTZ project), the Philippines (ICLARM, Manila), Peru and Tanzania (FAO/DANIDA training courses), New Caledonia, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya and Namibia (FishBase training courses), to name a few. And finally, to Vancouver, where he had the permanent task of being an advisor to graduate students and leader of Sea Around Us team members since the mid-1990s. Still cranking out a long list of publications like a paper mill and still going places as an invited speaker, (the ‘guru’) Daniel, mentor to some of us and professor to many, had an aversion to celebrating his own birthday for some reason he never really identified. This earned him the name ‘KJ’ (for ‘Kill Joy’) among staff at ICLARM in the early days (because Filipinos like parties and especially the food!). We at the Fisheries Centre are lucky that Daniel now seems to enjoy these celebrations (remember his 60th with that big event?). And this year’s birthday (total surprise) bash for our bashful celebrant is unique, his first birthday party onboard a cruise! Daniel had no clue that preparations were under way for his party, thanks to the deft planning committee (Grace, Aylin), those who avidly put their art and cooking skills to work (Leah, Sarah, Kristin, Fred, Veronica) with special mention to Sandra Pauly who provided us with lunch, those who provided the materials for the artwork, the poems and baking paraphernalia, him who told Daniel lies to get him out of the office (Dirk), the photographers and film makers (Dawit, Dalal, Ling Huang) and to all of you who came to the party! It was well worth a sunny afternoon out on a boat, wasn’t it!

Bigger Is Better When It Comes to MPAs

Read about potential economies of scale in marine protection in this piece at Nature, which highlights work by Sea Around Us Project members Ashley McCrea Strub and Daniel Pauly that they presented at IMCC in May.

A postdoc in Pauly’s lab, Ashley McCrea Strub, has calculated that, worldwide, today’s marine protected areas cost US$2 billion a year to run at full capacity. That compares, she says, with $16.2 billion a year spent on ‘negative subsidies’ that encourage fisherman to fish more rather than less — subsidization of fuel costs, for example. On Sunday, McCrea Strub told the conference that if larger marine reserves accounted for a larger percentage of the total area protected — 10% instead of 1% — the costs of managing these would come to 83% less a year.