The Sea Around Us Project provides global marine fisheries landings spatially so we have an idea of which country caught what and where. We have to keep the data updated, which takes a team of skilled people led by Dr. Reg Watson. The new and improved version of the database is now available online and includes updated catch data to 2006, catch reconstructions for China (whose catch was adjusted downward after Watson & Pauly, 2001) and 12 other countries, updated fishing agreements, and improved spatial allocation of catch due to greater knowledge of species distributions. You can read more about the database updates in the forthcoming Sea Around Us newsletter.
Tag: database
New Studies Give Shape to Future Jellyfish Research
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.