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Ongoing international negotiations on capacity enhancing fisheries subsidies may soon eliminate harmful subsidies. Although their negative ecosystem impacts are well known, their social dimensions are less understood. This paper investigates the distributional and equity dimensions of fisheries subsidies in two developing countries, Senegal and Vietnam, to understand how their provision or removal may affect different population groups. Using the limited data available, we paid specific attention to women and youth, who are especially vulnerable in these contexts. We recommend further study to understand the implications of reform on other vulnerable groups, such as indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities.

African maritime countries take the majority of their animal protein from fish. Bound with tradition and a promise of food and other values, African fisheries also provide a source of livelihood for over 35 million coastal fishers. Yet, as in many other regions of the world, the fishing sector is plagued with policy failures, and illegal activities. This paper summarizes the key points in the evolution of African fisheries in terms of exploitation, policy, and maritime security trends. It addresses how access to fishing by the small-scale sector is increasingly hindered by the increasing power and scope of an industrial fleet often involved in Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. It also discusses the impacts of ineffective enforcement against overexploitation and illegal fishing, piracy, human smuggling and climate-change risks for coastal communities, as well as policy measures and initiatives to reverse the existing trends. (Full publication)

Article originally posted at news.ubc.ca.

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Achieving the Paris Agreement global warming target could protect millions of tonnes in annual worldwide fisheries catch, as well as billions of dollars of annual revenues for fishers, workers’ income and household seafood expenditures, according to new research from the University of British Columbia.

The Paris Agreement aims to mitigate the potential impacts of climate change on ecological and social systems. Using an ensemble of climate-marine ecosystem and economic models, we explore the effects of implementing the Agreement on fish, fishers, and seafood consumers worldwide. We find that implementing the Agreement could protect millions of metric tons in annual worldwide catch of top revenue-generating fish species, as well as billions of dollars annually of fishers’ revenues, seafood workers’ income, and household seafood expenditure. Further, our analysis predicts that 75% of maritime countries would benefit from this protection, and that ~90% of this protected catch would occur within the territorial waters of developing countries. Thus, implementing the Paris Agreement could prove to be crucial for the future of the world’s ocean ecosystems and economies. (Full publication)

The European Union (EU) instituted a carding system via its European Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1005/2008 with the goal of incentivizing fish and fish products (fish) exporting countries to the Union to take action to reduce IUU fishing in their waters. This regulation stipulates that the EU will issue warnings, known as a “yellow card,” to countries that perform poorly in the effort to end IUU fishing in their waters. Failure to curb IUU fishing will result in a ban in the export of fish to the EU via the issuance of a red card. Here, I ask the following questions: what is the economic risk of being red carded by the EU? Is the economic risk big enough to significantly reduce IUU fishing in a targeted country’s waters? Would the risk be broad enough to result in a significant reduction in IUU fishing globally? What if the two other leading fish importing countries, i.e., the United States and Japan, also institute a similar carding system as the EU? To address these questions, I develop and compute an economic risk index for the carding system. This study suggests that the impact of an EU only IUU carding system could be significant for some targeted countries but its effect globally, with respect to reducing IUU fishing, would be minimal. However, I find that the economic risk to fish exporting countries would increase significantly if the United States and Japan also instituted similar carding systems, which would in turn help to reduce IUU fishing worldwide. This contribution shows that an IUU carding system could contribute significantly to the elimination of IUU fishing provided a critical mass of top fish importing countries participate in such a system. (Full publication)

Article originally posted at oceans.ubc.ca.

Microplastics are one of the most pervasive global pollutants, and their presence in our oceans is a cause for great concern. As the name says, these are micro particles, less than 5mm in size, that have either been deliberately manufactured (e.g., microbeads in cosmetics), or emerge as larger plastics break down (nets, bottles, bags, clothing, etc.). They are roughly the same size range as plankton, and so when they show up in marine ecosystems they have the potential to be consumed by a vast array of organisms.

Community volunteer group, Friends of Port Mouton Bay (FPMB), and OceanCanada, a national research organization working to address Canada’s most pressing coastal issues, have launched the Port Mouton Bay Asset Map. This is a major milestone for FPMB as part of the OceanCanada Partnership (OCP), a 6-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) initiative (2014-2020).

Congratulations to OceanCanada's Dr. U. Rashid Sumaila who has won UBC's President's Award for Public Education through Media, for his ongoing sharing of oceans and fisheries research expertise through the news media.

The reintroduction of a previously extirpated predator can engender conflict when the reintroduced species depletes customary fisheries to which indigenous communities have constitutionally protected rights. In the case of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) recovery on the west coast of North America, not only is Canada’s Species at Risk Act in conflict with Indigenous rights, but it also illuminates gaps in the principles of ecosystem-based management (EBM), such as equity and social justice. Broadly, we ask in this paper how EBM might be advanced if Indigenous communities were viewed as components of ecosystems having rights to a sustainable future equal to other components. Specifically, we explore evidence of sea otter management among precontact Northwest Coast societies and a contemporary co-managed system proposed by the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations that would combine research with refinement of traditional hunting practices. We show that barriers persist through lack of knowledge of past controlled hunts, ignorance of recent experiences of successful community-based clam management, distrust of Indigenous capacity to self-manage or co-manage a hunt, and divergent values among actors.

Threats that affect the avian diversity on the Galápagos Islands are increasing. We evaluated threats such as climate change and severe weather, human intrusions and disturbance, biological resource use, invasive and other problematic species, genes and diseases, pollution, geological events and loss of genetic diversity in relation with avian species enlisted in both the international and national (Ecuador) IUCN Red List, which can be used as sentinel species of the ecosystem. Here, the status of the threatened species for the next ten years (present time up to 2028), under two scenarios, including the status quo and the avian diversity vision for the species’ conservation, was assessed.