Fisheries and Global Warming: Impacts on marine ecosystems
Cover image
Prof. Pauly is the principal investigator of the Sea Around Us Project and has gained international recognition for his work on the impacts of global fisheries on marine environments.
Source: Bénédicte Martin.
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Practical info
When: May 25, 2017
Time: 6-7 PM (Perth local time)
Where: Theatre Auditorium
The University Club of Western Australia
(see map details below)
Prof. Daniel Pauly is visiting UWA and the Centre for Marine Futures this month and will be delivering a (free) public lecture entitled “Fisheries and Global Warming: Impacts on marine ecosystems” on May 25, 2017.
In his talk, Professor Pauly will take a historical look at fisheries, and comment on the current challenges of global food security.
ABSTRACT
The period following the Second World War saw a massive increase in fishing effort, particularly in the 1960s. However, crashes due to this overfishing began to be reflected in global catch trends in the 1970s, and intensified in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, the industrialised countries of the Northern Hemisphere (where overfishing-induced catch declines appeared first) moved their effort toward deeper waters, and toward the south, i.e., to the coasts off developing countries, and beyond into the southern hemisphere, all the way to Antarctica.
Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the global expansion of fisheries is completed, and the real global catch, which is much higher than officially reported, peaked in the late 1980s and is now rapidly declining. In parallel, the collateral damage to marine ecosystems and biodiversity continues to increase. Several factors act to prevent the public in developed countries from realising the depth of the crisis fisheries are in, notably the increased imports by developed countries, of seafood from developing countries. Also, the misleading perception that aquaculture can substitute for declining catches is widespread. In some countries, notably the U.S., stocks are being rebuilt, but elsewhere, the failure to respond creatively to these clear trends bode ill for the next decades. Indeed, the effects of global warming (productivity declines in the tropics, widespread disruptions at high latitudes), which have been increasingly felt in the last decades, will strongly impact fisheries and global seafood supply.