Winter School on Towards Ecosystem Based Management of Marine Fisheries – Building Mass Balance Trophic and Simulation Models

Winter School on Towards Ecosystem Based Management of Marine Fisheries – Building Mass Balance Trophic and Simulation Model

Course Manual Winter School on Structure and Functions of Marine Ecosystem: Fisheries

Marine ecosystems comprises of diverse organisms and their ambient abiotic components in varied relationships leading to an ecosystem functioning. These relationships provides the services that are essential for marine organisms to sustain in the nature. The studies examining the structure and functioning of these relationships remains unclear and hence understanding and modelling of the ecological functioning is imperative in the context of the threats different ecosystem components are facing. The relationship between marine population and their environment is complex and is subjected to fluctuations which affects the bottom level of an ecosystem pyramid to higher trophic levels. Understanding the energy flow within the marine ecosystems with the help of primary to secondary producers and secondary consumers are potentially important when assessing such states and changes in these environments. Many of the physiological changes are known to affect the key functional group, ie. the species or group of organisms, which play an important role in the health of the ecosystem. In marine environment, phytoplankton are the main functional forms which serves as the base of marine food web. Any change in the phytoplankton community structure may lead to alteration in the composition, size and structure of the entire ecosystem. Hence, it is critical to understand how these effects may scale up to population, communities, and entire marine ecosystem. Such changes are difficult to predict, particularly when more than one trophic level is affected. The identification and quantification of indicators of changes in ecosystem functioning and the knowledge base generated will provide a suitable way of bridging issues related to a specific ecosystem. New and meaningful indicators, derived from our current understanding of marine ecosystem functioning, can be used for assessing the impact of these changes and can be used as an aid in promoting responsible fisheries in marine ecosystems. Phytoplantkon is an indicator determining the colour of open Ocean. In recent years, new technologies have emerged which involves multidisciplinary activities including biogeochemistry and its dynamics affecting higher trophic levels including fishery. The winter school proposed will provide the insights into background required for such an approach involving teaching the theory, practical, analysis and interpretation techniques in understanding the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems from ground truth measurements as well as from satellite remote sensing data. This is organized with the full funding support from Indian council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) New Delhi and the 25 participants who are attending this programme has been selected after scrutiny of their applications based on their bio-data. The participants are from different States across Indian subcontinent covering north, east, west and south. They are serving as academicians such as Professors/ scientists and in similar posts. The training will be a feather in their career and will enable them to do their academic programmes in a better manner. Selected participants will be scrutinized initially to understand their knowledge level and classes will be oriented based on this. In addition, all of them will be provided with an e-manual based on the classes. All selected participants are provided with their travel and accommodation grants. The faculty include the scientists who developed this technology, those who are practicing it and few user groups who do their research in related areas. The programme is coordinated by the Fishery Resources Assessment Division of CMFRI. This programme will generate a team of elite academicians who can contribute to sustainable management of marine ecosystem and they will further contribute to capacity building in the sector by training many more interested researchers in the years to come

Scientific Information on Gulf of Mannar - A Bibliography

Gulf of Mannar in the southeast coast of India extends from Rameswaram Island in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. It has a chain of 21 islands stretching from Mandapam to Tuticorin to a distance of 140 km along the coast. Each one of the islands is located anywhere between 2 and 10 km from the mainland. The Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve was set up on 18th February 1989 jointly by the Government of India and the state of Tamilnadu. The government of Tamilnadu in G.O. M.S. No 962 dated 10th September 1986 notified under section 35(1) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 the intention to declare the 21 islands as Marine National Park for the purpose of protecting marine wildlife and its environment including depths of 3.5 fathoms on the bay side to 5 fathoms on the seaward side. The compilation of all available scientific literature in the form of an annotated bibliography of the Gulf of Mannar biosphere reserve has brought to light the existence of nearly 3,000 publications up to date. This covers the literature published from as early as 1864 to the current year. A large number of publications in the first half of the 20th century have brought out information on the variety of fauna and flora found in the Gulf of Mannar, their biology and ecology. A lot of emphasis on the fish and fisheries research has been given only in the second half of the 20th century. Emphasis is being given on biochemical aspects of flora and fauna in the later part of the 20th century and at present

Proceedings of the Second workshop on scientific results of FORV Sagar Sampada

Since inception in 1984, the Fisheries and Oceanographic Research Vessel Sagar Sampada, with sophisticated modern facilities onboard, has undertaken more than 140 cruises all over the Indian Ocean primarily in our Exclusive Economic Zone for fishery and oceanographic survey. Scientists from many institutions have made use of this facility to explore the resource potential in our sea and to understand its correlation with the environmental parameters. These survey and exploration efforts are continuing. This volume contains many papers which are the outcome of research work carried out onboard 'Sagar Sampada' during last five years (1989-1993) and presented in a Workshop to evaluate the scientific work. About 60 papers, included in this volume, bring out the results pertaining to environmental assessment, hydrology, productivity estimates, fishery resources availability, fishing technology, pollution monitoring etc. These relate mainly to the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands groups in the EEZ of India. These efforts along with other mission-oriented cruises have yielded valuable information on the fishery resources and their distribution in space and time

Course Manual: International Workshop-cum-Training Programme on "Fisheries and Aquaculture"

Marine fisheries contribute to food, nutrition, employment and income generation in India. The sector supports about four million people for their livelihood and nearly one million fishermen by way of employment and contributes significantly to the export earnings of the country and balance of trade. The sector contributes to an economic wealth valued at nearly US$10 billion annually. The marine fisheries of the country consist of small-scale and artisanal fishers belonging mechanized, motorized and non-mechanized sectors and a range of other stakeholders, including governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Though India is not a leading producer in true mariculture we are second in aquaculture production after China. Coastal aquaculture of shrimp has a major role in aquaculture production and export in India. Even though there is vast scope, recently only India has taken up mariculture technologies to the stake holder level. Due to the success achieved mariculture, it has been identified as a potential source of production enhancement for high valued species like lobster, seabass, cobia and pompano for which the capture fishery is negligible

On impact and volcanism across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary

The cause of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction is vigorously debated, owing to the occurrence of a very large bolide impact and flood basalt volcanism near the boundary. Disentangling their relative importance is complicated by uncertainty regarding kill mechanisms and the relative timing of volcanogenic outgassing, impact, and extinction. We used carbon cycle modeling and paleotemperature records to constrain the timing of volcanogenic outgassing. We found support for major outgassing beginning and ending distinctly before the impact, with only the impact coinciding with mass extinction and biologically amplified carbon cycle change. Our models show that these extinction-related carbon cycle changes would have allowed the ocean to absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide, thus limiting the global warming otherwise expected from postextinction volcanism

Earth Resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes, issue 6, December 1975

This bibliography lists 484 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between April 1975 and June 1975. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economic analysis

Marine Ecosystem Challenges & Opportunities (MECOS 3)

The Marine Biological Association of India (MBAI), established in 1958, is proud to gear up for MECOS3, the third symposium on Marine Ecosystems- Challenges and Opportunities during 7-10 January, 2020. The MBAI besides organising MECOS1 (2009) and MECOS2 (2014) has inculcated active interest and participation among its members by handling several national and international symposia/seminars, since its formation. The MBAI has 794 life members and 20 institutional members. The mandate of the MBAI is promotion of scientific research in the field of marine biology and allied sciences

Course Manual ICAR funded Summer School on Advanced Methods for Fish Stock Assessment and Fisheries Management

The fish production from marine sector is contributed by the wild capture that is happening from the sea. There are nearly 1 million active fishermen and nearly 4 million people directly or indirectly involved in this fishing activity. They harvest nearly 3.5 million tonnes of fish every year. Scientific studies have estimated Indian marine fisheries potential as 4.41 million tonnes. This indicates that our resources are exploited almost to its potential level and we have very few untapped resources. The fish production in the sector is contributed by more than 800 species of fish that constitute our commercial fishery. Most these species are not exploited in a sustainable manner. In India, the capacity of fishing fleets is more than our harvestable potential. Therefore it is imperative to know the stock size of various commercially harvested species. It is difficult to really estimate the fish biomass in the sea. It is like lifting the entire fish biomass form the seas and estimating the mass of individual species also and arriving at a potentially harvestable value. With various concentrated efforts in fisheries science, CMFRI was able to deduce few mechanisms to estimate the fish stock available in our coastal waters. Since long officials from CMFRI have been involved in gathering the species-wise and gear-wise information on fish landings from around 1300 landing centres based on a scientifically designed estimation procedure known as stratified multi stage random sampling method. The estimates of landings along with the fishing effort expended and the data on the biology of various species collected enable us to identify whether a stock is over exploited. Few years back CMFRI developed a rapid stock assessment method too. Based on such assessment methods, the information on stock status of various species was ascertained and the knowledge is passed on to policy planners at international, national and state/UT level for management of fishery

Seasonality in a changing climate: Insights from the modern ocean with application to the Eocene Epoch

Climate change is arguably the most important issue facing modern society. One of the best tools we have for constraining future climate conditions comes from looking at warm and transitional intervals in Earth’s geologic past, such as the Eocene Epoch (~56-34 Ma). The Eocene Epoch was a time of large-scale global climate change, bookended by both the warmest temperatures of the Cenozoic (i.e., the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) and the onset of southern hemisphere glaciation (i.e., the Eocene-Oligocene Transition). While mean global climatic conditions across the Eocene, inferred from a compilation of oxygen isotopes of benthic foraminifera, are well constrained and document a clear cooling trend, the few and geographically disparate records of local sea surface temperature (SST) from this interval are often conflicting and difficult to reproduce with climate models. Likewise, multi-proxy studies from the same location frequently yield diverging SST estimates. These inconsistencies within the climate record inhibit our ability to identify the mechanisms responsible for late Eocene cooling, and call into question our understanding of fundamental aspects of climate dynamics and the underlying assumptions guiding our interpretation of proxy data. Further, they highlight one of the dominant shortcomings of paleoclimate studies; namely the propensity to express climate variability in terms of global or latitudinal averages, while overlooking local and regional scale climate heterogeneity. Distilling global climate to single numbers (e.g., the 2oC global warming threshold) or metrics (e.g., meridional temperature gradients) is appealing, as it allows for direct comparison of different climate states, however oversimplifying conditions by ignoring natural spatial heterogeneity may lead to erroneous paleoclimate interpretations and contribute to the frequent need to set unrealistic boundary conditions in climate modelling studies. In fact, inspection of modern SST data reveal abundant variability along individual latitudinal bands. This contradicts the simplifying assumption of homogenous zonal paleotemperatures and suggests that improving our understanding on the controls on modern SSTs may hold the key to better understanding ancient climate systems. The ultimate goal of my dissertation is to provide the tools to facilitate a more robust evaluation of ancient climate dynamics, and thereby improve the fidelity of proxy-based paleoclimate reconstructions and future climate predictions. In Chapter 2, I use analyses of modern SST data to identify sampling biases in the paleo record and propose a new framework within which to more meaningfully interpret annually- and seasonally-resolved SST proxy data. In Chapter 3, I develop a bivalve growth rate model, which accounts for variable intra-annual growth rates and facilitates the temporal alignment of serially-sampled geochemical proxy data, increasing the reliability and applicability of paleo-seasonality interpretations. In Chapters 4 and 5, I apply these approaches to reconstruct seasonal changes in nearshore waters off the eastern margin of the Antarctic Peninsula between the middle and late Eocene. Proxy data are evaluated using climate models and modern analog analyses, supplemented with seasonal precipitation data, and contextualized with existing SST data from the Eocene Southern Ocean, resulting in a holistic assessment of climatic conditions during this critical time interval. The findings of these studies: 1) demonstrate the utility of seasonal data in distinguishing between the mechanisms responsible for large-scale climate change and identifying seasonal biases in other SST proxy data, 2) suggest that initial late Eocene Antarctic cooling was driven by changes in ocean circulation, rather than pCO2, 3) reveal how sampling location biases can generate spurious climate interpretations, and 4) illustrate that recognition of and correction for these biases can allow for a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of ancient climate dynamics conditions