The growth of the sea star, Asterias rubens, and its role as benthic predator in Kiel Bay

The determination of the age of individual sea stars (Asterias rubens) by means of length measurements or identification of growth rings in the calcareous skeleton presents great difficulties. Age-determinations are, however, the prior condition to growth calculations. For the determination of growth parameters L00, K and t0 of the VON BERTALANFFY growth equation by means of the modal class progression analysis monthly dredging samples were taken in 12 profiles across the mouth of the Eckernförde Bay. Sea stars, which were exposed to lower temperatures during the first months after onset of growth, reach a larger asymptotic length than those exposed to higher temperatures. - By means of parallel diving observations to the dredging the mean biomass of Asterias in Kiel Bay was estimated to be about 32000 tons. Assuming a daily food uptake of 1 % of its own weight the sea star stock consumes about 120000 tons of food organisms per year. These data are discussed in context with biomass values of macrobenthos and cod in Kiel Bay. - The most striking finding, however, is the assumption of an intermediate phase, the "waiting stage", between the larval phase, serving propagation, and the growing stage, serving reproduction, in which tiny sea stars can remain for months waiting for a "free seat" in the ecological nich

Reforms in Small-Scale Fishing in Senegal by Crisis or New Forms of Dialogue?

For decades, fishing was considered an area warranting public support policies, particularly its industrial segment. The sector continues to enjoy the support of international donors in addition to significant private overinvestment. Globally, catches of artisanal fisheries continue to grow while industrial fisheries decline since the mid 1990s. The latter are important for local food security, but are also increasingly export-oriented. Attempts to reform the sector are slow to make progress. Our case study in Senegal helps to understand better the opportunities for reforms securing local livelihoods and food security. It is based on more than350 interviews with fisherfolk, local public administrators and fish mongers in major artisanal fishing centres. We note that the efforts of the public administration since 2000 to reign in the expansion of the artisanal fleet have met with strong social resistance. At the same time, the artisanal fleet has increased in numbers, size and horsepower of outboard engines of new pirogues. Mobile phones and use of scientific data, particularly weather forecasts, have helped with risk management and keep otherwise increasing transaction costs engendered, e.g. by avoidance or conflict with the navy's surveillance of licence holders, under control. Using the interviews, we explore options for a more fruitful meeting of rather effective traditional social organisation with public policy to move forward in the reform attempts, including through better use of research by all parties.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

New socio-economic role models for women in fisheries and aquaculture

New socio-economic role models for women in fisheries and aquaculture Stella Williams and Cornelia E. Nauen The global scale of aquatic ecosystem degradation raises the question on how women in fisheries and aquaculture can reverse their resulting loss of social status and income by becoming major actors in the transition towards restoration of lost productivity. Influx of external capital into once traditional fisheries e.g. in West Africa, has eroded the control of family enterprises and the role of women who were important in maintaining rules of restraint. While these rules have often taken the form of the sacred in traditional communities, they worked de facto as access limitations to the resource and thus had conservation effects. New socio-economic role models for women could be instrumental in allowing them to regain lost economic influence. Where social recognition is achieved, particularly through enforcement of modern equal opportunity legislation and especially so, when combined with enhanced access to formal education, training, asset titles and credit, women regain capabilities for enhanced social organisation and leadership. A participatory method is proposed to render women’s role visible and enable development of socio-economic organisation supportive of social justice and ecosystem restoration.This is part of the IIFET Special Session on Markets and Value Chains for Small Aquaculture & Fisheries Enterprises with a Focus on Gender that took place on 17 July 2012 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in conjunction with 16th IIFET Conference. The complete proceedings of this special session are available ( http://aquafishcrsp.oregonstate.edu/Documents/Uploads/FileManager/IIFET%202012%20CRSP%20Session%20Proceedings%20Final_small.pdf) through the Aquaculture & Fisheries Collaborative Research Support Program gender web site, ( http://aquafishcrsp.oregonstate.edu/Gender/)

Recovering Fisheries from Crisis or Collapse: How to Shorten Impact Time of International Research Cooperation

ICES – the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea – was founded more than a century ago out of concern for overfishing. However, today’s global marine ecosystems are for the most part in a degraded state, many alarmingly so. Why is the science used so little to make decisions compatible with long-term sustainability of fisheries? The paper argues that there is a large gap between the understanding of scientists and that of political and economic decision makers. Scientists investigate the fundamentals of nature and socio-economic systems. These approaches do not coincide with the perceptions, belief systems and experiences of most social actors, except in the long run. Communicating scientific results better and more pervasively to citizens is an avenue that holds great potential to shorten impact times – provided there is willingness to hear the message. Since the media brought the overfishing message to the general public in the early 1990s, the international discourse has gradually shifted. From ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY) of single species, the discourse started to put restoration of entire marine ecosystems by 2015 formally on the agenda through the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. But results are few and far between as fleet overcapacity driving the process shows little sign of alleviation. It is desirable that international scientific cooperation engages more constructively with citizens, civil society movements, companies and government authorities to speed up adaptive learning. While not replacing political processes, research and research communication that are aware of the different mindsets, cultures and historically grown preferences in societies can help more effectively to bring about the conditions for recovery of lost ecosystem functions and productivity. Trust is a key condition for acceptance of the message. A few examples of the EC’s international S&T cooperation projects are given to explore opportunities and challenges to recover fisheries in crisis

Ethics to Intersect Civic Participation and Formal Guidance

Sound governance arrangement in socio-ecological systems (human niche) combines different means of sense-making. The sustainability of human niche-building depends on the governability of the social-ecological systems (SES) forming the niche. Experiences from small-scale marine fisheries and seabed mining illustrate how ethical frameworks, civic participation and formalised guidance combine in the context of a “blue economy„. Three lines of inquiries contextualise these experiences driving research questions, such as “what is the function of ethics for governability?„ First, complex-adaptive SES are featured to emphasise the sense-making feedback loop in SES. Actors are part of this feedback loop and can use different means of sense-making to guide their actions. Second, the “Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries„ and geoethical thinking are featured to highlight the relevance of actor-centric concepts. Third, Kohlberg’s model of “stages of moral adequacy„ and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) are used to show how to strengthen actor-centric virtue-ethics. Combining these lines of inquiry leads to the conclusion that ethical frameworks, civic participation and formalised guidance, when put in a mutual context, support governability and multi-actor/level policy-making. Further research could explore how creativity can strengthen civic participation, a feature only sketched here

Understanding El Niño -- The importance of Grey Literature in Coastal Ecosystem Research and Management

Access to information about past states of the environment and social systems is fundamental to understand, and cope with, the challenges of climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources at the onset of the 21st century. The loss of (old) data is a major threat to understanding better and mitigating long-term effects of human activities and anthropogenic changes to the environment. Although this is intuitively evident for old and local literature of any kind, even present-day international publishing of papers without the underlying raw data makes access to basic information a crucial issue. Here, we summarise experience resulting from a EU-funded International Science & Technology Cooperation (INCO) project (CENSOR) addressing Coastal Ecosystem Research and Management in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) context. We show that indeed "Grey Literature" is still one of the most important sources of knowledge about natural science research and management of natural resource systems in Latin American countries. We argue that public archiving of original data of present-day research and old (Grey) Literature and easy public access are important for appreciating today's global environmental challenges caused by human activities, both past and present.El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Artisanal fisheries Humboldt Current Coastal ecosystem management Database Climate oscillation

Measuring the scientific impact of FishBase after three decades

FishBase (www.fishbase.org) is a global, open access information system about fishes that contains published scientific data on topics such as physiology and behaviour, life-history characteristics, and species distributions. Since its creation in the late 1980s, FishBase has evolved into a highly dynamic and versatile tool for scientists and the public. The goal of this study is to quantify the impact of FishBase using citation analysis. We used three sources to count the number of times FishBase has been cited and the ways in which it has been used: Scopus for citations in peer-reviewed journals, Google Scholar for citations by a variety of items on the Internet, and Google Books for citations in books. Our findings reveal that FishBase has received more than 10,000 citations in total from 1994 to 2020 (up to 1,229 annual citations in 2020) across hundreds of peer-reviewed journals in Scopus, while Google Scholar attributed nearly 15,000 total citations to FishBase, with an average of 1,200+ citations per year from 2017 to 2021. Regions that use FishBase the most are in Europe, United States of America, Brazil, and Australia. Some of the top authors citing FishBase come from fields in agricultural (i.e., aquaculture), biological and environmental sciences, and work on fisheries biology and management, as well as parasitology, among others. Most citations of FishBase use it as a source of data for information on diet composition, fish sizes and length-weight relationships, taxonomy, or fish habitat. With a cumulative number of citations in the peer-reviewed literature exceeding 10,000 in Scopus and 15,000 in Google Scholar, FishBase is in the top 1% of all cited items published in this and the previous century