The star of the Ellen DeGeneres show has recently plugged the documentary film End of Line in which Dr. Sumaila is featured.

Photo via: Wikimedia Commons

From Ellen’s Twitter stream recently:

“Have you heard of this documentary “End of the Line?” I just heard about it. If you care about the planet, please watch it.”

and again appealing to her fans to go out and watch the film:

“Get more info here: http://endoftheline.com RT @nevergiveup2010 Where can I find this documentary? Is it online?”

The film has even made it into the list of films Ellen loves. It’s great to see this film waking waves in popular culture in…

Ahmed Khan, a graduate of UBC’s Fisheries Economics Research Unit now studying at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada says that Governance may be an influential factor to consider when it comes to seafood supply. This comes from a recent article in Science magazine’s policy forum titled Sustainability and Global Seafood which appeared in the February 12, 2010 issue.

Photo by Grace Ong

Ahmed is one of several authors on the paper who collaborated to draw attention to some of the current issues in world fisheries. A recent article in The Gazette summarizes some of the key points of the Science paper, and its implication for…

Dr. Sumaila appears in a video with several notable celebrities including Leonardo Dicaprio and Prince Charles. In this video concerning the health of the earth’s oceans and climate change Dr. Sumaila says:

Scientists have predicted: every second breath of humans depends on the oceans. So the oceans are central to our livelihoods and our survival on the planet.

For more information about this video with transcription, see the full post at sumprememastertv.com.

For many people, thoughts of fisheries brings to mind images of industrial fleets with sophisticated boats and gear. However, another side of fishing that is rarely seen in many parts of the world is the focus of work by Eny Buchary who is a current PhD candidate working with Dr. Tony Pitcher of the Policy and Ecosystem Restoration in Fisheries (PERF) group at the UBCFisheries Centre.

Eny describes the video, which she believes to be the only one documenting this particular fishery saying:

“[t]his video clip shows crew members of “Sumber Jaya”, a pair-boat purse seine (called “Slerek”), hauling sardine in the Bali Strait, Indonesia.…

The newest member of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit is Dr. Ling Huang from Duke University in the United States. Dr. Huang will be working as a post-doctoral researcher with Dr. Sumaila on several projects over the coming years.

Dr. Huang’s research interests have focused on fisheries topics such as in her job market paper Measuring the Dynamic Efficiency Costs of Common Property Resource Exploitation:A Dynamic Discrete Choice Model of the Fishery as well as energy markets and other topics in economics.

You can learn a little more about Dr. Huang’s research interests, her publications, and contact information on her homepage at Duke…

Megan Bailey of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit has just published her first work of 2010. Her paper titled Application of game theory to fisheries over three decades provides a review of how game theory has been used in the field of fisheries and possible avenues for future applications and policy analysis.

Photo by Eric Robinson

Abstract: Thirty years have passed since Munro published his 1979 work on the potential applications of game theory to fisheries. It is pertinent to ask now: has this potential been realized, and in what forms? This paper highlights progress in the field over the past three decades. We…

A short new video posted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on video sharing site YouTube is an excellent quick introduction to fisheries subsidies and why it is an important issue. Watch for appearances by Dr. Sumaila at 1:22, 2:37, and 2:59 in the video below.

Key concepts excerpted from the video are:

“almost every subsidy is potentially harmful”

“Subsidies even contribute to widespread illegal fishing”

“there are still complex issues on the negotiating table and it is crucial these are resolved….and soon.”

See the Fisheries Subsidies blog for more discussion of the video.

Also see UNEP’s Economics and Trade Branch (ETB) for further information

…

Many of the world’s fish stocks are currently over-exploited and some, such as Canada’s Atlantic cod, have collapsed completely without much hope for renewal. There are many reasons why these stocks are in decline, however, there is one major factor that we have direct control over, yet fail to take action — government subsidies.

Photo courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons

The harmful effects of subsidizing fishing fleets is most apparent in deep sea fisheries, such as for the orange roughy pictured above. Deep sea fishing is costly and, therefore, the profit margins are often quite narrow. In fact, if it weren’t for…

A recent United Nations food summit in Rome alerts the world that the number of under-fed people is now more than 15% the world’s estimated 6 billion population. It is now believed that the number of under-nourished people around the globe exceeds 1 billion for the first time in history.

Photo by Luke Redmond

Just weeks after preliminary results from the Global Ocean Economics project were made available on this site indicating that overfishing has exacerbated problems of undernourishment (PDF), this news from the UN food summit seems to highlight the importance of addressing the issue of overfishing around the globe. While the UN…

The Vancouver Sun reports yesterday on a paper by the Sea Around Us project’s Jennifer Jacquet and co-authored by Rashid Sumaila of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit. Coverage by that news organization is just one of several who have picked up on the story that consumer awareness programs, such as the Marine Stewardship Council’s product certification program, haven’t been effective in curbing the increasing rate of overfishing around the globe.

Photo by Telstar Logistic

The central issue in this article is that of the fishmeal trade, where thousands of tonnes of fish are caught and fed to livestock each year. The authors suggest that the practice of…