Photo courtesy of: The Daily Mail

A recent post on the Science Magazine news blog repeats a comment by Elliot Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. Regarding deep sea fisheries, Dr. Norse says:

“A population of fish is like a bank account, and its productivity is like the interest it earns. In shallow waters, fish reproduce quickly, and populations would tend to expand 10% annually if not checked by mortality, so they can be profitably harvested year after year. It’s like spending the interest from your savings account

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Below is a short video that looks to be a mashup of clips from around the web including one of Dr. Sumaila. Watch below or click through to the YouTube clip.

Head of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Rashid Sumaila is excited to have his first appearance in the journal Science, co-authoring an article titled “Scenarios for Global Biodiversity in the 21st Century.”

The article, which first appeared online yesterday explores scenarios of biodiversity changes in the future using metrics such as species extinctions, species abundance and community structure, habitat loss and degradation, and shifts in the distribution of species. The authors conclude by suggesting that future scenarios of biodiversity need to focus on integrating predictions of biodiversity changes with feedbacks to societal responses. The abstract is available…

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.

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…

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.

The central issue in this article is that of the fishmeal trade, where…

Recently Dr. Sumaila was in Germany to present some of his work at a session for the European Commission’s 2009 Sustainable Development conference. An audio recording of the session titled “Enhancing global sustainability through international cooperation” is available in it’s entirety.

You can listen for Dr. Sumaila’s presentation between 01:40:30 and 02:01:59 of the downloadable audio recording. Further information from Dr. Sumaila’s session, including a PDF or PPT version of his presentation is available at a speaker page setup by the European Commission.

Although this is an older (2007) video, it is worthy of mention since Dr. Sumaila expands a little further on the impact of subsidies in the high seas, difficulties associated with removing subsidies, and mentions an estimate of total subsidies to the world’s fisheries from Sumaila et al. (2006) — more than USD $30 billion.

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Source: YouTube Video

Dr. Sumaila has long been a vocal critic of the established practice of subsidizing fisheries around the globe. This video focuses on the Ghanaian economy, however, the idea that fishery subsidies negatively affect global fish stocks can be extrapolated to many, if not all, other regions.

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Source: YouTube Video