The Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, has joined forces with the president of BLOOM Association, Claire Nouvian, and philosopher and professor Baptiste Morizot from Aix-Marseille University, to publish a new book that tests dichotomous points of view when it comes to the exploitation of marine resources.
When users explore reconstructed catches by Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on the Sea Around Us website, they can also view how those catches are distributed across key ecosystems.
By scrolling down on a EEZ page and selecting “Ecosystems” on the “More info” section, users can access total catches by Inshore Fishing Area (IFA), estuaries, coral reefs, and seamounts. This ecosystem lens adds critical context, revealing not just how much is caught within an EEZ, but where those catches originate ecologically—and what that means for management.
Salomon Atoll in the Chagos Archipelago. Photo by Charles and Anne Sheppard, Wikimedia Commons.
Domestic fisheries catches in the Chagos Archipelago are 25 times higher than official statistics show, according to a recent study by Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean and Sea Around Us researchers.
At a moment when the fate of the island group also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory is uncertain, a new paper in the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region highlights the importance of accounting for all fish removals to safeguard the area’s biodiversity values.
Global warming is expected to push stocks of highly migratory straddling species in the Indo-Pacific, such as chub mackerel, from EEZs toward the high seas by mid-century. Photo by Matsumomushi, Wikimedia Commons.
Sea Around Us website users will now be able to access the Mean Temperature of the Catch (MTC), as an ecosystem indicator derived from the reconstructed catches of a large fraction of the 283 Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) presented on our website.
Saint Pierre’s shore. Photo by Chantal Briand.
Destructive fishing practices and inadequate management allowed industrial fisheries operating in the waters of Saint Pierre and Miquelon to dump about 80,000 tonnes of fish back into the ocean from 1950 to 2022, with authorities failing to track the wasteful practice. This is enough fish to fill 32 Olympic-sized pools.
Fishing net. Photo by Bicanski, Pixnio.
If humanity wants to continue to derive healthy nutrition from wild-caught fish – as 40 per cent of the global population currently does – it is crucial that fisheries managers and marine conservationists start using the same metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of both sustainable fisheries measures and the establishment of marine protected areas.
Clear blue water in the shallows of an island in the Marshall Islands. Photo by Erin Magee/AusAID, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
Some of the yearly campaigns thousands of organizations run, inspired by this goal, are guided by the annual action theme that NGO The Ocean Project proposes for WOD. The Ocean Project, together with the World Ocean Network, led efforts to get the UN to recognize June 8th as World Oceans Day.
Daniel Pauly (left) and Johannes Müller (right).
In a world where the dramatic effects of global warming on land dominate news headlines, there is a tendency to overlook the massive impacts of warming and deoxygenation on oceans and freshwater ecosystems. However, the effects of climate change on the species that inhabit these ecosystems are, in some respects, more drastic than the challenges faced by terrestrial animals.
Coral reef in Raja Ampat. Photo by Bird’s Head Seascape / Jones/Shimlock / Secret Sea Visions, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
Some of the yearly campaigns thousands of organizations run, inspired by this goal, are guided by the annual action theme that NGO The Ocean Project proposes for WOD. The Ocean Project, together with the World Ocean Network, led efforts to get the UN to recognize June 8th as World Oceans Day.
Purse seine. Photo by Hüseyin Ergül, Pexels.
The global fishing industry should be appropriately represented within climate change mitigation frameworks, where it remains overlooked, a new letter published in Science suggests.
Caribbean spiny lobster. Photo by James St. John, Wikimedia Commons.
Most of The Bahamas’ signature seafood stocks are being fished harder than the sea can replace them, a new paper led by Sea Around Us researchers and published in Frontiers in Marine Science shows.
Bottom trawler. Photo by Lisa, Flickr.
A new study suggests the hidden climate costs of bottom trawling in European waters may far outweigh its economic benefits, raising questions about the future of one of the world’s most widespread fishing practices.
Endemic Antipodean albatross. Photo by Oscar Thomas, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
From left and top: Maria ‘Deng’ Palomares, Heliana Teixeira, Phoebe Koundouri, Rachel Ann Hauser-Davis, and Sílvia C. Gonçalves.
The Sea Around Us manager, Dr. Maria ‘Deng’ Palomares, is one of the editors of a new research topic in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science titled “Women in Marine Science: 2026.”
Los Roques National Park in Venezuela. Photo by Tucanrecords, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
Some of the yearly campaigns thousands of organizations run, inspired by this goal, are guided by the annual action theme that NGO The Ocean Project proposes for WOD. The Ocean Project, together with the World Ocean Network, led efforts to get the UN to recognize June 8th as World Oceans Day.
Grouper. Image created with Adobe Firefly.
Aquatic animals that breathe through gills — including most fish and many invertebrates — are the backbone of life in oceans, lakes and rivers. They support biodiversity, shape food webs and sustain fisheries that feed millions of people worldwide. Understanding how these animals grow, reproduce and survive is therefore essential to understanding how aquatic ecosystems work — and how they continue to support human societies.
In thinking about February as Valentine’s Month, we invited our social media followers to “swipe right for healthy oceans.”
In a series of four posts showcasing country snapshots and designed to mimic a dating app interface, we presented how the Sea Around Us‘ fisheries data help us explore what ocean health looks like in different parts of the world. Each post highlights key strengths and challenges, grounded in catch reconstructions, stock assessments, and nutrition data.
Labour and human rights abuses, overfishing, unreported, unregulated and illegal fishing, all spurred by subsidies provided to distant-water fishing fleets, are some of the most pervasive practices linked to the global seafood industry.
Witnessing and reporting on all of this are fisheries observers. Often scientists – marine biologists or ecologists –, fisheries observers are tasked by national frameworks, regional bodies, or international fisheries organizations with gathering information that supports sustainable fisheries management. Some are hired by the fishing companies they monitor.
The video below shows the performance of one of the Sea Around Us most useful tools: the Mapped Data. By moving the lever from left to right, users can see how global fishing activity has expanded from 1950 to 2019.
Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park. Image by UNESCO, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
Some of the yearly campaigns thousands of organizations run, inspired by this goal, are guided by the annual action theme that NGO The Ocean Project proposes for WOD. The Ocean Project, together with the World Ocean Network, led efforts to get the UN to recognize June 8th as World Oceans Day.
Helostoma temminckii or kissing gourami. Image by Jörn, Wikimedia Commons.
The Marion Dufresne off the “port” of Crozet. East Island in the background. Photo by Dimitri Damasceno, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
