SeafoodPrint
A National Geographic & Sea Around Us Collaboration
The collaboration between National Geographic and the Sea Around Us Project originates in a common interest in quantifying and illustrating the impact of fisheries on marine ecosystems. We chose the “seafoodprint” of fisheries as a measure of this impact. Essentially, the seafoodprint is the oceanic primary production required to generate (or ‘sustain’) the catch of fisheries, similar to the grass that would be required per year to generate a certain production of milk or meat (see D. Pauly and V. Christensen, 1995, Nature, Vol. 374 Pages 255-257). The first products emanating from this collaboration are the richly illustrated contribution by Paul Greenberg in the Oct. 2010 issue of the National Geographic magazine and a scientific contribution, see W. Swartz, E. Sala, S. Tracey, R. Watson and D. Pauly, 2010, PLoS one 5(12):e15143, which documents and quantifies the spatial expansion of fisheries since 1950. Future collaboration between National Geographic and the Sea Around Us will use the seafoodprint concept to explore the future of fisheries under various management and global change scenarios.
