High seas at Harvard Kennedy School
High stakes on the high seas
High seas fisheries play a negligible role in addressing global food security
Authors: Laurenne Schiller, Megan Bailey, Jennifer Jacquet, and Enric Sala
Abstract
Recent international negotiations have highlighted the need to protect marine diversity on the high seas—the ocean area beyond national jurisdiction. However, restricting fishing access on the high seas raises many concerns, including how such restrictions would affect food security. We analyze high seas catches and trade data to determine the contribution of the high seas catch to global seafood production, the main species caught on the high seas, and the primary markets where these species are sold. By volume, the total catch from the high seas accounts for 4.2% of annual marine capture fisheries production and 2.4% of total seafood production, including freshwater fisheries and aquaculture. Thirty-nine fish and invertebrate species account for 99.5% of the high seas targeted catch, but only one species, Antarctic toothfish, is caught exclusively on the high seas. The remaining catch, which is caught both on the high seas and in national jurisdictions, is made up primarily of tunas, billfishes, small pelagic fishes, pelagic squids, toothfish, and krill. Most high seas species are destined for upscale food and supplement markets in developed, food-secure countries, such as Japan, the European Union, and the United States, suggesting that, in aggregate, high seas fisheries play a negligible role in ensuring global food security.
Read more here.
Watch over Antarctic waters
Commentary led by Cassandra Brooks, and also David Ainley, Peter Abrams, Paul Dayton, Robert Hofman, and Donald Siniff at Nature.
In a rapidly changing climate, fisheries in the Southern Ocean must be managed cautiously…
Read it here.
Defining denial and sentient seafood — a response to Sneddon et al.
Sneddon et al. address the scientists who reject the empirical evidence on fish sentience, calling them “sceptics” and their work “denial”. This is the first article to frame the question of fish sentience in these terms, and it provides an obvious opening for social science and humanities research in the science of fish sentience. It is also worth asking what practical changes in the lives of fish might arise from the mounting evidence of their sentience. I suggest that the relationship between sentience and our sense of moral obligation is not as clear as we often assume. Read the full response here.
Continue reading “Defining denial and sentient seafood — a response to Sneddon et al.”
Doom and gloom versus optimism: An assessment of ocean-related U.S. science journalism (2001-2015)
Article with Lisa Johns at Global Environmental Change.
While doom and gloom language was
identified in 10% of all articles, optimistic language was present in 27%.
Read it here.
WNYC interview over the death of the last male northern white rhino
Listen to an interview with WNYC’s the Takeway about the death of the last northern white rhino and our survivor guilt (also see Human Error in Lapham’s Quarterly).
