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This was a great day for climate protection. On 15 September, 250,000 people turned out in 250 cities and towns in Germany alone demanding Climate Justice NOW!. Many more shouted out this demand around Europe and across the globe. Fridays For Future and countless supporters in civil society, trade unions and a wide range of scientists, artists, and green and blue activists took to the streets. On Sunday, some other marches are scheduled in Brussels, Belgium, and other places. Mundus maris supported the renewed drive demanding governments to stop fossils and rather throw their support decisively behind renewables. An unbelievable 440 Billion USD have been invested over the last months in new fossil extractions on land and in the sea!

The FishBase Team of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, headed by Prof. Jos Snoeks, hosted the annual FishBase-SeaLifeBase Symposium for the fourth time on 4 September 2023. The public event featured interesting talks by representatives of many of the organisations already sustaining work on the global biodiversity data systems covering all fish species and all non-fish animals in the ocean or planning to do so. In addition, several researchers from other Belgian research institutes gave presentations of related work. As a new feature two flash talk sessions offered further research updates for online and onsite participants. The scientific advances presented thanks to using these data systems were impressive.

Excellent opportunity to join a lecture of acclaimed author and long-time friend, Daniel Pauly, at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands, on 2 September 2023. Despite the weekend, the lecture hall was packed full with scientists, managers, representatives of civil society and nature protection organisations, media and some people from government departments. They were not disappointed in their expectation to hear a bold interpretation of deep history of our species as it invaded every last corner of the planet. Means, as a species we are successful, aren't we? Let's see in a whistle stop tour through our history.

Fridays for Future and a very large number of organisations, including Mundus maris, invite you to join the world-wide marches to wean our economies from fossil fuels and protect the climate. After record-breaking temperatures, wildfires of unprecedented scale and torrential rains wreaking havoc in others everybody understands that it's high time to act and transform the way we do business, move, produce and consume in ways to fast track renewables and phase out fossils - really fast.

Download the poster which you can easily print on A4, A3 or even bigger on carton and use during the action day. Look up the march or strike activities closest to you.

Small-scale fisheries face multidimensional vulnerabilities from natural (e.g., disasters, ecosystem shifts) and human factors (e.g., policy, aquaculture, infrastructures, pollution). Despite extensive research on these, the connection between vulnerability and water quality remains unexplored. Fishing communities relate fish to aquatic health, highlighting the importance of water quality. In this webinar Navya Vikraman Nair, PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, Canada, delved into how water quality impacts vulnerabilities in small-scale fisheries.

Africa remains the world’s youngest continent with a median age of 19.7 years.By 2050, one in three young people will live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Estimates suggest that 80-90 percent of African workers are engaged in the informal sector. Each year, 10-12 million African youth enter the labor market, but the African Development Bank estimates that only three million formal jobs are created annually. Meanwhile, nearly half of all African countries rank in the bottom quartile of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index and a new wave of predominantly young people risk their lives in search of better futures in Europe and elsewhere because they see none at home.

The pursuit of creating sustainable fisheries worldwide is of utmost importance due to its numerous benefits. This presentation by Dr. Evans Kwasi Arizi, a fisheries scientist specialising in fish stock assessment, dynamics, and oceanography at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana, aims to enhance understanding of the biological and managerial approaches to fisheries. Healthy stocks help improving the socio-economic well-being of fishing communities.

Viano do Castelo in Northern Portugal is a beautiful port city with an attractive historical centre and inviting beaches. But like all coastal places it struggles with the growing amounts of garbage, plastic and otherwise, which spoil the environment on land and in the sea.

Mundus maris friend Prof. Sarah K. Meltzoff - see the review of her book on maritime anthropology - shared pictures of a remarkable public exhibition to alert citizens to the threats of garbage and marine pollution and promote greater respect for the ocean.

 

 

The production and trade of dried fish are important sources of livelihood and employment for poor people engaged in the dried fish value chain. Despite its importance, work on the dried fish value chain continues to focus on financial value creation and linear interactions among market actors that impede the recognition of human rights, justice, food security, and power across the entire value chain. Poor fishers and dried fish processors are placed at the extractive end of the value chain and hold low power in the market and remain vulnerable to changing social-ecological system dynamics.

Blue Fear – navigating ecological, social and existential anxieties during the Anthropocene - Amsterdam, 27-30 June 2023

"Oceans have always imbued seafarers with fear: fear of storms, pirates and shipwreck, and fear of the creatures that live beneath the surface. This conference suggests that such anxieties are currently broadening and intensifying. Not only are people afraid of occasional tsunamis and hurricanes that take lives and ravage coastal habitats. We are also afraid of what we have ourselves unleashed: the realities of sea level rise, climate change, pollution, overfishing and biodiversity loss. Scientists are working overtime to fine-tune the understanding of causes and effects and to provide possible solutions. International policy fora – such as those involved in the current Ocean Decade - are prodding policymakers and politicians to initiate meaningful mitigatory and adaptive action.

"Let’s Put the Ocean First", UN Secretary-General said in a message for World Ocean Day, 8 June 2023, urging all to keep pushing for recovery, conservation, sustainable use of resources. 'Humanity counts on the ocean. But can the ocean count on us?"  Following on from recent global agreements to protect 30 % of the ocean - including the High Seas - and 30% of the land for stopping mass species extinctions, the UN motto for World Ocean Day 2023 was "Planet Ocean: Tides are Changing".