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"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".

'Let’s Put the Ocean First’, UN Secretary-General says in 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?'  

In this spirit Mundus maris has mobilised many, particularly young, people since 2013 to celebrate World Ocean Day. Year after year we organised clean-up days, engaged in open air sports activities, theatre and music performances and more in countries on three continents.

Palermo, Sicily, 30 and 31 May 2023. The regional Lighthouse Activities to recover the badly affected Mediterranean and Black seas brought together representatives of countries, regions, cities, islands, ports, fisheries, educational and research institutions and projects together into the regional parliament, Palazzo dei Normanni. The splendid Sala d'Ercole was certainly a prestigious venue in what used to be the royal palace of Frederic II with roots of Phoenician and Punic settlements retrieved in its foundations and today a Unesco World Heritage site in recognition of more than 2000 years of human and cultural exchange across the Mediterranean.

This webinar on 26 May 2023 in the series of monthly events of the V2V research platform uncovered the contributions and impacts of small-scale fisheries through a multidisciplinary approach to data collection and analysis. Nicole Franz, Equitable Livelihoods Team Leader at the Fisheries Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) summarised key results from a multi-annual international research effort labelled "Illuminating Hidden Harvests. The contributions of small-scale fisheries to sustainable development". 

Excitement in and around the European Parliament. Droves of primarily young people standing in line to get their entry passes. They were among the 2000+ people registered for the 'Beyond Growth' Conference in the European Parliament, convened in hybrid mode. Only about half could participate in person. How can we all live dignified lives within planetary boundaries, the one planet we must share with organisms on the land, in the ocean and with fellow citizens everywhere?

The terms ‘vulnerability’ and ‘viability’ are usually studied in the context of socio-cultural and political-economic settings. In these cases, they would refer to vulnerability from and viability in challenging external circumstances, such as the consequences encountered by ecosystem-dependent communities in the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh. However, the speed and quality of transition are directly proportional to the psychological constitution, worldviews, and resilience of the individual and their sum total collective.

The beginnings of geoethics about a decade ago initiated by Silvia Peppoloni and Giuseppe Di Capua, geologists from Rome, were rather whimsical. The geoethics work stream at the 2023 Annual Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna has grown into a full day's programme. Mundus maris has repeatedly contributed to this encouraging development both at EGU conferences and in associated books projects. This year there were even several presentations reporting on field work and experiences on how to account for a range of different ways to express knowledge, inside and outside of scientific epistemologies.

When gas discoveries of 425 billion cubic meters were confirmed in 2015 for the coastal areas shared between Mauritania and Senegal, it spawned hope, such as providing electricity to the roughly 30% of the estimated 18 million Senegalese without access. At that time, the local artisanal fishers who had brought money into the communities of Guet Ndar in St Louis and others, were already struggling with many hardships such a coastal erosion of their villages and loss of life at sea. Worst of all was, however, the competition by foreign industrial vessels and gradual loss of access to the most productive fishing grounds reachable with their open boats, locally called pirogues. 

Upon the invitation of Prof. Madan M. Dey, Chair of the Department of Agricultural Sciences at Texas State University in San Marcos, Mundus maris Vice President Prof. Stella Williams paid a visit to campus on 13 April 2023. In the occasion, she taught a class of post-graduate students from India, Bangladesh and the USA summarising some of her rich research, teaching and, indeed, life experience on promoting women and youths in agriculture and how to support them to grow into leadership roles with a focus on Nigeria.

On April 4, the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Institute (GoGMI), based in Accra, Ghana, welcomed high school students from across the country to a maritime career fair. On offer were free ocean literacy presentations, lots of information about careers and networking opportunities. The students had beforehand participated in a survey to understand their perceptions of ocean careers. GoGMI is a local partner of the Development of Ocean Tecnical Capacity with African Nations (DOTCAN) Institute of Nova Scotia, Canada. It had invited Mundus maris Ghana to enrich the programme with an information booth.

 

 

This talk by Foluke Omotayo Areola provided an overview of the major challenges to the sustainability of small-scale fisheries and their governance in Nigeria. It addressed teh gaps in the administration of the legal instruments in the sector and discussed obstacles in the socio-economic development of such artisanal fisheries within the legal structures of Nigeria at federal, State and local levels. The tension between different levels of statutory law and customary law can be considerable. While Nigeria adheres to a large body of international treaties and arrangements many are yet to be domiciled in order to facilitate the transition from vulnerability to viability (V2V). This was the March webinar of the V2V research platform on small-scale fisheries to which Mundus maris is a partner.