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Covid got the better of the anniversaries - 30 years of FishBase and 15 years of SeaLifeBase - with celebrations originally scheduled for 2020. But this year, the FishBase and SeaLifeBase Symposium could take finally place in Paris from 6 to 7 September and was all the more diverse and informative. Thanks to the team of Patrice Pruvost of the Museum National de l'Histoire Naturelle and reinforced by Fabrice Teletchea of Loraine University and Valérie Gaudant of Cybium it was beautifully organised in the Auditorium of the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution of the Museum.

It is becoming a tradition. Once a year, we invite neighbours, friends and family to a garden party to celebrate good relations and the protection of the sea, marine cultures and nature around us. After a year's break forced by the pandemic, we were all so happy to pick up again where we left it in 2019. On Saturday 28 August, we seized the opportunity to get together again or afresh. And come they did. Some eighty guests from the youngest of just over a year to the oldest, past eighty, they accepted the invitation and joined the get together.

As part of the monthly lectures of the V2V research collaboration, on 27 August 2021 Prof C. Emdad Haque of the University of Manitoba, Canada, and Dr M. Salim Uddin, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Waterloo, Canada, spoke on the topic "Post-disaster livelihood reconstruction and resilience enhancement by the small-scale fishers and transformative changes in coastal Bangladesh". They looked a regions in the country which have experienced severe shocks over several generations and have developed capabilities to bounce back mostly through strong social bonds and mutual help.

It's almost an epic battle. On the one hand Paolo Fanciulli in Talamone, better known as Paolo, the fisherman, on the one hand, and the trawlers of Porto di Santo Stefano near Orbetello in Italy's Tuscany region, with tacit consent of several local authorities, on the other. You're forgiven to think instinctively it's a battle between David and Goliath. In more than one way it is. Paolo is determined to save coastal ecosystems, deploys innovative means and ways and does not get scared into submission. The trawlers operating often illegally at night in the immediate proximity of the coast reserved for artisans seem to have all the advantages on their side.

Since the last century, role-playing games have been implemented as a methodology to stimulate awareness and participation of communities in various problem areas, thus facilitating the search for solutions to conflicts of interest between parties. Among these problems, the growing environmental conflicts currently arouse special interest, particularly among young people, but also among older groups. This method of conflict resolution allows us to develop our creative skills through an interactive dynamic between groups and people, simulating in an almost theatrical performance a situation of marked realism and importance, but in a safe space.

The July 2021 lecture of the V2V Research Project - From Vulnerability to Viability - casts a light on migration, with special attention to environmental migration. Michaela Hynie of the Department of Psychology of York University focuses on the nature of migration and consequences for communities left behind in six sites across three countries: India, Nepal and Canada.

Small-scale fisheries employ more than 90% of all men and women active in different parts of the value chain of around the globe. Some 40 million in the catching sector alone and many more in pre- and postharvest jobs. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that approximately half are women. The vast majority, about 85%, lives and works in Asia, 9% in Africa, 3% in Latin America and only 1% in Oceania, Europe and North America respectively (1).

This year's Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) was convened entirely online from 5 to 8 July. Jointly organised together with the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of the Erasmus University Rotterdam it offered numerous parallel sessions grouped as seed panels, harvesting panels, workshops and roundtables.

From 28 June to 2 July this year, the MARE Conference offered again a platform for exchange of latest research results, joint learning and networking. The key theme invited critical reflection on the fact that 'sustainable development' as guiding concept for policy makers, has been replaced of late by the ‘blue economy’ and ‘blue growth’ mantra. We say instead, focus on people - they can correct the dangerous directions some investments are taking at the expense of the wellbeing of people and planet.

The Galapagos Islands located some 1200 km west of continental Ecuador have not only captured the imagination of Charles Darwin during the circumglobal voyage of the Beagle in September 1835, but of countless scientists and tourists ever since; without forgetting the pirates, whalers and other seafarers depositing their letters in Whaler's Barrel Postbox on Floreana since the late 18th century. Whoever passed by would pick up any letters destined to close to home and would deliver them personally in exchange for a cup of tea - a habit kept alive by modern tourists. María José Barragán, current science director of the Charles Darwin Foundation in Puerto Ayora, takes us through the research station's development phases since its creation in 1959 and the ups and downs of its scientific and social work in support of the Galapagos National Park to study and protect its unique biodiversity. Click on the picture to see the registration of her talk.

Congratulations to this year's Mundus maris Awardees selected from 61 submissions from 10 countries by the international jury. The theme chosen by the UN for this year's World Ocean Day was "The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods". The theme allowed for a wide variety of vistas. We invited submissions in the form stories, poems, paintings and video divided into age groups to account for different life stages. Covid may have reduced the numbers of contributions, but certainly not the quality.