• You are here:  
  • Home

June 8 is World Ocean Day and a good time to rethink how to put into practice what governments have promised on behalf of all of us when they adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, including stopping overfishing and implementing the Guidelines for Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries. Innovation for a sustainable ocean is the UN motto for this year, and the Corona pandemic certainly stimulates a lot of it.

The major organisations of small-scale fishers in Senegal, men, women, of all professions along the artisanal value chains are up in arms in the face of further threats to their livelihoods and future. What happens? Fisheries landings are going down since the turn of the millennium, mostly as a result of overfishing by industrial fleets. Those flying the Senegalese flag are often in foreign ownership or joint ventures oriented to export. The Minister for Fisheries and the Maritime Economy apparently wants to grant 56 more licences to primarily Chinese industrial vessels or boats to be "Senegalised".

Not all the preparations were in vain for the annual trip to Vienna for the usually massive gathering of geoscientists from around the globe. As a matter of fact, far from giving up, the EGU General Assembly 2020 from 3 to 8 May in the online format "Sharing Geoscience Online" was an exciting experiment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a great success throughout the entire week. 18,036 abstracts formed the programme with 701 scientific sessions. 11,380 presentation materials accompanied the abstracts and thousands of comments were posted online.

StorioneWe are living in exceptional times: the covid-19 pandemic has affected Rome and many different parts of the world even more seriously. The memory of other essential aspects of life will do us some good. Like healthy and sustainable nutrition, like the memory of our past, recent or distant. On the staircase of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which is located in the Campidoglio of Rome, on the right for those who enter from the magnificent square, there is a bas-relief of an uncertain era. It depicts a sturgeon, a fish present in the Tiber, the river that crosses the eternal city, until only some decades ago.

To celebrate World Ocean Day 2020 Mundus maris invites schools to draw and write - extended to November - See new announcement

On June 8, 2020 we celebrate again World Ocean Day. We celebrate together the marine world, its harmony and its beauty. We are in awe discovering its wonders and secrets. And we are also committed about taking care of it and protecting it from threats such as pollution and mistreatment of its living beings. The World Ocean Day theme for 2020 is 'Innovation for a sustainable ocean'.

This timely conference organised by Seas At Risk in Brussels, 5 February 2020, put all the emphasis where it urgently belongs: on to implementation and action! Taking issue with the gulf between talk and action, even between legislation supposed to be enacted, but regularly broken and ignored without consequences for the perpetrators in high office and in implementation agencies alike, the consortium supporting the conference had elaborated a Blue Manifesto of an implementation roadmap between now and 2030 to meet commitments.

It's the fourth time that the BOOT fair in Düsseldorf hosts the "love your ocean" platform of conservation organisations and innovators coordinated by the German Marine Foundation. It's the second time that Mundus maris and Q-quatics participate reaching out to visitors of all ages to discover the sounds fish are making and how to protect the ocean in times of growing demands on its resources.

The University of Kiel organises a lecture series about humans and the sea to increase ocean literacy. It takes place in the auditorium maximum and is open to citizens, including university staff and students. Mundus maris was invited to speak about small-scale fisheries in the session titled 'Fisheries and aquaculture narratives' on 8 January 2020. Dr. Ulrike Kronfeld-Goharani of the Research Group on International Political Sociology (IPS) moderated the evening.

Former Mundus maris treasurer Marianne Braun Richter (left) was among the many volunteers in Madrid rising to the challenge of helping to organise COP25 on short notice from 2 to 13 December 2019 after the Chilean government pulled the plug because of civil unrest in response to antisocial policies.

How does plankton affect the weather? How does the biodiversity of these organisms shape our existence? How do the diminishing numbers of diatoms, a type of micro-algae, and the revival of dinoflagellates or archaic cyanobacteria, threaten our health? Why is the severest impact of ocean plastic pollution not even covered by the media? And why is the Iodysseus programme at the heart of the issues faced by the planet’s global ecosystem?

The mega event at FAO HQ in Rome from 18 to 21 November about fisheries sustainability attracted some 750 registered participants. Structured in fine detail, the eight sessions with up to six keynotes and an equal number of panels of five experts each per day placed a heavy emphasis on statements. That relegated discussions mostly into the few breaks and social hours. A large set of speakers, geographically, institutionally and thematically diverse and with good gender balance, summarised their current understanding of the status and expected futures of fisheries around the globe.