Advancing marine conservation
In this new Fisheries Centre Research Report (FCRR), Project Seahorse team members, with members of the IUCN SSC Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Group investigated the international live trade in seahorses by species, countries of origin, whether specimens were wild sourced or cultured, destinations, volumes, and their changes over time. We did this by undertaking …
Conservation assessments are central to determining the extinction risk of species. They help drive effective management plans and regulations to protect threatened species. The IUCN Red List has led the way in assessing over 120,000 species worldwide. Given that conservation of threatened species is the legal purview of national governments around the world, it is …
Bans on exploitation and trade are increasingly being used in wildlife conservation. However, their effects on small, incidentally caught marine fishes are rarely examined. For my thesis, I evaluate the impact of one such paired ban in India, across different spatial scales, on the conservation of seahorse species and on the fishers who depend on …
Few marine taxa have been comprehensively assessed for their conservation status, despite heavy pressures from fishing, habitat degradation and climate change. Here we report on the first global assessment of extinction risk for 300 species of syngnathiform fishes known as of 2017, using the IUCN Red List criteria. This order of bony teleosts is dominated …
Intense human pressures require that conservation be nimble and action-oriented even in the face of significant data limitations. In the ocean, invertebrates comprise over 95% of animal biodiversity and are a major component of fisheries catch. Yet, exceedingly little effort is dedicated to supporting conservation of these taxa. The goal of this thesis is to …
Implementing a ban on fishing specific taxa is difficult enough without the added complexity of the taxa being primarily obtained as incidental catch. Most measures for restricting capture and trade to sustainable levels are directed towards targeted species, while overlooking the needs of incidentally caught species. Our study investigates the exploitation and conservation of seahorses …
Highlights CITES Review of Significant Trade (RST) is not improving implementation as intended. Our seahorse work shows that CITES needs to make five improvements to RST: Move beyond requesting outputs (e.g. reports) to recommend meaningful action. Scrutinize and track export suspensions declared during the process. Formally involve species experts, and fund such experts. Abstract Actions …
Tropical coral reefs are subject to multiple pressures from both natural and anthropogenic sources. These pressures have caused widespread declines in reef health, resulting in the increased use of spatial management tools such as marine protected areas (MPAs). MPAs have proven generally effective if well designed and enforced, but there are limited long-term studies investigating …
Download a two page briefing on bottom trawling (pdf). ” Bottom trawling is to the ocean what forest clearcutting is to land” — Amanda Vincent… Read more