Category Archives: News

Here’s good news amidst the COVID-19 crisis, just what everyone needs to hear right now. Dr. Rainer Froese has been selected as the winner for the Science category of this year’s Ocean Awards! Huge congratulations to FishBase co-founder and long-term coordinator! It’s a well-deserved award for Dr. Froese in recognition of his commitment to solving the ocean crisis. The organizers, UK-based BOAT International and Blue Marine Foundation, have announced the winners by category each day since Monday, 4 May 2020 on their respective websites and social media accounts. The news on the Science Award winner was officially released last among all categories, on Friday 8 May 2020. All the results will also be published in the June 2020 issue of BOAT International.

Ocean Awards honor and celebrate people and organisations who work tirelessly to help address the largest solvable problem on the planet – the crisis in our oceans. This year’s winners were chosen for taking strides to improve the health of the marine environment, with sustainable management of marine resources and public engagement efforts surrounding the oceans.

“Rainer Froese, who helped create the successful online encyclopedia on fish, FishBase, received the Science Award for empowering independent scientists to assess fish populations swiftly in ways that challenge conventional wisdom. He applied the first of these methods to a reassessment of European fish stocks which showed that the fishing industry could catch an additional 5 million tonnes – twice the what is produced from fish farming – if fisheries management was done properly and according to European law. His most recent breakthrough enabled the assessment of 38 data-poor North Sea species such as the thorny skate and Vahl’s eelpout, showing that the population of half of them was so small that reproduction may be impaired. The findings are likely to require some species to be listed as endangered and for the EU to return them all to favourable conservation status. Rainer also had the idea to look at where trawling was most intense in European waters – and his colleagues discovered that trawlers were, scandalously, most active in Europe’s designated marine reserves.”