Fisheries research overestimates fish stocks

Experts Call for More Realistic Stock Assessments The state of fish stocks in the world’s oceans is worse than previously thought. While overfishing has long been blamed on fisheries policies setting catch limits higher than scientific recommendations, a new study from four Australian research institutions reveals that even those scientific…

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Belizean fishers want changes in policy and practice to revert declining catch trends

Belizean fishers’ experience in the water confirms the declining trends in fishery catches – and, therefore, in fish populations – uncovered by the Belize Fisheries Project (BFP), of which the Sea Around Us is a member together with Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI), the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Healthy Reefs for Healthy People…

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Navigating challenges in scientific publishing: A letter to young scientists

By Rainer Froese I thought the background story of our recent publication ‘New developments in the analysis of catch time series as the basis for fish stock assessments: The CMSY++ method‘ may be of interest to young scientists. It all started in 2011, when I was visiting Daniel Pauly at…

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AI-powered data-limited stock assessment method more accurate than ‘gold standard’ in predicting sustainable fisheries catches

Maps showing the locations of the centroids of the over 2000 stock assessments performed with CMSY (~20%) and CMSY ++ (~80%) in all parts of the world. Image Credit: Froese et al.

A recent update introduced to the CMSY methodology used for assessing the status of fish stocks has proven to be more accurate in predicting the catch that a population can support than highly-valued data-intensive models. In a paper published in the journal Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, the international team of researchers that shaped the…

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An integrated ‘ABC’ toolbox for updating European stock assessments

In a five-day workshop organized by the EcoScope project at the Fisheries Research Institute (FRI) in Kavala, Greece from May 1st to May 5th of 2023, members of the Project Executive Board and International Advisory Board of EcoScope were joined by ten partners under Work Package 5: Assessing the Ecosystem…

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Video tutorials of CMSY assessment method now freely available

Q-quatics’ partner, the Sea Around Us, has released a suite of free video tutorials for data users interested in learning how to perform stock assessments using the CMSY methodology. CMSY or the estimation of maximum sustainable yield from catch and resilience, is one of the novel stock assessment methods for…

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A breakthrough in growth estimation of fishes and invertebrates by FishBase pioneer Dr. Rainer Froese

Co-creator and editor of FishBase Dr Rainer Froese, known and recognized for his advance and computer-intensive stock assessment method CMSY, has recently published a new method for estimating the somatic growth of fishes and invertebrates from its maximum length combined with either its length or age at maturation or with…

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How much fish is left? Assessments for 2,500 stocks now available from the Sea Around Us database

Under the premise of finding out how much fish is left in our oceans since 1950, when industrial fishing operations began to spread to the world oceans, the Sea Around Us team together with the Sea Around Us – Indian Ocean, and the FishBase and SeaLifeBase teams assessed the status of over 2,500 fish and invertebrate populations exploited in the Exclusive Economic Zones of all maritime countries and the high seas.

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FishBase and SeaLifeBase 2021 Anniversary Symposium – Magnifique!

The always buzzing Paris – which did it best to exhibit its usual accelerated rhythm even in pandemic times -, hosted on September 6-7, 2021, an equally dynamic FishBase and SeaLifeBase Symposium at the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution of the National Museum of Natural History. One presentation after the next,…

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Application of CMSY to reanalyze longest time series of catches and largest fishery collapse in history

Results of using CMSY, advanced yet easy to use fish stock assessment model developed at GEOMAR by Froese et al., to reanalyze more than five centuries of cod fishing in Eastern Canada suggests that annual yields could have been sustained at high levels if authorities had allowed the stock of…

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