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Does plastic around the world really get recycled? Not at all! Only 9% of discarded plastic is recycled. Plastic pollution is threatening the marine ecosystem worldwide. More than 8 billion tons of plastic are produced by humanity, and about 8 million tons are dumped into our oceans every year, where it persists for decades. Over the next years, the amount of marine plastic waste will double if we do not act. A global issue affects our ocean, our health, and our well-being. In fact, oceans host 80% of the planet’s biodiversity, they are the largest ecosystem on Earth, and are an import source of food. Despite the fact that researchers are uncertain about the nature and extent of the risk of marine debris on ecosystems and humans, the concern about plastic persistence and their effects on the oceans has increased since the last decade. Once in the ocean, the huge amount of plastic, although widespread, affects the safety of sea transport, fisheries, tourism, recreation, and biodiversity...

            Worldwide over 600 million people depend directly or indirectly on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods. Fish provide essential nutrition for over 4 billion people and at least 50 percent of animal protein and essential minerals to 400 million people in the poorest countries. In addition to the pressure exerted by human activities, such as over-fishing, habitat degradation and pollution, both fisheries and ecosystems are exposed to threats related to climate change. It is known that climate change is part of Earth's geological history, but that is not all. In the last 150 years we have been observing a rapid warming of the atmosphere, intensified in the last decades and attributed to the increase in the emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from human activities.             Climate variability and change are already affecting aquatic ...

We finally got to the end of our sequence of interviews with the IMBER crew, closing it with a flourish. We had a quick chat with Dr. Paul Suprenand, an expert modeler working with the Ecopath family, who also integrates physiology and ecology to address challenges associated with environmental change, especially related to fisheries. Paul is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at MOTE, in Florida (USA). FEME : What are the advantages and disadvantages of modelling nature? Dr. Paul Suprenand. Source: IMBER PAUL : Nature is a very complex system, it has so many wonderful things to it, but in the model you cannot always capture all these little differences and they could be very important. So, the advantage would be that you have a way to look at some of the most important factors that could influence ecosystems or the animals within the ecosystem. However, you may lose some of the complexity. What is neat about the model is that it is more readily understood; yo...

Unthinkable technologies – or thinkable only in Hollywood – have been emerging rapidly in the last decades. One incredible example and recently spread are drones. Drones are unmanned aerial devices that make a noise similar to drones, the male bee. Drones were originally created as a strategic war artifact, but now they have all kinds of applications, formats, and sizes. Some are so tiny that fit in your hand (Fig 1).  Fig. 1. You can fit a drone in your hand. Source: http://www.webdechollos.com/ Drones are polemic objects because they were originally created for military purposes. The USA has surveyed and attacked Afghanistan and Iraq using drones. In fact drones have seem to become really famous during the chase of Bin Laden. Several people also argue that the use of drones can shape wars to worse by reducing people’s empathy due to the lack of human-human contact (beats us to try to imagine an empathic war….). The use of drones also faces some legislation issues in several part...

In coastal settlements in Brazil, we often see women at the edge of the mangrove swamp, harvesting clams and seaweed, or back in their villages weaving nets and benefiting fish, with children in tow. The activities performed by these women are unstable and discontinuous, which depend unconditionally on environmental conditions, and also on social factors, such as being pregnant or with very young children at home. Women’s work is socially, economically, and ecologically relevant, but still invisible. We don´t know exactly what, how much, when and why they harvest. We don´t know how much of their product ends up in the market and if their market poses the same limitations faced by fishermen. We don´t know if their work is even more important to food security than male’s work and if it also contributes to the household economy when other activities fail. We, as a country, fail to recognize the overall role of artisanal fisheries in Brazil, but we manage to do a much poorer job when it co...

The Amazon basin is home for the silver arawana ( Osteoglossum bicirrhosum ), a fish better known in the international aquarium business as the “ dragon fish ” due to its phenotypic characteristics that makes it resemble a Chinese dragon, which has turned it into a highly popular pet in Asian countries. In such countries, this fish is believed to bring good luck and prosperity. Although not famous for its good looks, it is still an interesting fish that presents parental care by the male. Silver arawana ( Osteoglossum bicirrhosum ).  Image from http://www.acuamanus.com.ar At the tripoint where the borders of Colombia, Brazil and Peru meet in northwestern Amazonia, the ornamental fishing of the silver arawana is a highly important economic activity for many riverine communities of the three countries. However, the management policies vary greatly between countries to the point where what Brazil implements is exactly the opposite of what the others do. In Brazil its ornamental f...

It is widely recognized that marine resources, although renewable, are not endless and need to be properly managed if their contribution to the nutritional, economic and social well-being of a fast growing human population have to be sustained. In this sense, maintaining long-term marine fisheries sustainability entails not only socio-political significance, but also economic and ecological importance. So far, most of the fish stock assessments* performed rely on methods proposed in the first half of the twentieth century. Although robust, these methods are clearly outdated and inflexible because they demand b ig data set and they do not take into account the interactions that exist between the biological, physical and anthropic components. However, most of the ongoing fisheries research has to face the lack of regular data, making conventional stock assessment tools usually not applicable to data-poor situations. This is particularly a concern for developing countries, where fishe...