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Upon the invitation of Prof. Madan M. Dey, Chair of the Department of Agricultural Sciences at Texas State University in San Marcos, Mundus maris Vice President Prof. Stella Williams paid a visit to campus on 13 April 2023. In the occasion, she taught a class of post-graduate students from India, Bangladesh and the USA summarising some of her rich research, teaching and, indeed, life experience on promoting women and youths in agriculture and how to support them to grow into leadership roles with a focus on Nigeria.

On April 4, the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Institute (GoGMI), based in Accra, Ghana, welcomed high school students from across the country to a maritime career fair. On offer were free ocean literacy presentations, lots of information about careers and networking opportunities. The students had beforehand participated in a survey to understand their perceptions of ocean careers. GoGMI is a local partner of the Development of Ocean Tecnical Capacity with African Nations (DOTCAN) Institute of Nova Scotia, Canada. It had invited Mundus maris Ghana to enrich the programme with an information booth.

 

 

This talk by Foluke Omotayo Areola provided an overview of the major challenges to the sustainability of small-scale fisheries and their governance in Nigeria. It addressed teh gaps in the administration of the legal instruments in the sector and discussed obstacles in the socio-economic development of such artisanal fisheries within the legal structures of Nigeria at federal, State and local levels. The tension between different levels of statutory law and customary law can be considerable. While Nigeria adheres to a large body of international treaties and arrangements many are yet to be domiciled in order to facilitate the transition from vulnerability to viability (V2V). This was the March webinar of the V2V research platform on small-scale fisheries to which Mundus maris is a partner.

Did you know that sharks are killed worldwide in millions especially for their fins? Europe contributes a shocking 45% to the shark fin trade to Asian markets, both as a main exporter and as a trading hub for shark fins. But this is about to change. The EU Citizens Initiative @StopFinningEU collected over 1.1 million statements to support the establishment of a trade ban on shark fins in Europe! Now Europe has the chance to prove that they are taking their conservation obligations seriously.

The European Parliament held a much noticed hearing on the matter on 27 March 2023.

On Saturday March 4, 2023, the President of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (IGC) tasked with elaborating an Agreement to protect the biodiversity of the high seas declared, “The ship has reached the shore”. After more than 15 years of discussions and negotiations, consensus on an Agreement to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) has finally been reached.

The far-reaching agreement at COP15 in December 2022 which led to the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is the successor of the Aichi targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The webinar on 10 March 2023 featured Mr. Basile van Havre, the Co-Chair for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Open-Ended Working Group tasked with the development of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The webinar was hosted hosted by the School of the Environment and the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Canada) and the Community Conservation Research Network.

This talk by Andrea M. Collins of the University of Waterloo in Canada provided a high-level overview of the various tools and perspectives for undertaking gender-focused analysis in resource sectors such as small-scale fisheries. Drawing from gender studies, feminist political ecology, feminist political economy, and political science, this talk dispelled the idea that gender analysis means only focusing on women. It showed how understanding the many dimensions of gender roles and relations can improve the analysis of resource management and economic activity, expand our understanding of vulnerability and empowerment, and advance policy-relevant outcomes.

The 'Feed the Future - Innovation Lab for Fish' is a USAID supported project based at the Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi. It had invited Stella Williams of Mundus maris as a keynote speaker on 27 February 2023 at day one of its last annual project meeting in New Orleans. Fittingly, the day's key programme topics were gender, youth, and advancing human and institutional capacity development.

This was the first flagship event of the Mission to restore the ocean and waters, a major European initiative to prevent pollution, protect biodiversity and develop sustainable activities in our ocean and waters by 2030. Forum attendees had the opportunity to get some impressions of the first year of implementation of the Mission, showcasing an initial portfolio of projects and actions to achieve the Mission’s objectives. The full day of plenty of short presentations was interrupted by rather long breaks to allow for discussions and networking. Mundus maris shares some impressions.

You can come across them on any walk along the beach, small pieces of torn fishing nets. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. There are probably tens of thousands of tons of ghost nets on the bottom of the Baltic Sea or they got stuck on shipwrecks. These nets not only destroy the sometimes historic wrecks with their weight, but are also a deadly trap for fish, porpoises, seals and birds, which get caught in them and die miserably.

This talk dwells upon different research paradigms such as Hypothesis-oriented, Assessment-oriented, Action-oriented, Systems-oriented, Social adaptive (similar to V2V) frameworks. The motivation behind this talk is to discuss research that goes beyond the conventionally defined domains of science; the relevance of non-expert based knowledge to offer solutions to complex social and environmental problems, and the research that can bring significant impacts on people's behavior by small endeavors.