A holistic global strategic plan to include Antarctica's biodiversity

The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, developed under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), provides the framework for curbing biodiversity loss by 2020. It consists of five strategic goals interspersed with 20 targets known as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets—acting as a flexible framework for addressing national needs, priorities, and progress. 

Biodiversity and conservation state of the Antarctica and Southern Ocean (which cover 10% of the planet's surface), however, has not been evaluated against the Strategic Plan—a clear gap if a holistic global biodiversity assessment is aimed by 2020. Providing an analysis of the region will generate a true representative of the state of global biodiversity; it will also allow the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) to compare conservation progress in the region with that being made globally. 

Scientists led by Steven Chown, together with Sea Around Us Senior Scientist and SeaLifeBase Project Coordinator Maria Lourdes Palomares and others, filled in the gap using empirical evidence, expert knowledge, and general guidelines for conducting biodiversity assessments. 

Fig 1. Progress for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean against the Aichi target elements compared with the Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (Accessed from Chown_etal2017, PLOS Biology).  

Antarctica and the Southern Ocean biodiversity prospects for 2020 (and beyond to 2050), surprisingly, are at par or similar to those for the rest of the planet.  Still, a lot can be done to improve the state in the region through support from the government, industry, and public, creation of new tools, and an integrated biodiversity strategy and action plan.

Access the full article published in PLOS Biology: http://bit.ly/2t7ns2A

First record of a potentially invasive mussel Mytella charruana in Manila Bay

Human activities have, in many unprecedented ways, accelerated biological shifts and nuances in our planet. Such is the case for Manila Bay and its inhabitants. A slew of anthropogenic activities such as land and sea-based transportation, sedimentation, fisheries, and reclamation and land conversion has put the ecosystem at high risk for biological invasions.

Meet the Charru mussel Mytella charruana, a newly reported species in Manila Bay, which has been previously documented to be invasive in Florida. A team of researchers led by Dr. Benjamin Vallejo (University of the Philippines Diliman) and SeaLifeBase staff, Jeniffer Conejar-Espedido (University of the Philippines Los Banos) confirms its first recorded presence in the area. Previously identified as Mytilus spp., the bivalve was later identified via DNA barcoding to be Mytella charruana, suggesting its phylogenetic position within the Perna clade. Increasing trend in its abundance from 2014 to 2015 indicates likelihood of establishment and probable competition with the native mussel Perna viridis.  

What makes the species different from Perna and Modiolus is its dark bluish to brown hue and a bluish to purplish nacreous interior. It is also bigger (average of 2.8 cm shell length) compared to another non-indigenous mussel in the area, Mytilopsis, which only grows to 1 cm SL.

Mytella charruana from the Manila Bay PICES
collectors. Photographs by J. Conejar-Espedido.

How did M. charruana reach Manila Bay?

Researchers suggest it is likely to have been introduced via ballast water or through fouled ship hulls. Since mytilids in general adapt and highly reproduce in estuarine and coastal conditions, the persistence of M. charruana is likely.

The spat was first observed at the start of southwest monsoon rainy season. Assuming it has a similar life history profile as that of P. viridis, its introduction must have occurred between late April and early May 2014. This suggests possible competition between the two species. The increasing abundance of M. charruana also indicates its establishment in Manila Bay, but this is yet to be verified in succeeding years. How it could affect the populations of the native P. viridus is, however, is unknown. Further studies on the reproduction, ecology, community dynamics and population genetics are recommended.

Dr. Vallejo’s team also includes, Leanna Manubag, Kevin Carlo Artiaga, Amor Damatac II, Ivan Christian Imperial, Tyrll Adolf Itong, Ian Kendrich Fontanilla and Ernelea Cao.

You can access the full paper at (http://www.reabic.net/journals/bir/2017/1/BIR_2017_Vallejo_etal.pdf). 

Cheaper, faster tool may be used to assess risks posed to dolphin populations by dolphin-watching tourism

Many studies have supported the threats imposed by boat-based tourism on whale and dolphins, especially amidst poorly-enforced or lacking regulations. Tourist boats highly impact cetacean behavior, both in short- and long term aspects. Thus, there is a need to understand the ecological effects of boat-based tourism on cetaceans along with economic sustainability of the industry. Since long-term study of ecological indicators may take 15 years or more to detect, it is impractical and costly. A group of researchers then proposes a cheaper and faster approach on this issue.

To complement ecological data, they used human dimension data (which is more readily available) with insights from Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to rapidly assess the ecological impact of dolphin-watching tourism to dolphin populations across six developing Asian countries: Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Putting the framework within the context of dolphin-watching  tourism, they identified different indicators: the driver (development potential of dolphin-watching industry) that build pressure (number of tour boats, driving behavior, engine noise, etc.) on the environment, affecting the state (local IUCN status of species), leading to impact (change in population dynamics and habitat use) on ecosystems, hence the need for response (Code of Practice, cap on daily boat trips, alternative livelihoods, etc.).

Since impact can only be measured through large historical data, the indicators of the other four components and relationships among them where used to obtain a proxy, risk, i.e. the risk of a dolphin-watching industry harming, displacing or causing local extinction to a target dolphin population. A relative value of 0 to 5 was assigned for each D-P-S-R indicator: zero risk (0), very low risk (1), low risk (2), medium risk (3), high risk (4) and very high risk (5). Based on the values of pressure, state, and response, they obtained an overall risk indicator of local extinction.

They found high risk to dolphins in India and Indonesia, intermediate risk to Cambodia, and suspected low risk (pending more ecological data) to Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia populations.

Aside from alleviating the main contributing component to the overall risk factor, the study suggests “The introduction of and compliance to a Code of Practice would significantly reduce the pressure on the local dolphin populations.”

The international research team includes scientists from Indonesia (Putu Liza Mustika), Australia (Riccardo Welters, Gerard Edward Ryan - Cambodia, Coralie D’Lima - India), Philippines (Patricia Sorongon-Yap), Thailand (Suwat Jutapruet), and Malaysia (Cindy Peter). 

This paper is now published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

You can access the full paper here: A rapid assessment of wildlife tourism risk posed to cetaceans in Asia.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: DR. PAULY IN THE WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE FORUM

Dr. Daniel Pauly at a White House event on citizen science. (Source: Sea Around Us)

We take pride as SeaLifeBase’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly speaks in the recently held discussion of the Oceans and Coasts session of the “Open Science and Innovation: Of the people, by the people, for the people”, a live-webcast forum of the White House held last September 30, 2015. The event was hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Domestic Policy Council, having three objectives: (1) to celebrate the successes of citizen science and crowdsourcing; (2) to raise awareness of the benefits these innovative approaches can deliver and; (3) to motivate more Federal agencies and Americans to take advantage of these approaches [1].

In this forum, Dr. Pauly presented FishBase and briefly discussed the efforts of its project staff in the Philippines in gathering and extracting data from vast references in order to make information on all fishes become freely available to the world through the database. FishBase, an online information system founded more than 25 years ago, has grown to become one of the largest global database sources (GSDs) that provides systematic information on all fishes of the world including Etheostoma obama and Teleogramma obamaorum, two species of fish named in honor of President Obama. The database has received almost 50 million hits from over half a million users in a month and has been cited by more than 5000 scientific studies over the past decade, based from the Google scholar [2].

The forum was participated by respected citizen science professionals, researchers, stakeholders from different levels of the government, acadaemia as well as the non-profits and private sectors. It is such an honor for the whole FishBase team to be recognized as a successful science project by the White House. SeaLifeBase and  the whole FishBase Information and Research Group Inc. (FIN) family are very proud of what FishBase, with its founders, Dr. Pauly and Dr. Rainer Froese, have achieved.

Cheers! For future great collaborations that this opportunity might bring.

Watch the complete footage of the event here.

Links to other posts about the event: for Sea Around Us and for FishBase.

______________________________

[1] Kalil, T. and D. Wilkinson.  Accelerating Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing to Address Societal andScientific Challenges. Published on September 30, 2015. [Accessed 10/22/2015].

[2] The FishBase Project Facebook page. Coming Soon: FishBase in the White House! Published on September 28, 2015.  [Accessed 10/22/2015].

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SeaLifeBase opens its doors to summer volunteers

SeaLifeBase welcomes its newest member, our volunteer for this summer, Ms. Shamica Alonso. Mica is taking up her Bachelor ‘s degree in Biochemistry (major in Chemistry) at the De La Salle University. Apart from her passion in visual arts, such as photography, painting and other crafts, she also enjoys fun outdoor activities and was a former varsity member of Miriam College’s Football team, SY 2010–2011. She is looking forward to gain a wider perspective and personal hands-on experience in the field of marine biology, which is one of her current interests.

Welcome to the SeaLifeBase Team, Mica! 

We hope you will also love and enjoy your stay with us.

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Dr. Pauly's latest updates: Global marine fisheries true catch

Do you want to get updated about the reconstruction efforts on the annual global fish harvests?

On April 17, Dr. Daniel Pauly, Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us and the SeaLifeBase Project, will be presenting:

"Reconstructing the global marine fisheries catch: the main findings so far"

Time: 11am

Location: AERL 120, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada

This will be the last Fisheries Centre Seminar talk this semester. Don’t miss this chance. Everyone is very much welcome to attend.

SeaLifeBase welcomes its new members!

SeaLifeBase wholeheartedly welcomes its two (2) new members: Rachell Gallano and Rubyann Polido. Both started last November 2014. Three months have passed and we wanted to know how are they feeling so we asked them to share their experiences and expectations since they joined the team. Here's what they have to say.

Rachell Gallano

Academic Profile

I earned my Bachelor's degree in Biology from Southern Luzon State University (SLSU) in Lucban, Quezon back in 2008. In the same year, I became a College Instructor of the Natural and Biological Sciences Department in SLSU. After two years, I pursued my Masters degree in Zoology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). At that time, I was a full-time student and a recipient of the Department of Science and Technology-Accelerated Science and Technology Human Resource Development Program (DOST-ASTHRDP) scholarship. My research on the “Prevalence and intermediate hosts of acanthocephalan parasites in cultured Nile tilapia” during my masters received the Best Paper award during the 6^th CAS-UPLB Student and Faculty Research Conference in December 2013. My research interests have been parasitology and ecology of aquatic ecosystems. I also plan to pursue a Doctoral degree in the future. 

Venturing into marine research

From academe, I engaged myself into marine research. I entered this kind of career to develop my scientific writing and communication skills.

Experience and Expectations

I was tasked to handle the SeaLifeBase facebook and blogspot pages wherein I feature and share information and latest news about various non-fish marine organisms on a daily basis. For the past three months since day one, I have also developed my written communication skills with my continuous effort to contact SeaLifeBase collaborators from different parts of the world. I also learned to multi-task by managing my time doing both administrative-related work and searching for vernacular names of different marine species. This kind of career is not just a challenge but also a rewarding task especially when you have accomplished it well.

As of now, I am still undecided about future plans pertaining to my career but one thing is certain, I love and enjoy my job and colleagues here in SeaLifeBase. 

Rubyann Polido 

Academic Profile

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Biology major in Ecology from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). I did a special problem on the phenotypic plasticity of an ornamental plant, Hoya albida, under the supervision of Prof. Faith S. Maranan. I presented my study last May 2014 in the Philippine Society for the Study of Nature. While still figuring out my niche in marine research, I presently have this growing interest in mangroves and sea turtles.

Venturing into marine research

While checking online courses in edX, I stumbled upon a course offered by the University of Queensland entitled Tropical Coastal Ecosystems. Fundamentals of marine biology were discussed there and I found it really interesting to the point that I dedicated months to complete the course - jotting down notes, taking short quizzes and watching videos. Taking the course was free so I maximized that opportunity.  Few months later, I found a post on a social media regarding a vacancy in SeaLifeBase. How timely! Curiosity took me away so then and there I applied. More importantly, I felt the urge that I had to be assertive of what I really want; to be a marine biologist, I hope, can be that fulfilment.

Experience and Expectations

It was said in the post that the job entails encoding of non-fish marine species, so I already expected a bonding with the computer. It was a good fit because what I needed was an introduction to marine species before I can specialize on a specific field of study. The environment? I already felt like I have a set of good friends. It was comforting to have met dedicated colleagues who have their own field of interest. That makes you want to develop your own.

First day jitters turned to weeks. Research is tough. But good things come out of patience and great training. Learning how to zero in on a specific information and encoding it is definitely a discipline. And it is really satisfying when you finally come across that information you have been looking for so long. Among others, exhausting available data online, scrutinizing details, entering a bibliography, citing a reference properly are things that I will be grateful for learning. It is also a plus to be in an environment where I can forge my path towards the field I want to specialize on in the future. 

We are grateful to the both of you because we are able to positively contribute to your growth as marine researchers. We hope that you will enjoy not only the company of its team members but also the project as it is. Remember that we are one in conservation!

Crêpes à la Bailly

Last week, we greeted FishBase Coordinator and FIN Board Chair Dr. Rainer Froese to his annual Philippines visit with a crêpe party.

SeaLifeBase Scientific Adviser and FishBase Project Manager Nicolas Bailly was chef of the night.

Welcome back, Rainer!

University of Alicante awards Daniel Pauly an honorary doctorate

Dr. Pauly at the awarding of an honorary doctorate from the
University of  Alicante (Spain) last January 28, 2013. Source

Esteemed fisheries scientist Dr. Daniel Pauly was recently awarded as the new Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Alicante (UA).

Known for his work on studying human impacts on global fisheries, Dr. Pauly is a forerunner of the ecosystem approach to fisheries management, co-developing simulation toolkits such as Ecopath, Ecosim and EcoSpace to offer a new perspective in managing fisheries.

Dr. Pauly is a co-maker of FishBase and currently the SeaLifeBase Project’s beloved Principal Investigator. The SeaLifeBase Project follows the FishBase example of a global biodiversity information system for the rest of the animals in the oceans.

Congratulations, DP!


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2013 ushers in a new member of the SeaLifeBase team

The SeaLifeBase Project welcomes its newest member,

Ms. Elizabeth Bato.

Beth holds a degree on Agriculture and is currently on her 2^nd year post-graduate studies on Environmental Science at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

She will be handling distribution and occurrence data, thus her knowledge and experience on geographic information system (GIS) would be very helpful for this assignment.

Welcome aboard, Beth!


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Announcement from FIN Executive Director Mary Ann Bimbao

On September 2012, SeaLifeBase Project Coordinator M.L. Deng Palomares accepted the position of Associate Scientific Director for the FishBase Information & Research Group, Inc.(FIN) which manages both FishBase and SeaLifeBase projects.
          
Deng joins Nicolas Bailly who was appointed as FIN's Scientific Director in January 2011, with the latter and the former to lead and manage FishBase and SeaLifeBase, respectively. Her appointment will balance the relationship and work between the two databases, whose programs will further be well coordinated for upcoming projects particularly directed towards an ecosystem approach.
           
Nicolas and Deng are on secondment arrangement from WorldFish and UBC Fisheries Centre, respectively.

Publication in the Nature Climate Change

SeaLifeBase Principal Investigator Daniel Pauly and Project Coordinator Deng Palomares are co-authors in an article recently published in Nature Climate Change (NCC). Entitled "Shrinking of fishes exacerbates impacts of global ocean changes on marine ecosystems," the paper talks about how changes in biogeochemical properties directly affect the ecophysiology of marine water-breathing organisms. In simpler terms, it shows how global warming affect the distribution and reproduction of fishes, notably how fish across different species decrease in size with the continuing rise of water temperature. The data used in this paper was based heavily on FishBase growth data.

This study has been featured by the BBC News.
To access the full paper, click here.

New publication in PLOS ONE

SeaLifeBase Project Principal Investigator Daniel Pauly and SeaLifeBase Project Coordinator Maria Lourdes Palomares are co-authors in a new publication entitled "Gaining Perspective on What We’ve Lost: The Reliability of Encoded Anecdotes in Historical Ecology", published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Abstract:

Historical data are essential in fisheries management and conservation, especially for species that suffered significant population declines prior to ecological data collection. Within the field of historical marine ecology, studies have relied on anecdotal evidence, such as written accounts by explorers and interviews of different generations of resource users, to demonstrate the former abundance of certain species and the extent of their ranges. Yet, do we all agree on how these anecdotes are interpreted? This study examines the way that different people interpret anecdotes extracted from historical narratives. We outsource a survey to 50 randomly selected people using Amazon Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) and ask them to ‘code’ historical anecdotes based on their perceived abundance of species. We perform intercoder reliability tests to show that people's perceptions of historical anecdotes are generally consistent. The results speak to the reliability of using people's perceptions to acquire quantitative data, and provide novel insights into the use of anecdotal evidence to inform historical ecology.

Read and/or download the rest of the paper here.

Posted by:

Lealde Pacres-Urriquia

Research Assistant

The SeaLifeBase Project

Philippine fisheries and Daniel Pauly in Oceana Magazine

Oceana recently released their Summer 2012 magazine.

The Small Sanctuary Approach

Read the article at pages 8- 11.

Good coastal fisheries stewardship, combined with national policies on quotas, habitat and bycatch, can alleviate poverty.

The status of the marine protected areas, condition of the coastal communities, and municipal fisheries of the Philippines are featured. Find out how commercial fisheries are classified as artisanal fishing in the Philippines.

Ask Dr. Pauly: Are the Oceans Jellifying?

Ask Dr. Pauly at page 13.

People notice jellyfish more these days – or is it the jellyfish that notice more people? In any case, more people are getting stung – a rash of rashes as it were.

Daniel Pauly once again talks about jellyfish and the possible causes of the outbreaks. Is it really because of global warming?

Visit Oceana to know more or click here to read the rest of the magazine.

Posted by:

Lealde Pacres-Urriquia

Research Assistant

The SeaLifeBase Project

Daniel Pauly in Synergy Online

SeaLifeBase Project Principal Investigator Daniel Pauly is cited in the July 2012 issue of Synergy Online, journal of the Faculty of Science, University of British Columbia (UBC).

In the article Jellyfish Rising, Pauly mentioned that the scope of the jellyfish populations study can further be extended into a global scale by combining published scientific data with other unpublished data and observations, which can then result to the "best available scientific estimate" of the jellyfish blooms.

Visit Synergy to read the rest of the article.

Posted by:

Lealde Pacres-Urriquia

Research Assistant

The SeaLifeBase Project 

Food For Thought Seminar Series 2012

The SeaLifeBase Project Scientific Adviser Nicolas Bailly and Project Coordinator Deng Palomares participated in the Food For Thought seminar series of the WorldFish Center in Penang, Malaysia. 
     
They discussed the status and projects of both SeaLifeBase and FishBase, including the current efforts in publishing reports on marine species list by area. 
    
Click play to view the entire presentation and listen to the audio transcription:

FishBase and SeaLifeBase: current status and efforts

More PowerPoint presentations from The WorldFish Center

The SeaLifeBase Project Principal Investigator Dr. Daniel Pauly is co-author in an article on the Rio+20 summit as published in Science on 15 June 2012.

Avoiding Empty Ocean Commitments at Rio+20

To read the complete article, visit www.sciencemag.org or click here.


Posted by:
Lealde Pacres-Urriquia
Research Assistant
The SeaLifeBase Project

SeaLifeBase joins the world in celebrating