Fish

are sought on the Resilience Alliance Blog:

Decline in salmon causes decline in cultural ecosystem services

Agriculture increases the supply of food supplied by an ecosystem, but often decreases its ability to supply other services.  The same appears to be true for salmon aquaculture. …

and

PhD Position at Stockholm Resilience Centre

Line Gorden and Gary Peterson are looking for a PhD student to work with them at the Stockholm University on resilience issues of Arctic Ecosystems. (You must love the cold…!)

The Resilience concept is a relatively new approach developed to examine the sustainability of linked social-ecological systems.  The Resilience Alliance’s website has a great wealth of information on the topic.

Last week thirteen Vietnamese fishers were caught fishing just off the Philippines westernmost province, Palawan, which borders the South China Sea. Among various other sorts of fish, they had in their possession more than 100 turtles. I have a particular interest in this because they were caught in one of the islands I did fieldwork in, Linapacan Island in the Calamian Group. After a short chase by the military, the fishers were eventually taken into custody in the nearby town of El Nido. Given the government’s earlier spineless responses to the incursions of Chinese fishers into the World Heritage-listed Tubbataha Reef, it will be interesting to see what action (if any) is eventually pursued against these Vietnamese fishers.

A new scheme has aimed at reducing confusion over fish names in Australian fish markets and retailers.  The Fish Names Brand Scheme was adopted yesterday by the biggest fish market in the country, the Sydney Fish Market, and their retailers.  It has involved the creation of standardised terms for each Australian fish species to replace various obselete names. ‘Deep sea perch’, for example, is now an obselete name for orange roughy. The scheme is expected to be adopted nationwide within the next couple of years.

 For full details of the scheme see here.

I’ve recently published an article that deals with the relationship between illegal fishing and young men in Palawan, Philippines. I argue that those involved in illegal fishing activities, such as cyanide fishing for the live fish trade, are usually macho young men who are keen to show off their masculinity.

 The article can be viewed here; I’d be interested if anyone had any comments or feedback.

13th-17th October 2008, Bangkok, Thailand. See here for details.