UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN

Department of
Biological Sciences



How can fisheries contribute more to a sustainable future?

News

Fishing for Our Future: Future Fisheries partners with Nature and Youth

Nature and Youth, partner in the Future Fisheries project, organized Fishing for Our Future and Ocean Seminar.

14 October 2022

All geared up for fishing, big smiles included! (Photo: Nature and Youth)

Every summer, the Norwegian branch of Nature and Youth organizes the event Fesk Førr Framtida (Fishing for Our Future). This is a project where young people get the opportunity to try out life as a fisherman for a week. The goal is to inform youth about sustainable fishing practices and the difficulties that the Norwegian fishing inshore industry faces. The participants discover the entire fisheries process, as they work both onboard an inshore fishing vessel and at a processing facility. Since the project’s start in 2014, over 100 young people have participated in the project.

In the course of the autumn, Nature and Youtha also organized an Ocean Seminar (Havseminar) in Volda, Norway. The seminar with 62 participants covered a variety of environmental topics under the broad umbrella of ocean management, including seabed mining, aquaculture, and how climate change is affecting ocean biodiversity.

Nature and Youth arranges several events focusing on ocean sustainability and fisheries. Here from the Ocean Seminar 2022 in Volda. (Photo: Nature and Youth)

Sustainable fisheries futures at Nor-Fishing 2022

Kim Scherrer and Sara Hornborg (project partner at RISE) of the Future Fisheries project contributed to the academic program at the the Nor-Fishing exhibition.

13 October 2022

Nor-Fishing was arranged 22-26 August in Trondheim. Beyond seizing the opportunity to interact with the industry, fisher organizations, coastal municipalities, and management organizations, the two team members contributed to the academic program at the fair. At the Research Square (Forskningstorget), Kim presented the project (How can fisheries contribute more to a sustainable future?) in a special session on the Decade of Ocean Science - Ten Years of Ocean Action. Both Kim and Sara were involved in the academic conference at Nor-Fishing, which this year had the theme: Green Transition and Sustainability in Fisheries. Sara gave the keynote presentation in the session Methods for Future Management of Fisheries, focusing on future sustainability challenges like CO2 emissions and how to manage them. Kim chaired the session together with TEG alumni Fabian Zimmerman from IMR.

Kim on stage with Fabian Zimmermann of IMR. (Photo: Mikko Heino)

Three new members working with sustainable fisheries

We are excited to welcome three new members to the Theoretical Ecology Group to work on the project How can fisheries contribute to a more sustainable future? The project is a Collaborative Project to Meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges within the thematic area Sustainable Food Systems funded by the Research Council of Norway.

4 March 2022

From left Anita Løtvedt, Alex Tidd, and Kim Scherrer. (CC0)

PhD research fellow Anita Løtvedt

My name is Anita and I just started as a PhD fellow in biological oceanography, in the project “How can fisheries contribute to a more sustainable future?” led by Katja Enberg. I grew up in a rural part of the west-coast of Norway (south of Bergen), but I’ve lived here for the majority of the last decade. I’ve studied mathematics here at UiB and have a Master’s degree in applied and computational mathematics. My main research interests are dynamic modeling, numerical analysis, and global sensitivity analysis.
My PhD project will be part of the work package led by my main supervisor, Dag L. Aksnes, Does state-of-the-art microbial models revise primary production and trophic efficiency? and will mostly entail developing a depth-resolved minimum microbial food web model as well as analyzing the sensitivity of key model output to changes in driving forces in the model.

Postdoctoral research fellow Alex Tidd

I recently joined the University of Bergen as a researcher to work on the sustainable food systems project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. I am going to be researching underutilized fishing efficiency (and greenhouse gas emissions) and how this threatens the long-term sustainability and biodiversity of marine capture fisheries and seafood supply, including those threatened by climate change. My background and main area of research are fishing fleet dynamics and fisher behavior, and I have a wider interest in linking these processes to aquatic ecosystems. I began my career in the United Kingdom working at the Centre for the environment, fisheries, and aquaculture Science (Cefas) working on a variety of policy-orientated European Commission and UK government-funded research projects. Since I have gained international experience including working in policy at an intergovernmental organization, and within a number of academic environments.

Postdoctoral research fellow Kim Scherrer

I have just started as a postdoc with Katja Enberg as part of the Future Fisheries project. I’m from Östersund, Sweden, and did my PhD at ICTA at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. There, I focused on representing human dimensions like management, climatic shocks and employment in a global fisheries model. I’m interested in future projections for marine ecosystems, size-spectrum modelling and many other things in the interface between marine and human systems. Beyond that, I’m a keen skier, climber and hiker. In the Future Fisheries project, I will explore the potential productivity of marine fisheries and interlinkages between marine and terrestrial food production systems. Through such analyses, we hope to identify ways in which fisheries can contribute more food with less ecosystem and climate impacts.

Webmaster:  Christian Jørgensen.