Local fisherman in Madagascar sorting through the morning's catch ~ Photo by Tara Whitty

Project Support:
Artisanal Fisheries Research Network &
Assessing Modern Global Pollution of Seafood

Founded in 1903, Scripps Institution of Oceanography is one of the oldest and largest acedemic ocean, atmosphere, and earth science institutions.  With more than a century of exploration and discovery in global sciences, Scripps is the world’s preeminent center for ocean and earth research, teaching, and public education.

A department of UC San Diego, Scripps’ leadership in many scientific fields reflects its continuing commitment to excellence in research, modern facilities and ships, distinguished faculty, and outstanding graduate and undergraduate students - and the horizons continue to expand.

Artisanal Fisheries Project

The Artisanal Fisheries Research Network (AFRN) is a San Diego-based group of students, researchers, and faculty who study artisanal (subsistence and small-scale) fisheries around the world. Network members represent a broad range of academic disciplines – including marine biology, economics, international relations, anthropology, and geography – and are associated with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, and San Diego State University.

Founded in January 2010, AFRN aims to serve as a hub for interdisciplinary communication and collaboration on methods for studying artisanal fisheries, and for elucidating the commonalities and differences across fisheries in different regions where our research is conducted. What unites AFRN researchers and their projects is a recognized need to study the ecological, social, economic, and cultural context of artisanal fisheries in order to move toward effective management and conservation.

Ayana Johnson conducting socioeconomic interviews with fishermen at a roadside fish stand in Curaçao.

Artisanal fisheries are defined as small-scale operations that catch fish for subsistence or for local markets. Globally, these fisheries catch approximately 30 million tons of fish annually for human consumption (the same amount as commercial fisheries), and provide protein and income for an estimated 500 million people. However, these fisheries have the capacity to significantly alter marine ecosystems through overfishing and habitat damage. Nevertheless, they are also our greatest hope for achieving sustainable harvests, because they are more efficient than commercial fisheries in terms of much lower bycatch and fuel use and much greater employment.

Understanding and reducing the negative impacts of artisanal fisheries on the marine environment is a rapidly emerging priority for marine conservation, and is critical to both the health of marine ecosystems and the welfare of people who depend upon them. To better understand, scientists must engage in interdisciplinary research that considers each the ecological, social, economic, and cultural aspects of artisanal fisheries. Collaboration among scientists, projects, regions, and disciplines is critical if research is to contribute to effective, well-informed management.

By synthesizing the collective expertise and experience of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and beyond, the team will develop and disseminate standardized methods to better document and understand the socioeconomic and cultural context of artisanal fisheries, with the aim of producing results that are applicable to effective management.

Assessing Modern Global Pollution of Seafood

In the past century, humans have put 83,000 synthetic industrial compounds into the environment. 5000 of these chemicals are high production volume chemicals, produced at volumes of thousands of metric tonnes annually. We have also dramatically changed the environmental levels of natural harmful compounds such as carbon dioxide and mercury; indeed two-thirds of the mercury in the atmosphere today is from our use of coal for energy. Many modern industrial compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, perfluorocarbons (PFC; teflon) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDE; flame retardants), are highly persistent.

The oceans are a repository for global pollutants. In turn, our own exposure to these ocean pollutants is often directly linked to our consumption of seafood. For example, elemental mercury in the atmosphere is deposited in the oceans through atmospheric processes and converted to organic mercury by microbes in sediments. Organic mercury persists, by binding to intracellular proteins, and rapidly moves up the food chain where it accumulates to high levels in long-lived fish. In turn, we humans are exposed to mercury when we eat those fish. There is urgent need to measure the scale of the ocean pollution problem and to determine the extent to which it presents a threat to human and environmental health through consumption of seafood.

Industrial chemicals pollute our oceans, including our seafood. Photo: Brian J. Skerry / National Geographic Stock

The overall goal of this project is to estimate levels and distributions of modern industrial chemicals in the global seafood supply. The principal focus will be on one common fishery, the yellowfin tuna. Yellowfin tuna is among the most important fisheries targets worldwide, supporting fishing activities worldwide in tropical and subtropical seas. Approximately one million metric tonnes of yellowfin tuna are caught annually, making up one of the largest single-species contributions to total worldwide finfish consumption (approximately 2% of the total by yellowfin tuna alone). Yellowfin tuna tend to school in shallow waters and thus are likely to be regularly exposed to common sources of marine pollution that are concentrated in the shallow depths of the ocean.

During the first phase of the study, an unbiased chemical screen of yellowfin tuna will be conducted to identify the types and range of chemicals found in these fish. In the second phase, the study will amplify on this screen with targeted analysis of the major problem chemicals generating a large, statistically robust dataset on these common pollutants in yellowfin. They anticipate focusing on modern organic pollutants, including PBDEs, PFCs and one toxic metal, mercury. The study will explore the scope of the problem by comparing contaminant levels in fish across the globe, asking the question whether any fish, even those from the most remote areas of the planet, are free from contamination by modern chemicals.

This project will give us a better understanding of the scope of the seafood pollution, specifically focusing on identification of modern industrial chemicals. This proposal targets a gap in knowledge of how industrial chemistry influences our food supply through global marine pollution.

Help is needed in collecting yellowfin tuna samples from across the globe. Do you have access to locally-caught yellowfin tuna? If so, a collection kit can be sent and you can help in expanding the map. Please contact Stuart Sandin (ssandin@ucsd.edu) or Amro Hamdoun (ahamdoun@ucsd.edu).

Through this project, a global map of distribution of key contaminants in yellowfin tuna will be generated. These data will describe robustly whether or not 'pollution knows borders', namely whether any of the world's seafood sources are beyond the influence of chemical pollution.

Resources

Artisanal Fisheries Research Network Website
Scripps Institution of Oceanography Website