Speaker: Dr. Athanassios Tsikliras
Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Location: Online (RSVP required)
The bad status of marine populations and the degradation of marine ecosystems highlight the urgency for a paradigm shift from the anthropocentric perception of commercial stock surplus yield to an ecocentric fisheries management that incorporates all ecosystem components, including abiotic and socioeconomic factors, aiming at rebuilding fish stocks, and restoring ecosystems and habitats. The aim of this work is to demonstrate the main outputs and milestones of the EcoScope project and the scientific developments that will, hopefully, promote the ecocentric fisheries management in Europe. Throughout the course of the project we produced four main outputs (a platform, a toolbox, an academy, and a mobile application) and delivered several other side activities including ecosystem models, stock assessments, socio-economic and value chain analyses, management and climate scenarios under uncertainty, a marine spatial planning challenge simulation platform and a card game. The interoperable EcoScope platform, organised and homogenized climatic, oceanographic, biogeochemical, biological, and fisheries datasets across European Seas to a common standard type and format and is now available to its users through interactive mapping layers. The EcoScope Toolbox, a scoring system that hosts ecosystem models, socio-economic indicators, and fisheries and ecosystem assessment tools can be used to assess fisheries and ecosystems using an array of indicators. Various stakeholders were involved in the design and content of the platform and toolbox, both of which used biological data from FishBase and SeaLifeBase, species distributions from AquaMaps, as well as catch and economic data from the Sea Around Us. The EcoScope Academy includes a series of online courses and sophisticated capacity building tools, such as documentary films, webinars, and games, and is freely available to scientists, decision-makers, and other stakeholders. A series of base EwE ecosystem models (ECOPATH) were developed in all case study areas, along with their temporal (ECOSIM) and spatial (ECOSPACE) components. The mobile phone application (EcoScope App) aims to increase awareness of the general public in marine environmental issues. A Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Challenge simulation platform has been developed for the eastern Mediterranean Sea launching a new tool on fisheries management to help decision-makers, stakeholders, and students understand and manage the maritime (blue) economy and marine environment. Finally, a card tabletop game Fish n’ Ships – Aegean Sea version which simulates the management of fisheries and marine ecosystems in the Aegean Sea, was developed to teach marine sustainability and ecosystem dynamics in an engaging yet scientifically robust way.
EcoScope (Ecocentric management for sustainable fisheries and healthy marine ecosystems – Grant 101000302, www.ecoscopium.eu, 2021-2025) is an H2020 funded project (BG-10-2020 work programme topic “Fisheries in the full ecosystem context”) aiming to address ecosystem degradation, anthropogenic impacts, and unsustainable fisheries and to co-design efficient, holistic ecosystem-based fisheries management that will aid towards restoring fisheries sustainability and ensuring a balance between food security and healthy seas.