Bianca Haas, a PhD student from the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Centre for Marine Socioecology is researching the connections between Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) and sustainability initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She will use the scholarship funding to attend RFMO meetings in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.
Bianca said: “Improving our knowledge about the dynamics of these organisations will help to establish agreements and thus chart new ground in the future understanding of sustainability, which may result in enhanced scientific work, such as stock assessment models to achieve sustainable fisheries.”
Jessica Hudgins from Heriot-Watt University, UK, will be researching the population dynamics of sawfish in Queensland waters, focusing on the Gulf of Carpentaria. In collaboration with Sharks and Rays Australia, the project will have workshops to train fishers on safe sawfish handling, sawfish tagging and DNA sample collection.
Jessica said: “This research will allow us to understand current and historical distributions of sawfish using approaches that can be applied to other data poor or remote areas.”
Rodrigo Oyanedel from the University of Oxford, UK, is researching the illegal fishing of common hake in Chile which is affecting local fishermen and fisherwomen that depend on hake fishing for their livelihoods. He will investigate the drivers for illegal fishing and aims to design interventions to reduce the practice in the region.
Guilherme Suzano Coqueiro from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, is studying the socioeconomic effects of using bycatch exclusion devices in small-scale, traditional community fisheries in southern Brazil.
Santiago Bianchi from the National University of Mar del Plata, Argentina, will use the fund to study whether escape rings can help reduce spider crab bycatch in the Argentine southern king crab fisheries.
The scholarship program is part of the MSC’s ongoing commitment to supporting science and research worldwide to tackle overfishing. Students receive funding of up to A$7,000 per project to support research focused on fisheries science or supply chain traceability.
MSC scholarships help advance knowledge in fisheries science and supply chain traceability around the world. Previous scholarship recipient, Rachel Mullins, published the results of her scholarship project in the ICES Journal of Marine Science in 2018. Her research focused on the potential mismatch between biological and management units of yellowfin tuna in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Read more about our scholarship research program
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Notes for editors:
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organisation. Our vision is for the world’s oceans to be teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations. Our ecolabel and certification program recognises and rewards sustainable fishing practices and is helping create a more sustainable seafood market.
The MSC ecolabel on a seafood product means that:
* It comes from a wild-catch fishery which has been independently certified to the MSC’s science-based standard for environmentally sustainable fishing.
* It’s fully traceable to a sustainable source.
More than 370 fisheries in over 36 countries are certified to the MSC’s Standard. These fisheries have a combined annual seafood production of almost nine million metric tonnes, representing almost 15% of global marine catch. More than 36,000 seafood products worldwide carry the MSC label.
The MSC program could not exist without the many fishers around the world who work to safeguard stocks, ecosystems and their own livelihoods. Read stories about fishers working hard to safeguard our oceans.