The MSC has awarded a fifth student scholarship to develop the knowledge and understanding of fisheries biology and management. Each student has received a travel and study scholarship up to the value of £4,000.
Following on from the launch of the MSC scholarship programme in Spring 2012, the emphasis for this round of research projects was to support students and projects in Asia, South America or Africa.
A panel of four selected the project which best met the requirement of researching some aspect of environmental improvement, performance or best practice in fisheries management.
Miguel Cosmelli an MSc student at University of California, Santa Barbara (USA) was awarded a scholarship for his project ‘A Socioeconomic Assessment of the artisanal Lobster fishery in Juan Fernandez Islands, Chile’.
Following news of his successful scholarship award Miguel said “The Lobster fishery of Juan Fernandez island is a Chilean example about how a community can manage their fishery resources in a sustainable way. As such it is one of the most promising candidates for applying an ecosystem based management (EBM). In this project we will contribute to establish a socio-economic baseline for EBM in order to obtain key socio-economic indicators which can improve management regimes and commercial strategies."
David Agnew, Director of Standards at the MSC said “This is an exciting project which will be the first towards the construction of more complex socio-bio-economic models that could include many other aspects required for an Ecosystem Based Management. It’s a small scale, community based project which we’re pleased to support”.
Miguel’s research will be published by the MSC in October 2014.
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