Project

This project will from the social sciences contribute to the establishment of a unique scientific network integrating natural and social sciences and thus improve the understanding of the marine ecosystem off West Greenland and the implications of climate change for the structure and functioning of the ecosystem by: 1) Identifying and describing the main social, economic and institutional drivers behind environmentally significant human behaviors with special emphasis on fishing and 2) Identifying and describing the existing environmental governance institutions and those social interactions that contribute or detract from effective governance of the fisheries resources off West Greenland.

With Horizon 2020 funding, ECOTIP launches a pioneering assessment of changes to Arctic marine ecosystems and societies, from melting ice to shifting fisheries

The ambitious new ECOTIP initiative brings together a multidisciplinary group of scientists from more than 10 countries to study ecosystem tipping cascades in the Arctic marine environment. This major international effort will advance understanding of the impacts of climate change on Arctic biodiversity and the cascading effects that biodiversity change can have on marine ecosystems, the climate services they provide, and the human communities that depend on them. The innovative four-year project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme, launched on 1 June 2020.

The Oceans Past Platform Action aims to measure and understand the significance and value to European societies of living marine resource extraction and production to help shape the future of coasts and oceans. The Integrative Platform will lower the barriers between human, social and natural sciences; multiply the learning capacity of research environments; and enable knowledge transfer and co-production among researchers and other societal factors, specifically by integrating historical findings of scale and intensity of resource use into management and policy frameworks.

The oceans offer rich resources for feeding a hungry world. However, the sea is an alien space in a sense that the land is not. Fishing requires skills that must be learned, it presupposes culinary preferences, technical ability, knowledge of target species, and a backdrop of material and intangible culture. The Action asks when, how and with what socio-economic, political, cultural and ecological implications humans have impacted marine life, primarily in European seas in the last two millennia.

The Action calls on historians, archaeologists and social scientists as well as colleagues from the marine sciences to engage in dialogue and collaboration with ocean and coastal managers. The Action will develop historical descriptors and indicators for marine and coastal management.

Understanding the marine environment is a key component to a more sustainable Earth. Technologies to automate data collection and analysis of the marine environment are necessary. Underwater cameras and AI (here in the form of computer vision algorithms) are predicted to play major roles in this regard. This research project takes its starting point in a recently established underwater camera setup that captures video in various conditions. The project aim is an underwater computer vision system that can estimate the visibility, prune the massive amounts of video so only images containing marine organism remains, and finally classify the marine organisms.

Since the reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy in 2002, effort has been devoted to addressing the governance, scientific, social and economic issues required to introduce an ecosystem approach to European marine fisheries.

Fisheries management needs to support the 'three pillars of sustainability' (ecological, social and economic). Fisheries Ecosystem Plans (FEPs) were developed to further the ecosystem approach in fisheries management and as a tool to assist managers consider the ecological, social and economic implications of their decisions. The FP5-funded European Fisheries Ecosystem Plan (EFEP) project developed a FEP for European waters, using the North Sea as a case study.

The core concept of the Making the European Fisheries Ecosystem Plan Operational (MEFEPO) project is the delivery of an operational framework for three regional seas. This is the necessary next step in the process. Furthermore, MEFEPO will, based on the lessons learned, consider how FEPs can be made operational and developed for other regional areas. MEFEPO will focus on how best to make current institutional frameworks responsive to an ecosystem approach to fisheries management at regional and pan-European levels in accordance with the principles of good governance. This will involve developing new linkages and means of allowing dialogue between the disparate groups of stakeholders, the integration of the considerable body of ecological, fisheries, social and economic research which has been developed in recent years and investigate how existing institutional frameworks need to evolve to incorporate this information and develop both dialogue between the disparate groups of marine stakeholders and develop a decision-making process which integrates a wide breadth of interests. The three areas used by MEFEPO will be the North Sea RAC, North-western Waters RAC and South-western Waters RAC areas.

Marine life makes a substantial contribution to the economy and society of Europe. VECTORS will elucidate the drivers, pressures and vectors that cause change in marine life, the mechanisms by which they do so, the impacts that they have on ecosystem structures and functioning, and on the economics of associated marine sectors and society. VECTORS will particularly focus on causes and consequences of invasive alien species, outbreak forming species, and changes in fish distribution and productivity. New and existing knowledge and insight will be synthesized and integrated to project changes in marine life, ecosystems and economies under future scenarios for adaptation and mitigation in the light of new technologies, fishing strategies and policy needs. VECTORS will evaluate current forms and mechanisms of marine governance in relation to the vectors of change. Based on its findings, VECTORS will provide solutions and tools for relevant stakeholders and policymakers, to be available for use during the lifetime of the project. The project will address a complex array of interests comprising areas of concern for marine life, biodiversity, sectoral interests, regional seas, and academic disciplines as well as the interests of stakeholders. VECTORS will ensure that the links and interactions between all these areas of interest are explored, explained, modeled and communicated effectively to the relevant stakeholders. The VECTORS consortium is extremely experienced and genuinely multidisciplinary. It includes a mixture of natural scientists with knowledge of socio-economic aspects, and social scientists (environmental economists, policy and governance analysts and environmental law specialists) with interests in natural system functioning.

For VECTORS, IFM researchers are focusing their research primarily on the Baltic and North Seas; theoretical work surrounds governance, stakeholder and sector interactions and input, and the cultural valuation of ecosystem services.

In Jammerbugt in Skagerrak, some of the most intensively fished Danish sea areas are found. The area is particularly characterised by the fact that all of the most important types of Danish fishing methods for demersal fishing for food fish take place. This applies to gillnets, which are fixed fishing gears, as well as beam trawls, purse seines and trawls, which are bottom-towed fishing gears. The different gears physically affect the seabed in different ways. Fixed fishing gears have relatively low impact and are therefore not included in this project. The habitats on the seabed in the area and the fauna associated with them have not been studied in particular detail. This is important in terms of being able to assess the effect of bottom-towed fishing gears.

There has therefore been a desire to have the impacts from bottom-towed fishing gears, with a main focus on beam trawls, investigated. Through monitoring work in 2023, this research project has investigated fishing activities, the impact of bottom-towed gears, habitats, fauna and biodiversity in general. Many different monitoring tools have been used to provide a broader understanding of these conditions, including: sidescan sonar, vessel satellite data, underwater drone, underwater video camera, towed Ockelmans sled, Van Veen grab for bottom samples, sound recordings and e-DNA. Taken together, the studies provide new general insight into marine nature and impacts from fishing activities with bottom-tow fishing gear in Jammerbugt.

This is an international researcher-practitioner collaboration to co-produce a conceptualisation of marine identity.
The collaboration aims, via workshops, shared writing tasks, and networking platforms, to co-produce an academic paper for publication on the nature and types of marine identities.

What does it mean to identify with the marine? Are there universal aspects to this? To what extent does it affect the relationship between humans, other humans, and the coast? The paper will engage with such questions and this collaboration will aim to create space for follow on work and opportunities in developing knowledge in this space.

The MERCES project is focused on the restoration of different degraded marine habitats, with the aim of: 1) assessing the potential of different technologies and approaches; 2) quantifying the returns in terms of ecosystem services and their socio-economic impacts; 3) defining the legal policy and governance frameworks needed to optimize the effectiveness of the different restoration approaches. Specific aims include: a) improving existing, and developing new, restoration actions of degraded marine habitats; b) increasing the adaptation of EU degraded marine habitats to global change; c) enhancing marine ecosystem resilience and services; d) conducting cost-benefit analyzes for marine restoration measures; e) creating new industrial targets and opportunities.

The core aim of the RESOCO is to build an interdisciplinary synthesis of up-to-date Nordic knowledge and best practices and set the stage for alternative solutions on how to effectively reconcile seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic Sea.

The overall objective of RESOCO is to propose pragmatic and regionally applicable measures which are acceptable to all key stakeholders involved in seal-fishery conflicts in the Baltic Sea. These measures include a mixture of technological tools and practices, management of seal populations, economic measures, and institutional and governance instruments.

The project applies a transdisciplinary approach, incorporating technological sciences, social sciences, economics, environmental psychology, and natural sciences. It supports participatory, coordinated and synergetic approaches for moving towards a more balanced situation in seal-fishery conflict.