Rising oceans, changing lives: Final report is the overview report in a series of technical reports that have been
written for the project on Lifuka Island. Accordingly the section titles in the final report correspond with the
names of the respective technical reports.
This report provides a review of our knowledge of the bycatches, defined as
discarded dead, from the tropical tuna purse seine fisheries of the world. The major
fishing grounds involved (eastern and western Pacific, eastern Atlantic, and western
Indian Oceans) share the gear, the ways of fishing, and the structure of the pelagic
communities. Because of that, the species taken in association with tuna schools tend
to be the same in all regions.
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation has completed the World Reef Map, an online interactive coral reef atlas that allows users to explore all of the coral reefs and shallow water marine habitats mapped on the Global Reef Expedition. With over 65,000 square kilometers of shallow water marine ecosystems mapped, this is by far the largest collection of high-resolution coral reef maps ever made.
Map layers include Benthic Habitat Data, Bathymetry, Depth Contours and Habitat Videos.
The Bycatch Management Information System (BMIS) focuses on bycatch mitigation and management in oceanic tuna and billfish fisheries*. It is an open resource useful for fishery managers, fishers, scientists, observers, educators and anyone with an interest in fisheries management. As a reference and educational tool, the BMIS aims to support the adoption and implementation of science-based management measures so that bycatch is managed comprehensively and sustainably.
The region’s fishery resources can be broadly split into two main categories: oceanic, and coastal or inshore. Coastal or inshore resources include a wide range of finfish and invertebrates. They are characterized by their shallow-water habitats or demersal lifestyles, and restriction of individual movements to coastal areas. This paper discusses
Conservation International, GRID-Arendal and Geoscience Australia recently collaborated to produce a map of the global distribution of seafloor geomorphic features. The global seafloor geomorphic features map represents an important contribution towards the understanding of the distribution of blue habitats. Certain geomorphic feature are known to be good surrogates for biodiversity. For example, seamounts support a different suite of species to abyssal plains.
AquaMaps are computer-generated predictions of natural occurrence of marine species, based on the environmental tolerance of a given species with respect to depth, salinity, temperature, primary productivity, and its association with sea ice or coastal areas. These 'environmental envelopes' are matched against an authority file which contains respective information for the Oceans of the World. Independent knowledge such as distribution by FAO areas or bounding boxes are used to avoid mapping species in areas that contain suitable habitat, but are not occupied by the species.