Aberdeen – 2nd annual meeting for Smartfish
Smartfish is another Horizon 2020 project I am involved in – this one I am Project Leader for and work closely with the SINTEF Ocean team on coordinating the project – and this trip was the second annual meeting – we are halfway through the project, and it was time for us to discuss how to continue with the testing part of the project. SMARTFISH H2020 is an international research project which aims to develop, test and promote a suite of high-tech systems for the EU fishing sector. The goal is to optimize resource efficiency, improve automatic data collection for fish stock assessment, provide evidence of compliance with fishery regulations…
Brussels and the 18 month review
One of the research projects I have a work package leader role in is called COASTAL – and it is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. In this project, we take advantage of a unique multi-actor collaboration of coastal and rural business entrepreneurs, administrations, stakeholders, and natural and social science experts in our networks, and we developed a proposal where one of the aims was to formulate and evaluate business solutions and policy recommendations that had as its aim to improve coastal-rural synergies that could in turn foster rural and coastal development while still preserving the environment. My role in this project is to lead…
Annual Meeting – GoJelly! in Piran, Slovenia
What an amazing week in Slovenia! I sometimes pinch myself at how lucky I am to get to work on such exciting projects with a fantastic group of people from not only all over Europe – but also from within my own organization and my town! I had never been to Slovenia before – and did not know much about the country – but it has a very small coast line but a big personality! It is on the Adriatic sea, north of Croatia, south of Austria, and across the pond from Italy – and it was so quaint and sweet a place. We got there the day before, and…
Svalbard, Arctic shipping routes and port development – newest article
The newest article co-written by myself and my colleagues at Texas A&M University at Galveston just got published in Maritime Studies – https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-019-00143-4 Svalbard, which I have written about several times since I started my PhD studies in 2005, is and island group that is located in the Arctic Ocean, and is administered by Norway through the 1920 Svalbard Treaty. Due to its strategic location, the increasing activities of oil/gas exploration development and the possibilities of new routes to and from Europe and Asia using the Arctic passage, Svalbard represent a new potential development area within a new efficient transport route. The aim of this paper was to investigate Svalbard’s…
SHARE this questionnaire! You could win an iPad!
Please help me – fill out this questionnaire for the GoJelly project on perceptions of jellyfish and microplastics – Bonus – you could win one of five ipads! QUESTIONNAIRE LINK It should not take you more than 6-10 minutes to fill it out and I really want as many answers as possible so please share the survey as well – especially if you know any commercial fishers, or people from the tourism industry or similar. You can find more information about the GoJelly project here – our aim is to develop a solution to plastic pollution that exploits the jellyfish blooms experienced globally and using this as a resource for…
The Once and Future Treaty – newest published article
This is an article that is written by myself and my now three most favorite co-authors from my BBNJ adventures in New York City earlier this school year and it was available online today November 10th 2018. My coauthors are: Elizabeth De Santo Elizabeth Mendenhall Elizabeth Nyman You can download it for free until the end of the year – so hurry up and get your copy before it is no longer open access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X18307048?dgcid=coauthor The articles abstract is as follows: The current regime governing Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) as a global commons has resulted in overutilization of fisheries resources and patchwork attempts to regulate resource extraction. States are looking to…
TEDx style talk – how to prepare
I was recently invited to be one of the plenary speakers of the Fulbright annual conference in Puebla, Mexico, having a TEDx style talk – which immediately got me nervous since – well – I love TED talks *imposter-syndrom-kick-in* So first thing first – get a book on TED talks! I figure – I can watch as many TED talks possible but it probably helps to read (reading helps everything – I am a book-a-holic and read probably way too much fantasy and future dystopia and young adult novels for my own good, but it is a good escape from the realities of climate change and microplastic pollution and ocean…
Blog post in the Washington Post
So my friends and I who went to New York City for the negotiations for the Biodiversity treaty approached the blog Monkey Cage in the Washington Post after the fact and asked if they would be interested in an article about precisely what you could learn from the negotiations. They were interested and seldom have we worked so fast and so well in order to reach a very tight deadline for this article to get out in a timely fashion, as soon after the negotiations as possible. I mentioned the article in my post about the negotiations themselves but I feel it deserves a post in itself to highlight the…
Off to New York City, the UN and international negotiations
Part of my job while here in the US is to follow the negotiations of the upcoming treaty on biodiversity protection in areas beyond national jurisdiction, with a special focus (for me) on plastics and the Arctic, with the Arctic ocean being an emerging ocean as the ice is melting and more of it is becoming navigable. The negotiations are taking place for two years in New York City, twice per year, and there was an organizational meeting in April that my friend and colleague Elizabeth Nyman from Texas A&M University at Galveston – where I am affiliated – works, in the Maritime Studies program. The first meeting proper was…
YES – I am going to the UN meeting!
So very excited today – because I just received my approval from the BBNJ conference secretariat to attend as an ISA representatives to the BBNJ conference, being held in New York from 4-17 September 2018. I have even received my individual letters that iterates the details of my approved registration, including guidance to obtain my temporary UN grounds pass. This is an important element in my Fulbright study as well as my work on marine plastics with the GoJelly project financed by Horizon2020 – and it opens the door for my observational study and in-depth interviews! I have spent the morning finalizing the interview guide, and looking over documents from…
