This seminar, the first of a weekly series, will start with a brief presentation of the fieldwork that Daniel Pauly, then a fisheries student working on his MSc thesis performed in and around Sakumo Lagoon, near Tema, in 1971. This will be followed by various highlights of his career, which will be presented in more detail in subsequent seminars.  

Dr. Daniel Pauly was born in Paris, France; he is both French and Canadian and studied fisheries science in Germany, but he spent much of his career in the tropics, notably in the Philippines. Since 1994, he is a Professor of Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada, where, since 1999, he directs the Sea Around Us research initiative, funded by a variety of philanthropic foundations, and which is devoted to documenting and mitigating the impact of fisheries on the world’s marine ecosystems.  The concepts, methods and software he (co-)developed are documented in over 1000 widely-cited contributions and have led to his receiving multiple scientific awards. 

He jointly won the 2023 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement with Prof. Rashid Sumaila and is currently a visiting professor at the Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience at the University of Cape Coast (ACECoR, UCC)

A detailed account of Daniel Pauly’s work and influence may be found in a full-length biography (“Daniel Pauly – un océan de combats” by David Grémillet), published in French in 2019 and in English in 2021 as “The Ocean’s Whistleblower – the remarkable life and work of Daniel Pauly.”