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Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference
Programme of Abstracts
Monday, May 11, 18:00 UCT:
Cristina Brito, The Bestiary of D. Juan de Austria: Natural history treatises as elements for the analysis of
past sea animals and populations
Natural history treaties and bestiaries were a model of scientific production in early modern Europe. There
are multiple examples in many nations, as natural history and philosophy started to develop and the art of
drawing, painting and printing mainstreamed throughout the Renaissance. Authors writing descriptions and
depictions of sea animals multiplied from the 16th century onwards, as audiences and consumers became
ever more demanding on information about natural novelties and eccentricities. For the Iberian kingdoms,
particularly Portugal, these types of publications were however scarcer. Leaflets, letters, poems and
engravings were produced, but books of natural history were quite rare. A comparison of the poorly known
Bestiary of Don Juan de Austria (16th century Spain, original in Burgos) with the unpublished fishing treaty
Piscilegio Lusitano (18th century Portugal, held by Samuel Iglesias) and other coeval Iberian, American
and European works will be conducted. More than details on features and classification, these works offer
us a view into the past of species’ occurrence and distribution. They allow us to characterize historical
habitats and marine biodiversity and quite often to compare it with present-day ecological and behavioural
data. Examples of cetaceans will showcase the value of the historical information encompassed in such,
usually neglected, sources.
Bernard Allaire, French cod catches in Newfoundland 1500-1800
Historians of fisheries have long focused on the 19th-20th centuries in their studies of cod overfishing in
Newfoundland, due to the easier access to a wider range of official and private sources for the modern era.
Thanks to major advances in research, it is now possible to push the study of the level of cod fishing back
to its origins in the 16th century. France presents a particularly promising field of study for this topic because
it was, until the 18th century, the main actor in the Newfoundland and Canadian cod fisheries. Due to
France’s longstanding administrative tradition, most French port-cities have kept important records which
make it possible to study this economic sector, in perpetual growth, during the Early Modern era. The
collection of known historical data, the further study of pertinent records and the advent of cliometrics
methodologies for processing the results, have provided an unprecedented opportunity to go beyond the
traditional approximations regarding the scale of the Early Modern French cod fisheries in Newfoundland.
John Nicholls, The Capacity Trend Method: A new approach for enumerating the Newfoundland cod
fisheries (1675-1790)
This paper is dedicated to applying a novel and innovative methodology to the study of the Newfoundland
cod fisheries in order to determine a reasoned and acceptable chronological value series for total catch
amounts in the early modern period where data are scarce. The paper focuses on the two main protagonists
in the Newfoundland fisheries arena for which certain limited data sources are available: France and
England. The period 1675 to 1790 has been selected as a viable and representative chronology for a case
study where data, while available in part, are limited and often missing. The subject of these fisheries
remains open to discovery, and the new methodology deployed enables further input and assessment such
that an ever-greater level of accuracy and robustness may be achieved in future where possible.
1Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Poul Holm, The Danish North Sea Coast Fisheries, 1450-1660
The paper assesses the importance of a major regional fishery by establishing levels of taxation and
calculating total landings and values. The rich documentary and archaeological documentation that exist
for the southwest Danish North Sea fishery provides an opportunity to assess the chronology, scale,
volume, and economic importance of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century fishery. The paper discusses
the major factors driving the fishery: climate change, habitat change, market forces and warfare. Within the
context established by the previous papers, this regional, multi-species fishery, set in the same time period,
was hostage to market dynamics and external factors which dominated the vibrant but small-scale industry.
Tuesday May 12, 18:00 UCT:
Paul Montgomery, Environmental history and archaeology of coastal northern communities of the
transpacific Otter fur trade
Between 17th the 19th century, a trade in sea otter (Enhydra lutris) fur developed linking indigenous peoples
of the Pacific Northwest Coast and coastal island to the markets of China, Europe and Americas. This paper
will look at the archaeological record of the coastal groups in Pacific Northwest and attempt evaluate the
long-term implications of their subsistence methods and interaction with changing marine ecological
context. This historical trade network was a major cause of depopulation of the sea otters had pronounced
impact in the wider marine ecology both animals and human population of North Pacific (Orchard, 2012).
Within the complex food web network, the otters act as natural stop on the population growth of urchins
(Mesocentrotus franciscanus) which feed on the giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) and bull kelp (Nereocystis
leutkeana). Historians have in past investigated patterns of trade and interaction but little reserch has been
done on the on the long-term impact on archaeological record of these coastal communities and their
evolving interactions with the wider marine ecological as it fluctuated. The alteration the marine food web
network had impactions both positive and negative for coastal communities as their substance methods
evolved with a changing marine ecology.
Sophia Nicolov, A Return to the Past or the New Normal?: Human responses to the 1999-2000 and 2019
eastern North Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) unusual mortality events
In 2019, 214 eastern North Pacific gray whales were discovered stranded on the west coasts of the USA,
Canada and Mexico. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared it an “unusual
mortality event” (UME). This is not, however, the first time that this has happened. Between 1999 and 2000,
651 were recorded stranded in what was this species’ first official UME. Experts believed that this was part
of a population decline of a third after having recently recovered to pre-whaling levels. The population
recovery, warmer sea temperatures associated with El Niño and, potentially, human activity – as well as
longer-term impacts of whaling – have been identified as possible contributors in both UMEs.
Strandings have a dual role in science and popular culture. This paper discusses the complex of responses
to the UMEs, exploring what they reveal about understandings of threats to gray whales and marine
ecosystems. It considers how scientific knowledge changes over time and what the implications of this
might be for management of marine mammals and understandings of shifting baseline syndrome. I highlight
the difficulties of ascertaining if these events reflect trends in the pre-whaling population or if they represent
a new normal as a result of anthropogenic pressures.
2Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Josheena Naggea, Social-ecological transformations affecting marine governance in the Republic of
Mauritius
Small island nations are critical places to study complex social-ecological interactions because they provide
manageable spaces in which policy implemented by various actors can be investigated and results can be
interpreted for other contexts. Here, I investigate the socio-political and cultural transformations that have
shaped attitudes and behaviours on Mauritius with respect to marine ecosystems and their management.
Described as an ethnographic paradise, Mauritius has a history of slavery, indentured servitude, and
colonization, which combined with today’s globalization, offer a valuable case study within the Indian Ocean
context. Understanding the colonial history of the country and its impact on population movements, shaping
landscapes, cultural heritage and governance processes is crucial to improving marine resource
management. Through secondary sources, I construct a historical timeline of socio-political, environmental
and cultural transformations such as political independence, destruction of pristine forests, monocultures,
booming tourism industry that have occurred since the first colonisation of Mauritius in the 1600s. I also
use semi-structured interviews with government officials, private companies, and NGOs to provide context
for how these transformations interact with current anthropoenic and climate-related pressures like
increasing coastal development, overfishing, and recurrent bleaching events. These findings may provide
insight into how other countries pursue marine management.
Guillem Chust, Null models for attribution analysis of fish distribution shifts to climate change
Cumulative evidence has shown that marine species have exhibited distribution changes in recent decades,
and these changes have been triggered by environmental variability, climate change trends, phenological
and anthropogenic pressures. Disentangling the causes of fish shifts among those drivers and their
interactions is challenging. This difficulty is mainly because most data come from catch information, which
is incomplete (lack of absences), and biased (captures depend on gear type and distance from harbours).
Also, in some cases, scientific survey data do not have homogeneous spatio-temporal coverage. To
quantify the interannual variability of the distribution of fish occurrence and its potential relationship with
oceanographic variability, we compared trends in the distribution of raw observations, with those from null
ecological models: 1) niche-based models used to assess whether trends were due to sea environmental
change and, in particular, sea warming, and 2) spatio-temporal reconstructed distribution models to avoid
bias in irregular sampling. We applied this framework to assess the causes of distribution changes in
several north-eastern Atlantic pelagic species (Atlantic mackerel, Atlantic horse mackerel, anchovy, tuna
fish) in the last few decades. Results showed that climate change signal in fishes was detected either in
poleward distribution shifts or in earlier phenology.
Wednesday, May 13, 18:00 UCT:
Bo Poulsen, 1000 years of commercial eel fisheries in Europe
This paper documents the rise and spread of commercial fisheries for eel (Anguilla Anguilla) since c. 1000
CE, and the development of long distance trade patterns, where salted and smoked eel were much
treasured commodities. Sometime in the 15th century, eel became the object of the first sustained
international trade in fresh marine products, as Londoners started to import live eel from the Netherlands.
The paper further discusses the role of conspicuous marine consumption, and the extent to which the taste
or distaste for eel in certain regions transcend multiple centuries. For several centuries, eel was a target
species in Italy, The Netherlands and Denmark, areas where the eel also is a mark of cultural identity. This
continues even into the 21th century, where ocean wide stock of the European freshwater eel has dwindled
to a mere fraction of the stock abundance just a few decades ago. The reasons for the demise of the eel
range from overfishing, climate change, and introduced parasites. Yet narrating the implications of past and
present eel stories building on the existing public imagination for the eel, may provide an important lesson
for future policy development.
3Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Tom McGovern, Introducing the North Atlantic Encounters Program
North Atlantic Encounters (NAE) program is sponsored by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization
(www.nabohome.org) and the Humanities for Environment Circumpolar Observatory (https://hfe-
observatories.org/observatories/circumpolar-observatory/). This program promotes trans-disciplinary
cooperation across disciplines including natural sciences, social sciences, history, environmental
humanities, place-based education for sustainability and arts and media for sustainability. It promotes co-
production of knowledge with local institutions, indigenous communities and scholars and digital media
experts. It makes use of over two decades of collaborative experience by the international NABO
cooperative and productive collaborations with local communities in Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland to
promote an inter-connected set of projects investigating the human experience of living in the North Atlantic
islands over the past millennium while experiencing cultural landscape and seascape creation, climate
impacts, medieval and early modern world system impacts, and the onset of modernity as participants in
different colonial systems. The NAE program will connect participating local resident communities in
Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland as well as linking academics and practitioners. It will pool resources,
equipment, and staff to carry out vigorous and sustained cross-case, inter-regional comparative work on all
periods taking on the “longitudinal” cross temporal perspective of Historical Ecology emphasizing change
in places through time. Join us!
Jennifer Selgrath, Setting baselines for coastal species in Central California
Developing a clear understanding of how marine biodiversity has changed over time is critical in the face
of both local and global pressures from human activities. However, observations and scientific studies of
marine life are often episodic and limited to a few years. As a result, records of basic changes that have
occurred to biodiversity and the environment are often missing. When baseline data are absent, the long-
term local ecological knowledge of scientists, naturalists, and others can provide a powerful opportunity to
understand the past. In an on-going project to reconstruct ecosystem changes in Monterey Bay, CA, we
interviewed approximately 50 people who were students or researchers in Monterey Bay from 1938 to 2019
and supplemented oral histories with archival records. We document a marked change in the abundance
of several species, including a shift in dominance from bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) to giant kelp
(Macrocystis pyrifera) and declines in the once common black abalone (Haliotis Cracherodii). This recent
shift in the dominant kelp species and in abalone populations occurred in the 1960s, following the return of
sea otters to Monterey Bay.
Ilse Martínez, Changing times, changing vulnerabilities in Mexican shark fisheries
The transformation of fisheries over time has reflected on the vulnerability of the targeted species. The
worldwide decline of shark populations and the lack of data has led to the use of data-poor assessments
like the productivity and susceptibility analysis (PSA) to determine their vulnerability, however, its current
use does not take into account the history of exploitation of the species. A multidisciplinary approach was
used to make a historical characterization of the shark fishery in Campeche, Mexico, determine its main
time periods, and apply a PSA to each one. The periods were defined as: local commercialization (1940-
1979), where all species had their lowest vulnerability values, and the largest shark species were classified
as highly vulnerable; developed industry (1980-1998) characterized by an increased fishing pressure,
where most small sharks (150 cm total length) scored their highest vulnerability values; and the declining industry (1999-
2018), where all species had lower vulnerability than in the developed industry period, but Carcharhinus
brevipinna, Carcharhinus leucas, Ginglymostoma cirratum and Sphyrna mokarran were still classified as
highly vulnerable and could be suffering the accumulative effects of decades of fishing pressure.
4Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Thursday, May 14, 18:00 UCT:
Poster: Joana Baço, Marine Lexicon: Presenting a cross-European thesaurus about early modern marine
mammals
Marine Lexicon is a cooperation project between Portugal and Norway, funded by EEA Grants, aiming at
the construction of a thesaurus of European common names of marine mammals (cetaceans, seals and
sea lions, and sirenian) and symbolic elements (sea monsters, hybrid beings, folklore creatures)
represented in the early modern age (15th-18th centuries). This project established and reinforced
Portuguese-Norwegian networking research on historical whaling, sealing, and marine mammals’
appropriation, trade and use from medieval and the early modern period. Documentary and visual sources
for the European and Transatlantic Natural History, including saga literature, diaries, treaties, leaflets, maps
and travel literatures will be used to dig for past information about local species and names. Artefacts made
of parts (bones and other) of the animals, and material from the zooarchaeology/quaternary zoology will be
considered too. Words associated with activities of use and extraction, and animal distribution (products,
objects, artefacts, toponomy) are also part of the study. We will present the first results to construct an open
access online database - the Marine Lexicon - as a new and future tool on the field of marine environmental
history, providing a better understanding of the significance of these animals for different societies during
this period.
Poster: Nina Vieira, Casks of oil, burdens of baleen: The importance of whales and whaling in Brazil (17th
and 18th centuries)
Whaling in Brazil was a Crown Monopoly - first Iberian and then Portuguese - between 1614 and 1801.
During this time thousands of whales were hunted, most likely southern right whale (Eubalaena australis)
and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), and in a lesser extent also sperm whale (Physeter
macrocephalus). Our research intended to explore the importance of whaling for the Portuguese settlement
in South America. The development of whaling along the coast of Brazil was promoted by the Portuguese
Crown and its officials, following the colonial processes of territory appropriation and the coastal settlement
from north to south. Central products with commercial value were oil and baleen plates and thousands of
whale oil casks and barrels and hundreds of burdens of baleen were transported to Lisbon. Whale meat
was mostly used as food for slaves and whale bones were part of the littoral spaces marked by the whaling
processes of dismantling and transforming the animals. The Brazilian whaling operation of this time was
characterized by the Basque-Style in its most extension and between 1774 and 1777 was simultaneously
included in the Basque-Style and American-Style eras. Whaling in modern Brazil is a case study to
understand the importance that marine animals had on human actions and the impact of people’s
establishment in littoral and oceanic ecosystems.
Poster: David Orton, SeaChanges: a training network bridging archaeology and marine biology
The need for long-term perspectives on marine ecosystems is becoming increasingly clear, but disciplinary
silos continue to hold back integration of archaeological data and approaches to this end. SeaChanges is
a new training and research network on marine historical ecology that has been established to address this
challenge. A collaboration between seven core institutions and 29 partner organisations, spread across a
total of 15 countries, SeaChanges aims to explore the time depth of human impact upon marine vertebrates,
while training a new generation of researchers able to operate confidently at the interface of archaeology
and marine biology from the outset of their careers.
The network is composed of 15 distinct but complementary PhD projects, covering species from herring to
sperm whale, timescales from decades to millennia, and all of Europe's seas and beyond. This poster will
provide a preview of the research to come over the next three years, introducing the projects, themes, and
methods employed across the network.
5Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Poster: Katrien Dierickx, Flatfish and the origins of European marine fishing
During the early medieval period, most fish consumed around the southern North Sea were freshwater
species. From around the 11th century CE, significantly more marine species appear in archaeological
deposits - the so-called ‘fish event horizon’. Pleuronectiformes are potentially amongst the first marine taxa
targeted, but so far their role in this economic transition has been unclear due to difficulties in identifying
marine vs. estuarine species.
This poster presents a new PhD project that aims to develop identification methods to classify
archaeological flatfish remains to species level. Traditional morphological methods will be combined with
geometric morphometrics and with bone collagen ‘fingerprinting’ (ZooMS). Carbon, nitrogen and sulphur
stable isotopes in bone collagen will also be used to explore catch environments
(marine/brackish/freshwater) of archaeological samples. Using this combined approach, this project further
aims to reconstruct a timeline for the presence and frequency of each species from key sites from around
the southern North Sea littoral and explore how flatfish fisheries changed around the marine fishing
revolution.
Poster: Paul Butler, SEACHANGE: Quantifying the impact of major cultural transitions on marine
ecosystem functioning and biodiversity
The full extent of the impacts of human activities on marine ecosystems is difficult to determine, because
changes in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the ocean take place out of human awareness and
therefore not recorded in historical documents, while the evidence that humans can perceive, for example
the makeup of catches from fisheries, is biased because of shifting baseline syndrome.
SEACHANGE is a six-year EU Synergy grant, whose aim is to develop new high-resolution approaches
and combine them with existing palaeo reconstruction techniques to set new evidence-based standards for
understanding marine environmental change. The project seeks to establish the impact of human activities
on marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning over an extended time-depth perspective across key
cultural transitions in five very different parts of the ocean. We will focus on changes across five major
human cultural transitions during the Holocene:
the transition to farming in Denmark and Orkney (Mesolithic to Neolithic, 8000 to 5000 years BP);
the Australian hunter-gatherer (aboriginal) to colonial (last 6,000 years)
the European pre-industrial to modern (last 2000 years) in the North Sea
consequences of the Viking settlement of Iceland in 874 AD
the period of intensive whaling/fishing in Antarctica around 100 years ago
6Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Poster: Antony Firth, Ocean Decade Heritage Network (ODHN)
A new international network has been set up to boost the role of heritage within the UN Decade of Ocean
Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030. The #OceanDecade, as it is known, is currently in its
planning phase. The Ocean Decade Heritage Network – ODHN – is seeking to ensure that the
#OceanDecade fully recognises the connections between cultural heritage, marine science and sustainable
development. ODHN will also provide a focus for building these connections into international, regional and
national marine science programmes during the implementation phase. By 2030 we hope to see much
closer integration of cultural heritage, marine science and sustainable development, and for the marine
historic environment to benefit – and be recognised for its own benefits – as a result. ODHN can be found
online and is free to join at www.oceandecadeheritage.org. News about cultural heritage and
#OceanDecade is on Twitter at @DecadeHeritage. The background to #OceanDecade and the aspirations
of ODHN have also been set out in an Open Access article at
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-019-09241-0. ODHN intends to be a fully global network,
working alongside and between existing NGOs and institutions to facilitate engagement between the
cultural heritage community and this major UN programme. If you have interests that include topics such
as marine archaeology, maritime history or coastal heritage – and their relationship to science and
sustainable development – then please get involved!
Poster: Youri Van den Hurk, The Demise of the North Atlantic Grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus)
The grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is currently restricted to the North Pacific, but in the past another
population was present in the North Atlantic. This population has now been extirpated, but appears to have
survived in the North Atlantic until the 17th or 18th century AD. Among baleen whales, grey whales are the
only species to have been extirpated from an entire ocean basin during historical times. Several historical
sources presumably discuss the grey whale’s presence in the North Atlantic, including an account from
16th century Iceland described as the “sandloegja”. The descriptions of whales in historical sources are
often vague and hard to ascribe to a particular species. Findings of sub-fossil remains are more clear
evidence of the grey whale’s presence in the North Atlantic. Findings have been made on both sides of the
North Atlantic dating to several hundred years to 50,000 years ago. Recently, several grey whale bones
have been identified from the archaeological record through Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry
(ZooMS). As part of this study, six new grey whale specimens were identified, all originating from
archaeological contexts, potentially suggesting that pre-modern whaling might have contributed to the
eventual demise of the North Atlantic grey whale population.
Paolo Albano, Climate-driven biodiversity collapse on the Mediterranean Israeli shelf
We quantify a large-scale extirpation of native species from the Israeli Mediterranean shelf, a region
strongly affected by rapidly changing environmental conditions and the introduction of non-indigenous
species, based on an extensive sampling programme of mollusks on intertidal to subtidal soft and hard
substrata. We reconstruct historical species richness from shelly death assemblages, quantify the time
range they cover with radiocarbon dating, and compare their richness with today’s living assemblage
diversity. The median native richness is 50% of the historical richness for the intertidal, but only 8% for the
subtidal down to 40 m. Samples from the mesophotic zone show a much higher median of 42%, which is
likely an underestimation due to sampling constraints. In contrast, non-indigenous species show
assemblages matching the historical richness. Additionally, a comparison between today’s and historical
native species maximum size shows that shallow subtidal native populations are mostly non-reproductive.
In contrast, non-indigenous populations reach reproductive size. These results suggest that a recent large-
scale change in environmental conditions is strongly favoring non-indigenous species and is the main cause
behind the shallow subtidal native species decline.
7Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Ruth Thurstan, Two centuries of social and ecological transformation in an inshore marine system:
Queensland's rock oysters
Oyster reef ecosystems have suffered significant declines globally. In this study we reconstruct the
transformations in the Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) wild commercial industry of central and
southeast Queensland, as well as the changing societal and cultural values related to the presence and
use of the rock oyster through time. By integrating data from the archaeological, anthropological and
fisheries literature, government and media accounts, we explore the social, cultural and ecological
transformations that have occurred over the last two centuries, and the value of this information for
contemporary management and policy.
John Nicholls, OBIS – A brief overview
OBIS is a global open-access data and information clearing-house on marine biodiversity for science,
conservation and sustainable development.
More than 20 OBIS nodes around the world connect 500 institutions from 56 countries. Collectively, they
have provided over 45 million observations of nearly 120 000 marine species, from Bacteria to Whales,
from the surface to 10 900 meters depth, and from the Tropics to the Poles. The datasets are integrated so
you can search and map them all seamlessly by species name, higher taxonomic level, geographic area,
depth, time and environmental parameters. OBIS emanates from the Census of Marine Life (2000-2010)
and was adopted as a project under IOC-UNESCO’s International Oceanographic Data and Information
(IODE) programme in 2009.
OBIS-OPI an OBIS Node that supports and embraces the concept of shared information.
Friday, May 15, 18:00 UCT:
Georgina Hunt, Long-term changes in fish communities in the western North Sea
Anthropogenic stressors such as trawling has led to widespread changes in the composition, diversity and
biomass of demersal fish species and their benthic prey in the North Sea. However, relatively few studies
have quantified the longer-term responses of marine communities to such stressors. In waters off the north-
east coast of England and Dogger Bank region, we examined temporal patterns in the diet composition of
six dominant bottom-dwelling fish species using a unique time-series of stomach content data spanning
1896-2015. Three of the six predators exhibited a general long-term shift in diet between historical and
contemporary time periods. Specifically, bivalves predominated plaice, dab and haddock diet in the early
and mid-20th century and declined in subsequent decades. Conversely, smaller, short-lived species such
as polychaetes increased in importance overtime and were the main prey resource for plaice in the 1970s
and 2000s by number and weight. These diet shifts may be attributed to changes in the benthic prey base
of the North Sea, linked to increased beam trawling in the 1960s-1970s, eutrophication, and climatic
processes. In conjunction with recent diet data, this work underpins the value of historical diet data to
elucidate broad-scale and long-term change in marine food webs. It further provides a benchmark for
improving ecosystem status and management plans for the recovery of benthic communities on continental
shelves.
8Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Hreiðar Þór Valtýsson, Disentangling the factors affecting the CPUE in Icelandic fisheries in the past
Catch per unit effort (CPUE) is widely used as a proxy for biomass when formal stock assessment or
surveys are not available. This is especially useful when reconstructing biomass in the ocean past.
However, CPUE has many potential flaws as technology and catchability can change causing apparent
increase and occasionally decrease in the CPUE that does not reflect the true stock size. Here I use
information from old fisheries journals, historical statistics and memoirs from fishers to map the potential
changes in the fishing efficiency of the Icelandic fleet since 1900 and compare that to the changes in CPUE
of the main species.
9Ocean’s Past Initiative – 2020 Online Conference ‐ Programme of Abstracts
Alf Ring Kleiven, Sigurd Heiberg Espeland, Stian Stiansen, Esben Moland Olsen. Technological creep
masking stock collapse in a 90-year marine fishery time series
Philip Ross, Te Waiwhakata: reflecting on the past to plan for the sustainability of coastal ecosystems
Aotearoa / New Zealand is very different today to the land that greeted the first Polynesian explorers
stepping from their voyaging canoes more than eight centuries ago. Since then, human populations have
grown, forests have been cleared and burned, crops have been planted, animals have been hunted and
farmed, and coastal margins have been occupied and industrialised. While the consequences of human
occupation are easily observed on land, changes in aquatic ecosystems are more difficult to assess.
Accordingly, we have more limited knowledge of human impacts in coastal ecosystems and the
mechanisms contributing to these changes. This deficiency of knowledge is a worldwide phenomenon that
compromises our ability to effectively manage marine natural resources.
In this talk, I present which utilises New Zealand’s short history and combines mātauranga Māori (Māori
knowledge) with academic science to extend our knowledge of human-environment interactions back
beyond the dawn of contemporary ecology. Specifically, we explore historical environmental information
held by Māori as well as the historical data contained within the sediments and shells of estuaries. This
method allows us to link historic and pre-historic changes in human land-use to changes in coastal health
and human wellbeing.
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