Scientists studying ancient fish bones in Scandinavia have discovered that warm-water species like anchovies and black sea bream once thrived in Danish waters during a prehistoric warm period and are now returning. Some cold-water species, such as cod, were also abundant during this period, having benefited from a lower fishing effort.
Through the study of archaeological material, tax accounts, church registers and account books of monasteries, an international group of fisheries ecologists and fisheries/maritime historians have drawn a picture of marine life in the northern European seas (North Sea, Wadden Sea, Baltic Sea, and White Sea) as it looked in the past.
Special edition
The results are presented in a special issue of Fisheries Research "History of Marine Animal Populations and their Exploitation in Northern Europe" 14 papers starting from ca. 7000 BC to present.
The volume is edited by Brian R. MacKenzie, Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, The Technical University of Denmark and Henn Ojaveer, Estonian Marine Institute
New documentation becoming available
"New historical documentation is increasingly becoming available. Its interpretation is providing a broader basis for understanding processes and mechanisms that lead to variations in marine populations and ecosystems. The studies in this special issue are important contributions to the establishment of new baselines for management of marine ecosystems including conservation strategies for overexploited living resources. They were conducted as part of the History of Marine Animal Populations, a project of the international collaboration, the Census of Marine Life," the Census of Marine Life writes in a press release December 12th, 2007.
About History of Marine Animal Populations:
History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) is a global inter-disciplinary project being conducted within the Census of Marine Life (CoML). HMAP is investigating historical changes in marine populations and ecosystems, and is encouraging the integration of natural and social sciences to understand the magnitude, causes and consequences of long-term changes in marine animal populations.
One of the main activities within HMAP is the identification, recovery and interpretation of new original datasets from both written (e. g., surveys, landings, tax records) and non-written sources (e. g., archaeological, paleo-oceanographic) that extend over long periods of time. The length of these datasets allows marine ecologists to develop new baselines of species abundances and distribution, and to investigate how exploitation and environmental variability have interacted over longer time scales and under different combinations of exploitation and environmental forcing.
Census of Marine Life
The Census of Marine Life is a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations engaged in a 10-year scientific initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. The world’s first comprehensive Census of Marine Life—past, present, and future—will be released in 2010. (www.coml.org). The History of Marine Animal Populations is a component project of the Census.
Contact:
Professor Brian MacKenzie
Danish Institute for Fisheries Research
Technical University of Denmark
brm@difres.dk
+45 33 34 34 03
Further information:
Fisheries Research "History of Marine Animal Populations and their Exploitation in Northern Europe"
Volume 87, Issues 2-3, Pages 101-262 (November 2007)