Friday, 14 February 2014: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Toronto (Hyatt Regency Chicago)Marine fish are a major natural resource, and fishing—providing nutrition and income since millennia—is deeply embedded in human culture. However, in many regions massive fishing activity—legal and illegal—has had a dramatic impact, with virtually 70 percent of the world’s fish stocks being fully exploited, overexploited, or collapsing. Policymakers and fishery managers worldwide strive to design strategies for sustainable exploitation. These endeavors rely heavily on scientific information, and a number of countries actively seek scientific advice for marine management and conservation. Despite recent progress in fishery genetics, enabled by rapid technology advancement, genetics and genomics are not yet routinely applied for fishery or aquaculture management, with a few notable exceptions. Novel genetic and genomic approaches can readily be applied to address crucial issues, e.g., management and conservation unit identification, revealing adaptive responses to exploitation or environmental changes, identification of farm escapees, improvement of breeding schemes, and support to control. This session presents recent progress in fishery genetics and genomics, introduces innovative analytical approaches, provides examples of approaches that are successfully applied for management or control, and explores how the transfer of genetics and genomics into fishery and aquaculture management could be strengthened.
Geraldine Barry, European Commission, Joint Research Center