This article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discuss the issue of bycatch – non target animals that are accidentally caught or entangled in fishing gear. 

In this briefing paper by IIED, Essam Yassin Mohammed argues that sustainable fisheries must be central to the new global development goals (SDGs) of 2015. This could either be realised by providing goals and targets for the fisheries themselves in the agenda — or by making them part of a broader set of goals that focus on food security and livelihoods.

SEAT, the Sustaining Ethical Aquaculture Trade project have highlighted some key ‘myths’ around aquaculture on their website and sought to provide some clarity on the reality of the situation.

A study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science reviews the Database on Raising Intelligence to find interventions that increased children’s intelligence. One such intervention involved supplementing infants with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, and the study concludes that this does indeed have a positive impact on children’s IQ. 

A new book entitled “Principles of Sustainable Aquaculture: Promoting Social, Economic and Environmental Resilience” by Stuart W. Bunting of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex serves as an advanced level textbook focusing on developing more sustainable aquaculture practices. 

This interesting blog on the Planet Earth Online website reports on a study from the University of Salford which conducted blind tastings for a range of fish species.  Only 15% of British tasters were able to identify cod – even though this is apparently our favourite fish, and we are generally very reluctant to try anything else. 

John Forster, an FCRN mailing list member, has written two very interesting articles on aquaculture for the UK Research Councils’ Food Security website www.foodsecurity.ac.uk

In "Life cycle measures of biophysical sustainability in feed production for conventional and organic salmon aquaculture in the northeast pacific" it was found that the cumulative impacts of industrial society's high material/energy throughput compromise the stability of planetary biogeochemical cycles.