Daniel Pauly | |
|---|---|
 Daniel Pauly | |
| Born | (1946-05-02)May 2, 1946 (age 78) |
| Nationality | French / Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of Kiel |
| Known for | Sea Around Us Project Shifting baselines Fishing down marine food webs FishBase Ecopath with Ecosim |
| Awards | International Cosmos Prize (2005) Volvo Environment Prize (2006) Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology (2008) Albert Ier Grand Medal in Science (2016) Ocean Award (2017) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Marine biologist,fisheries scientist |
| Institutions | International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management UBC Fisheries Centre University of British Columbia |
| Doctoral advisor | Gotthilf Hempel |
Daniel Pauly is aFrench-bornmarine biologist, well known for his work in studying human impacts on global fisheries and in 2020 was the most cited fisheries scientist in the world.[1] He is a professor and the project leader of theSea Around Us initiative at theInstitute for the Oceans and Fisheries at theUniversity of British Columbia. He also served as Director of the UBC Fisheries Centre from November 2003 to October 2008.
In February 2023 Pauly was the co-recipient of the 2023Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, withUssif Rashid Sumaila.[2] The award has been described as the ‘Nobel Prize for the Environment.’[3]
Pauly was born inParis,France. He grew up, however, inLa Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland in what was called a strange "Dickensian" childhood where he was forced to stay as a live-in servant to a new family. For the first 16 years of his life, Pauly lived an inward life as he was mixed race in an all-white town, finding solace in books/reading and model construction. At 16 he ran away and put himself through high school in Wuppertal, Germany after one year working with disabled people for a local church-run institution. His work led to a scholarship to theUniversity of Kiel.
It was at the University of Kiel where Pauly decided onfisheries biology. He said he wanted to work in the tropics because he felt that he would "fit in" better there. He also wanted to devote his life to an applied job where he could help people.
He did a master's degree at Kiel University atGotthilf Hempel lab on"The ecology and fishery of a small West African lagoon".[4] Pauly then spent two years conducting trawling surveys as a member of a German-Indonesian project aiming at introducing this relatively new gear.[5] He began to write on tropical fisheries management; later his emphasis switched to global fisheries trends and conservation.
Pauly completed his Ph.D. at Kiel University in Germany supervised by Hempel, in which he established strong relationships between the surface area of gills and the growth of fishes and aquatic (gill-breathing) invertebrates.[6] His dissertation laid the foundation for hisGill-Oxygen Limitation Theory, which he would later develop in more detail.
After his Ph.D., Pauly worked for 15 years at theInternational Center for Living and Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), inManila,Philippines. Early in his career at ICLARM, Pauly worked in the tropics and developed new methods for estimatingfish populations. Pauly helped to design, implement, and perfect methods using length-frequency data instead of the age of fish to estimate parameters of fisheries statistics such as growth and mortality.
Later, he helped develop two major projects: ELEFAN andFishBase. ELEFAN (ELectronic Length Frequency ANalysis) made it possible to use length-frequency data to estimate the growth and mortality of fishes.FishBase is an online encyclopedia of fish and fisheries information comprising information on more than 30,000 different species. Both projects received worldwide attention and through multiple upgrades and additions, are still prominent in fisheries biology.
Through the 1990s, Pauly’s work centered on the effects ofoverfishing. The author of several books and more than 500 scientific papers, Pauly is a prolific writer and communicator. He developed the concept ofshifting baselines in 1995 and authored the seminal paper,Fishing down marine food webs, in 1998.[7] For working to protect the environment, he earned a place in the "Scientific American 50" in 2003, the same yearThe New York Times labeled him an "iconoclast". Pauly won theInternational Cosmos Prize in 2005, theVolvo Environment Prize in 2006, the Excellence in Ecology Prize andTed Danson Ocean Hero Award in 2007, theRamon Margalef Prize in Ecology and Environmental Sciences in 2008,[8] and theNierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest from theScripps Institution of Oceanography in 2012. In 2015, Pauly received the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in Science.[9] In 2016, he was honored in Paris with the Albert Ier Grand Medal in the Science category.[10] In 2017, he received, together with Dirk Zeller as part of theSea Around Us leading team, the Ocean Award in the Science category.[11]
Also in 2017 and specifically on French National Day, he was named Chevalier de la Légion D’Honneur.[12]
Pauly has written several books, includingDarwin's Fishes[13] (Cambridge University Press),Five Easy Pieces: How Fishing Impacts Marine Ecosystems (Island Press) andGasping Fish and Panting Squids: Oxygen, Temperature and the Growth of Water-Breathing Animals.
To date, he frequently expresses opinions about public policy. Specifically, he argues that governments should abolishsubsidies tofishing fleets[14] and establishmarine reserves. He is a member of the Board ofOceana. In a 2009 article written forThe New Republic, Pauly compares today's fisheries to a globalPonzi scheme.[15]
Select publications
