Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture

Wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture together produce ~200 million tonnes of food per year. Research at the School of Ocean Sciences underpins the sustainable exploitation and production of these important sources of protein. Fisheries and aquaculture can have wider effects on the marine ecosystem and can affect bycatch species (other fish, seabirds, marine mammals, seabed organisms) and habitats (e.g. reefs, seagrass beds).

The Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture research group at Bangor University has a long history of world leading research. Its approach is wide-ranging, covering 1) stock assessment and biology of fish and shellfish, and 2) ecosystem impacts of fisheries and aquaculture. Methods employed include surveys on our research vessel the Prince Madog, systematic review and meta-analysis, analysis of long-term time series and modelling. Integral to our approach is extensive collaboration with the fishing and aquaculture industry.

We are well-funded with >£20M in research income over the past 10 years from a large variety of sources, including the EU, Research Councils, DEFRA, Welsh Government and charities. Apart from generating excellent scientific papers, including papers in PNAS, Proc Roy Soc B, and Fish and Fisheries, many of our projects also address practical issues of direct concern to stakeholders. The applied nature of our research also results in a range of societal impacts, and this is reflected by the fact that our impact case studies were judged to have 4* elements in the 2014 REF.