Stephen Long

Stephen Long

Profile
Profile Display Name:

Stephen Long

E-mail Address:

stephen.long.16@ucl.ac.uk

Start Year

2016 (Cohort 3)

Research interests:

Stephen’s interests lie in ensuring the sustainable management and exploitation of natural resources, particularly in marine environments. His research has addressed fishery management in the UK, Madagascar and now Greenland.

Hobbies and interests:

PhD Project
PhD Title

Sustainable fishing in Greenland: impact of deep-sea trawling on benthic ecosystems

Research Theme

Biodiversity and Ecology

Primary Supervisor
Primary Institution

IOZ

Secondary Supervisor
Secondary Institution

UCL

Additional supervisor(s)

Kirsty Kemp (IOZ),
Martin Blicher (Greenland Institute of Natural Resources),

Abstract

Climatic change is causing increasing temperatures, reduction in sea ice extents and changes to marine ecosystems in polar waters. Over-exploitation of continental shelf fish stocks has driven fishing effort deeper and further offshore, with increasing calls to sustainably manage fisheries. Fisheries are complex socio-economic systems, therefore assessment of sustainability requires a holistic, interdisciplinary approach, that quantifies the ecological impacts, whilst understanding the roles and perspectives of diverse governance actors. The entrance of Greenland’s fisheries to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification scheme has highlighted the paucity of knowledge on the impacts of bottom-trawling on deep-sea benthic ecosystems in the Arctic. This collaborative project will develop understanding of the structure, function and diversity of benthic communities in the Greenland halibut fishery, using photographic, video, bycatch and environmental data. This will provide maps of the distribution of habitats and Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) within region that the fishery is found. Improved knowledge of benthic ecosystems and their responses to fishing pressure will have direct applications to the sustainable management of the fishery. Further the project will allow a critical evaluation of the role of the MSC certification scheme in fishery governance, by employing social science techniques to capture the perspectives of diverse actors. Studies combining detailed ecological knowledge with in-depth social analysis are rare. This approach will provide insights into the governance and management of the Greenland halibut fishery, with wider applications to deep-sea fisheries and those engaged in the MSC certification scheme.

Policy Impact
Background Reading
Collaborators

Sustainable Fisheries Greenland (SFG)

Grants and awards
  • Daisy Balogh Fund –
  • Mead Travel Fund –
  • Frank Carter Travel Award –
  • Early Career Scientist Travel Fund – International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)
  • Travel Grant – Fisheries Society of the British Isles (FSBI)
Publications

Activities
Conferences and Workshops
  • Institute of Zoology Annual Student Conference, 2018. Talk: BLUE PLANET III: Deep-sea fishing impacts, filmed on a budget.
  • London NERC DTP Student Conference: Frontiers in Natural Environment Research, 2017. Poster: Deep impact: developing video approaches to assess the effects of trawling on deep-sea benthic ecosystems.
  • BioTweeps Twitter Conference. Talk: Sustainable fishing in the Arctic: impacts of trawling on deep-sea habitats.: https://twitter.com/Stephen_D_Long/status/1010168300201013248
  • 15th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium (September 2018). Talk: Impacts of deep-sea Greenland halibut trawling on benthic ecosystems.: https://dsbs2018.org/abstracts/
  • 15th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium (September 2018). Poster: Impacts of deep-sea Greenland halibut trawling on benthic ecosystems.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327906981_Impacts_of_deep-sea_Greenland_halibut_trawling_on_benthic_ecosystems.
  • Royal Society Challenger Meeting (November 2018). Poster: Impacts of deep-sea Greenland halibut trawling on benthic ecosystems.
Internship(s)

SEED Madagascar, supervised by Mark Jacobs, Managing Director. 31/10/2018 – 31/12/2018.

Training courses
  • NERC Ocean Gliders Advanced Training Short Course, hosted by University of East Anglia. January 2019
  • GIS Training Workshop, hosted by Zoological Society of London. July 2017
  • Marine Species Distribution Modelling (SDM), hosted by International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange Programme (IODE) of the UN. March 2019
Engagement

Social Links

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