Fisheries face both challenges and opportunities on the way to becoming a sustainable and climate neutral food production system. The ocean hosts a variety of species that are either not harvested or only marginally utilized. These species could be an important nutritional source for a growing global human population, both as seafood, or as high-quality raw materials for food and feed ingredients. Simultaneously, fishing impacts the natural environment, directly altering ecosystems and habitats, and indirectly through energy consumption and emissions of harmful substances and climate gases. While fisheries are considered to have a low carbon footprint compared to other food production, the footprint varies between and within fishing fleets, as well as for fish processing and distribution systems.
It is an overall goal to increase sustainable food production from the oceans while further reducing the environmental impact as well as the emission of harmful substances from the sector. Management has always played a key role for sustainable fisheries, but a broader tool set is required to address both ongoing and rapidly emerging sustainability issues. There is a need to facilitate the green transition in fisheries, with comprehensive needs for new management technologies for effective monitoring, regulation and enforcement. Being at the forefront of solving these issues is key to ensure long-term benefits from fisheries.
The NORFISHING 2022 Conferences will address the above mentioned scientific issues. The following sessions are established for the scientific conference:
1. Harvesting new marine resources
2. How can the wild fish industry meet the green transition?
3. Future control of the fisheries
The sessions will cover management, societal, technological and scientific aspects. Both digital and physical lectures are accepted for publication.
The Research Topic ‘Green Transition and Sustainability in Fisheries’ invites for scientific publications submitted by authors registered in the
NORFISHING 2022 Conference program. Selected papers given orally, papers that are submitted (but because of space limitation and other reasons, are not accepted for oral presentation), and finally also papers submitted for oral digital presentation, can all have the chance to submit papers to the Research Topic. Digital papers will become displayed in a digital session published in the NORFISHING web pages. The session chairs of the conference will decide if a paper can be submitted to the present Research Topic.
Oral and digital oral presentations are invited within the following general topics:
• Opportunities and challenges of harvesting new marine species, including studies on biological and ecological aspects and the theoretical and technological development of important resources.
• Catch handling and pre-processing of raw materials for feed and food ingredients, including? seafood quality and safety for the consumer.
• Fisheries interaction with the natural marine ecosystems, including physical disturbance, emissions of harmful substances and climate gases.
• Assessment of carbon footprint between and within fishing fleets with a general aim to reduce the climate impact of fisheries.
• State-of-the-art methods for monitoring, regulating, and managing fisheries, with a specific focus on establishing standardized fisheries indicators for stock assessment and management.
• Means to support the green transition of fisheries towards improved sustainability and ecosystem-based management