6 November 2019 news

Today Akvaplan-niva has a presentation at a shellfish symposium in Tromsø arranged by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and hosted by the Institute of Marine Research. The project presented is Ecology and management of the invasive snow crab: Predicting expansion, impacts and sustainability in the Arctic under climate change (EISA). The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway, owned by NIVA and led by Akvaplan-niva (Paul Renaud). 

The goal of the ICES symposium is to discuss the role of cold-water shellfish both as a harvestable resource and as important ecosystem players in northern hemisphere cold marine ecosystem:

• How do we exploit them sustainably
• Can we explain the recent changes in distribution and population dynamics for e.g. shrimp and snow crab, and what should be the management responses?
• What are the ecological effects of invasive species, and should they be controlled by excessive harvests or managed for sustainability?
• The ecosystem effects of the boom and bust of large shellfish populations are potentially massive; can these impacts be quantified?