Persistent Digital Identifiers (UIDs)
ORCID :
0000-0001-8454-9364
Subject Area
Fisheries, Aquaculture
Policy, Law, Economics, Management
Activities
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.
PhD project - Sustainable fishing in Greenland: impact of deep-sea trawling on benthic ecosystems
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 benthic communities and the impacts of trawling in the Greenland halibut fishery, using photographic, video, bycatch and environmental data. Further the project will allow a critical evaluation of the role of the MSC certification scheme in fishery governance, with wider applications to the management of deep-sea fisheries and those engaged in the MSC certification scheme.
Other projects
Project Oratsimba was an FAO-Smartfish funded project to establish community-based lobster fishery management, including the introduction of periodic No Take Zones, in Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar. The fishers of Sainte Luce are active contributors to MIHARI – Madagascar’s locally managed marine area (LMMA) network. Findings from participatory fisheries monitoring have been used to inform local management with applications to small-scale fisheries across the Western Indian Ocean.
The Marine
Protected Area Governance (MPAG) framework was developed as an empirical tool to analyse governance of marine protected areas (MPAs). Stephen's research has made novel use of this tool applying it to a locally managed small-scale crab fishery in a mangrove ecosystem of north west Madagascar.
The Fal oyster fishery, Cornwall, has been in operation since Roman times and is the last remaining commercial sailing fleet in Europe. Fishers continue to employ traditional methods, deploying hand-hauled dredges and from sailing boats and rowing punts. This offers a stark counterfactual to the increasing power and mechanisation of commercial fisheries in the last 100 years. Working with collaborators at the University of Exeter, data from GPS loggers on boats and fisheries monitoring data was combined to gain insights into this unique fishery.
Sea regions of study
Baffin Bay
Davis Strait
Labrador Sea
Indian Ocean