Daniel Pauly, a French citizen, is the Director of the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Educated in Germany, he studied fisheries biology because he wanted a portable skill that would enable him to work in tropical developing countries, where he has spent most of his working life, inventing new approaches for fisheries research and management in data-sparse settings and teaching on these issues in four languages in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America.

Besides numerous and well-cited journal articles, books and other publications, his work led to the creation of software (ELEFAN, Ecopath) and scientific databases (FishBase) now used throughout the world. His work links to concepts now structuring a wide span of research in marine biology, notably on "fishing down marine food webs," which impacts all the world's aquatic systems, but which many do not notice because of the "shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries." Dr. Pauly is Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia and is devoted to investigating the global impact of fisheries on marine ecosystems. He has received numerous scientific awards and his work and life were profiled in Science (April 19, 2002), Nature (Jan. 2, 2003), the New York Times (Jan. 21, 2003) and other outlets. Two books (In a Perfect Ocean: fisheries and ecosystem in the North Atlantic. Island Press, 2003; and Darwin's Fishes: an encyclopedia of ichthyology, ecology and evolution. Cambridge University Press, 2004) document his current interests in marine science.

Related Websites

Dr. Pauly's bio page at the Fisheries Centre