Oceans Past and Future: what role can history play in restoration and recovery of marine environments?

 A public lecture by Associate Professor Andrea Gaynor, History, The University of Western Australia

When: 9 November 2017, 6-7pm
Where: Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre Auditorium, The University of Western Australia
Cost: Free
For further information and to reserve a seat see: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/andrea-gaynor

Faced with the dramatic depletion and collapse of many of the world’s significant fish stocks, over recent decades marine scientists and managers have increasingly turned to historical sources in order to comprehend the full extent and nature of change in marine ecosystems. Beginning with the concept of shifting baselines elaborated by Daniel Pauly in 1995, historical knowledge has increasingly been recognised as important for present understanding and management. For example, the ten year Census of Marine Life, which involved 2700 scientists and more than 80 nations, included a component called History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) that researched changes in abundance of various forms of marine life, the effects of large-scale exploitation of marine animals, and the changing ways in which societies have organised around the harvest and distribution of marine resources over time.

Historians, historical ecologists and other researchers have looked to a diverse array of sources, from monastic records and ship’s logs to fisheries returns and oral histories to construct images of past abundance and ecosystem function. However, creating images of ‘oceans past’ is far from straightforward. This lecture will discuss some of the challenges of research in this area, as well as proposing that while historical data is important, there are other significant roles for history to play in restoration and recovery of marine environments.

Andrea Gaynor is Associate Professor of History at The University of Western Australia. Her expertise encompasses the history of food production in Australian cities, Western Australian environmental history, agricultural history, animals in history and the history of fish and fishing. She is the author of Harvest of the Suburbs: An Environmental History of Growing Food in Australian Cities (2006, UWA Publishing).