Publications

Jim Leape, Bronwen Golder, Richard Barnes, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Dawn Borg-Costanzi, Jessica L Decker Sparks, Jaeyoon Park, Robert Blasiak, Elizabeth R Selig, Shinnosuke Nakayama, Colette C.C. Wabnitz. 2025. Leveraging port state measures to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ads1592

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the sustainability of fisheries and communities dependent on them. The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) is a key tool for combatting IUU fishing by foreign fleets, requiring standardized inspections, information sharing, and port denial. Using satellite data, we characterized how PSMA has affected high seas vessel behavior and identify opportunities to strengthen...

J.-B. Jouffray, J. Virdin, J. Bebbington, R. Blasiak, A. Dunchus, M. Lo Presti, J. Pare, D. Prosi, J. P. Quintero, R. Rosenthal, P. Tortora, D. Vermeer. 2025. Identifying and closing gaps in corporate reporting of ocean impacts. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01631-8

As ocean industrialization accelerates, corporate transparency is increasingly seen as critical to improve governance, yet little is known about how firms disclose their impacts on marine ecosystems. This study addresses that gap through a content analysis of sustainability and annual reports from 75 of the largest companies across 8 sectors of the ocean economy. We examine which impacts are reported, how they are measured and...

Elizabeth R. Selig, Colette C. C. Wabnitz, Shinnosuke Nakayama, Jaeyoon Park, Richard Barnes, Robert Blasiak, Dawn Borg-Costanzi, Bronwen Golder, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Jim Leape, Jessica L. Decker Sparks. 2025. Leveraging port state measures to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ads1592

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the sustainability of fisheries and communities dependent on them. The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) is a key tool for combatting IUU fishing by foreign fleets, requiring standardized inspections, information sharing, and port denial. Using satellite data, we characterized how PSMA has affected high seas vessel behavior and identify opportunities to strengthen...

Shun Kageyama, Madlen Sobkowiak, Henrik Österblom, Robert Blasiak. 2025. Exploring evidence of cascading change towards stewardship in the Japanese seafood industry. Marine Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2025.106626

There is a growing global demand for a more sustainable seafood industry, and pre-competitive initiatives have emerged on multiple continents to meet this demand. Such initiatives could have “cascading effects,” suggesting that their impacts may extend beyond their direct participants to effect broader, industry-wide change. To date, little research has been conducted to determine whether pre-competitive initiatives are trigge...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Jessica M. da Silva, Robert Blasiak. 2025. How transdisciplinarity can help biotech-driven biodiversity research. Trends in Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2025.04.008

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework marks a significant step toward conserving genetic diversity on a global scale. Sequencing advancements have broadened biodiversity studies by enabling the mapping of species distributions, increasing understanding of ecological interactions, and monitoring genetic diversity. However, these tools are hindered by inequalities and biases, particularly in biodiversity-rich develo...

Frida Bengtsson, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Shinnosuke Nakayama, Erik Zhivkoplias, Colette C. C. Wabnitz, Robert Blasiak, Elizabeth R. Selig, Henrik Österblom. 2024. Who owns reefer vessels? Uncovering the ecosystem of transshipment in fisheries. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn3874

A central barrier to effective governance and accountability in fisheries is the limited transparency of corporate ownership. Transshipment—the transfer of catches, fuel, parts, or crew between fishing and cargo vessels known as reefers—is often criticized for its opacity and poor governance. Better insight into the beneficial ownership of vessels involved in transshipment and their operational patterns could lead to more effe...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Paul Dunshirn, Agnes Pranindita, Robert Blasiak. 2024. Growing prominence of deep-sea life in marine bioprospecting. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01392-w

Marine bioprospecting, which involves the exploration of genetic and biochemical material from marine organisms, can be used towards addressing a broad range of public and environmental health applications such as disease treatment, diagnostics and bioremediation. Marine genetic resources are important reservoirs for such bioprospecting efforts; however, the extent to which they are used commercially for natural product discov...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Agnes Pranindita, Paul Dunshirn, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Robert Blasiak. 2023. Novel database reveals growing prominence of deep-sea life for marine bioprospecting. Nature Sustainability/Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3136354/v1

Perceptions that marine bioprospecting will deliver vast commercial benefits have placed ‘marine genetic resources’ at the center of key policy processes yet our knowledge about their importance remains limited. Here, we introduce a novel global database of marine gene sequences referenced in patent filings, the MArine Bioprospecting PATent (MABPAT) Database. It includes 25,682 sequences from 1,092 marine species associated wi...

Robert Blasiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Diva J. Amon, Joachim Claudet, Paul Dunshirn, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Agnes Pranindita, Colette C. C. Wabnitz, Erik Zhivkoplias, Henrik Österblom. 2023. Making marine biotechnology work for people and nature. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01976-9

Robert Blasiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Albert Norström, Cibele Queiroz, Colette CC Wabnitz, Henrik Österblom. 2023. The Ocean Decade as an instrument of peace. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101319

The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021–2030 (the ‘Ocean Decade’) is poised to stimulate new cooperation for ocean science, but makes no mention of conflict or peace. We contend that this is a missed opportunity, and use an environmental peacebuilding typology to review how ocean science has historically contributed to peace. Such considerations are timely in the context of an increasingly c...