Research Unit

• Sea Around Us Project (SAUP)

Biography

Dr Dirk Zeller is Senior Research Fellow and Project Manager of the Sea Around Us project (www.seaaroundus.org).

As Project Manager and Senior Researcher he directs day-to-day research activities and management issues of the Project, and actively engages in and directs strategic research and funding decisions in close coordination with the Project Principle Investigator, Prof. Daniel Pauly. Furthermore, Dirk is leading the catch data reconstruction team and associated projects that deal with Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing. He has contributed to stock assessment collaborations with the Fisheries Centre Quantitative Modeling Group for Hawaiian bottom fish assessments, and illustrated that ICES (EU) catch data for the Baltic Sea substantially underreport total catches. Dirk also investigates coral reef fisheries (e.g., Coral Triangle Initiative) and global marine pollution modelling, engages in ocean governance and fisheries policy research, and collaborates with the Fisheries Economics Research Unit on issues in resource economics, and with the UBC Faculty of Law on issues related to international maritime boundary law, the Coral Triangle Initiative, and the UN Law of the Sea Convention.

Dirk has published over 100 scientific contributions, both in the primary literature (Nature, Science, Marine Policy, Ocean Yearbook, Marine Ecology Progress Series, Environmental Health Perspectives etc.) and in dedicated book chapters and research reports. Dirk was co-awarded the 2012 UBC Innovative Dissemination of Research Award and the 2011 Ecological Society of America Sustainability Science Award. He collaborates with scientists in Australia, Asia, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and Pacific. He represents the Sea Around Us Project at conferences and workshops throughout the world.

Dirk has a background in tropical marine biology and fisheries ecology from James Cook University, Australia, and has professional interests in sustainability, strategic global policy developments and resource economics, as well as marine reserves and coral reef ecology. Over the last 30 years, he also conducted research on corals, sea turtles and cephalopods.

Links

List of publications

PDFs of publications

Google Scholar Citations