Daniel Pauly

Dr. Daniel Pauly is a French citizen who completed his high school and university studies in Germany; his doctorate (1979) and habilitation (1985) are in Fisheries Biology, from the University of Kiel.

After many years at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), in Manila, Philippines, Daniel Pauly became in 1994 Professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, of which he was the Director for 5 years (Nov. ’03-Oct. ’08). Since 1999, he is also Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Project (see www.seaaroundus.org), funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, and devoted to studying, documenting and promoting policies to mitigate the impact of fisheries on the world’s marine ecosystems (see AMBIO, 34: 290-295, 2007).

The concepts, methods and software which Daniel Pauly (co-)developed, documented in over 500 scientific and general-interest publications, are used throughout the world, not least as a result of his teaching a multitude of courses, and supervising students in four languages on five continents. This applies especially to the Ecopath modeling approach and software (www.ecopath.org) and FishBase, the online encyclopedia of fishes (www.fishbase.org).

This work is recognized in various profiles, notably Science (Apr. ’02); Nature (Jan. ’03); New York Time (Jan. ’03), and by numerous awards, among them honorary doctorates from four universities, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Science; ‘03); and receiving the Award of Excellence of the American Fisheries Society (‘04); the International Cosmos Prize, Japan (‘05), the Volvo Environmental Prize, Sweden (‘06), the Excellence in Ecology Prize, Germany (‘07) and the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology, Spain (‘08).