From 12-16 August, ORI is hosting 16 fish experts from research institutes in the US, Taiwan, India, UK, Tanzania, Mozambique, Australia, Portugal, Norway and South Africa. They are here for a workshop to assess extinction risk in a large group of fishes.
The workshop is being run by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), as part of its Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) programme to assess species for inclusion on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Fishes are the most diverse and numerous vertebrates, yet many of them have not been assessed; the GMSA is working hard to remedy this by drawing on scientific expertise to collate species’ information on population levels, distribution, habitats, ecology, threats and conservation. This is used to assign species to different extinction threat categories; once the assessments have been reviewed, they are published on the IUCN Red List website http://www.iucnredlist.org/
ORI scientists have previously participated in Species Specialist Group assessment workshops on rockcod, kobs, seabreams and sharks and rays – this workshop is dealing with many species that occur in the Western Indian Ocean including goatfishes, lizardfishes flatfishesand deep-sea fishes such as hatchetfish and anglerfish.
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species