Country: Canada
Rodolphe Devillers is Professor of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada. Rodolphe leads the Marine Geomatics Research Lab, an interdisciplinary group exploring research questions related to the use of GIS and spatial analysis for improving our understanding of marine environments. Some of his more applied research looks at seabed mapping, benthic habitat mapping, conservation planning and deep-sea coral ecology. Other more theoretical research includes the use of spatial statistical methods for marine environmental modelling, the development of 3D marine data structures, the improvement of geovisualization tools for supporting maritime decision-making and the crowdsourcing of geographic data. Most of his work is at the interface between geography and biology, focusing on marine conservation issues. Rodolphe led the Working Group 1 of the TBTI project in charge of SSF data integration, management and analysis and is now a cluster coordinator for the Global Synthesis cluster.
1. What are you currently working on within the context of SSF?
Unlike many people in TBTI I am not technically a SSF scientist. My contribution is to provide geospatial tools that can support this community. My main role has been to lead the design and development of the Information System on Small-scale Fisheries (ISSF).
2. If you could single out one or two most significant factors for securing sustainability of SSF, what would these factors be?
The only way of ensuring sustainability in fisheries (not only SSF) is to limit catches globally and regionally as oceans can simply not respond to the increasing demand for fish. If the world population keeps growing, then limiting wild fish catches, increasing aquaculture production, reducing fish consumption and increasing fish value are ways that could contribute to more sustainable fisheries.
