
Ian G CowxUniversity of Hull · Hull International Fisheries Institute
Ian G Cowx
BSc, PhD
Emeritus Professor. Hull International Fisheries Institute, University of Hull, UK
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Publications (343)
Globally, fish have been severely affected by the widespread, chronic degradation of fresh waters, with a substantial proportion of species declining in abundance or range in recent decades. This has especially been the case in densely populated countries with an industrial heritage and intensive agriculture, where the majority of river catchments...
Species presence/absence data in different water bodies in different regions of Saudi Arabia were collated from the literature and collected from field surveys to determine the geographical distribution of fish species in the country. Freshwater fish are mainly located in drainages in the south-west of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, both in the lowla...
Long-term datasets provide context and understanding of complex ecological processes, including temporal variations in species diversity and ecosystem dynamics. This dataset is comprised of body length measurements (mm) of more than 380,000 larval or juvenile fish of 30 species from five English river catchments collected almost monthly over two de...
The Mekong River is the most productive inland fishery in the world and identified as a valuable source of hydropower generation. Consequently, benefits of energy production must be traded off against impacts on other ecological and environmental services, especially on fisheries that have been largely downplayed. We surveyed fish markets in 12 pro...
Inland recreational fishing is primarily considered a leisure-driven activity in freshwaters, yet its harvest can contribute to food systems. Here we estimate that the harvest from inland recreational fishing equates to just over one-tenth of all reported inland fisheries catch globally. The estimated total consumptive use value of inland recreatio...
The migration of fishes through the Thoranit Naruemit water gate on the Nam Kam River, a tributary of the Mekong River in Thailand, was studied to understand the hydrological factors and improve the operational regime of the fish pass at the structure. Migration of fish from the Mekong River started in May, at the onset of the rainy season. During...
Describing patterns in activity and behaviour of animals as they move through their environment helps to reveal fundamental aspects of their ecology and identify key habitat requirements. Nursery areas are used by many shark species and play an important role in maintaining the viability of populations. Although shark movements within nursery areas...
Reversing the negative impacts that anthropogenic habitat fragmentation has on animal movement is a key goal in the management of landscapes and conservation of species globally. Accurate assessment of measures to remediate habitat fragmentation, such as fish passage solutions in rivers, are imperative but are particularly challenging for territori...
MRC conducts periodic assessments of fisheries yield in different regions of the Lower Mekong Basin ):MB) to inform policy decisions and understand trends in catches and the value of aquatic living resources over time. The assessments conducted in 2020 suggest that the annual finfish yield from the LMB falls within the range of 1.51 to 1.71 million...
Psychology and vision science, university of leicester, leicester, uK; j school of veterinary science, Murdoch university, Perth, wA, Australia; k Department of ichthyology, Faculty of Biology, lomonosov Moscow state university, Moscow, Russia; l school of Biomedical sciences, university of queensland, Australia; m Pepperell Research and consulting...
Stocking is one of the foremost tools in the inland fisheries management toolbox, but it comes with both opportunities and risks. Stocking is often used as compensation for depleted wild populations, particularly where recruitment processes have been disrupted, but it can introduce disease, disrupt community structures, reduce genetic integrity, an...
For millennia humans have extracted biological and physical resources from the planet to sustain societies and enable the development of technology and infrastructure. Growth in the human population and changing consumption patterns have increased the human footprint on ecosystems and their biodiversity, including in fresh waters. Freshwater ecosys...
This paper addresses why food security implications of projected
losses to inland capture fisheries due to hydropower development
have been neglected in policy arenas. Drawing on the case of the
Lower Mekong Basin, this paper applies a conceptual framework for analyzing this question as a case of fundamental food system
change. Four inter-related a...
Context
Increasing fragmentation of rivers caused by barriers continues to impact watersheds, especially disruption of fish migration patterns and loss of access to spawning and nursery habitats. Infrastructure expansion and ageing installations exacerbate the problem, reducing effectiveness of management in addressing barriers. Reduction in waters...
Inland waters support the livelihoods of up to 820 million people and provide fisheries that make an essential contribution towards food security, particularly in the developing world where 90% of inland fisheries catch is consumed. Despite their importance, inland fisheries are overlooked in favour of other water use sectors deemed more economical...
Non-technical summary
Rivers are crucial to the water cycle, linking the landscape to the sea. Human activities, including effluent discharge, water use and fisheries, have transformed the resilience of many rivers around the globe. Sustainable development goal (SDG) 14 prioritizes addressing many of the same issues in marine ecosystems. This revie...
Inland recreational fisheries, found in lakes, rivers, and other landlocked waters, are important to livelihoods, nutrition, leisure, and other societal ecosystem services worldwide. Although recreationally-caught fish are frequently harvested and consumed by fishers, their contribution to food and nutrition has not been adequately quantified due t...
The proliferation of hydropower development to meet obligations under the Renewable Energy Directive has also seen the emergence of conflict between the hydropower developers and the fisheries and conservation sectors. To address this trade-off between hydroelectricity supply and its environmental costs, this chapter introduces a series of tools an...
Inland recreational fisheries provide numerous socio-economic
benefits to fishers,
families and communities. Recreationally harvested fish are also frequently consumed
and may provide affordable and sustainable but undervalued contributions to human
nutrition. Quantifying the degree to which recreationally harvested fish contribute to
food security...
Fish often migrate to feed, reproduce and seek refuge from predators and prevailing environmental conditions. As a result, migration tactics often vary among species based on a diversity of life history needs, although variation within species is increasingly being recognised as important to population resilience. In this study, within‐ and among‐s...
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a unifying call for change - guiding global actions at multiple levels of governance for a better planet and better lives. Consequently, achieving the “future we want” may be hindered by overlooking valuable natural resources and services that are not explicitly included in the SDGs. Not r...
Fourteen species of pangasiid catfish are found in the Mekong River. They are key components of both capture fisheries and aquaculture, although little is known about their migratory ecology, which is particularly important as some species are in decline. In order to examine the life-history strategies of key pangasiid catfishes in the Mekong River...
Hydropower production is one of the greatest threats to fluvial ecosystems and freshwater biodiversity. Now that we have entered the Anthropocene, there is an opportunity to reflect on what might constitute a ‘sustainable’ Anthropocene in the context of hydropower and riverine fish populations. Considering elements of existing practices that promot...
Inland fisheries make substantial contributions to food security and livelihoods locally, regionally, and globally but their conservation and management have been largely overlooked by policy makers. In an effort to remedy this limited recognition, a cross-sectoral community of scientists, practitioners, and policy makers from around the world conv...
This study investigated aspects of the ornamental fish export trade in Malawi to understand potential impacts of the trade on exploited fish populations in Lake Malawi and recommend measures for management of the ornamental fishery. Information about the ornamental fish export trade in Malawi was sourced from hardcopy file records maintained by the...
In Malawi, small-scale inland fisheries1 are the main source of fish and other aquatic foods. They contribute more than 90% of national fish supplies, provide nutrition for over 11.9 million people and employment for over 200,000 women and men (Figure 1). Fish and other aquatic foods are the most consumed animalsource food (a critical food group),...
Most freshwater fisheries occur in developing countries, where freshwater fish underpin local food security and small-scale fisheries livelihoods. Comprehensive catch data are fundamental to support the sustainable management of freshwater fisheries. However, freshwater catch data reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nati...
Food system is a powerful concept for understanding and responding to nutrition and sustainability challenges. Food systems integrate social, economic, environmental and health aspects of food production through to consumption. Aquatic foods are an essential part of food systems providing an accessible source of nutrition for millions of people. Ye...
Spatial and temporal variation of nine elements (Ba, Ca, Cu, Mg, Mn, Na, Se, Sr, and Zn) and some additional environmental parameters (salinity, water levels, and conductivity) were examined over two 2,000 km along the length of the main Mekong River channel from Luang Prabang in Northern Lao PDR to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Longitudinal profile...
A structured and collaborative approach to design and decision‐making in the context of ecological restoration of rivers is developed and illustrated using a case study involving the mitigation of physical barriers to fish migration on the River Trent in the UK. The integrated design and decision-making framework provide a practical workflow model...
Productivity Sustainability Analysis (PSA) was used to assess the vulnerability of 103 most targeted ornamental fish species of Lake Malawi to fishing for the export trade. The PSA was based on five productivity and four susceptibility attributes that are relevant to the ornamental fishes of Lake Malawi, and for which information was readily availa...
This review presents summary information on 45 river and great lake basins of the world, which support inland fisheries. The information presented is drawn from published information in peer-reviewed journals as well as grey literature. Each basin summary is presented in a common format, covering the description of the fishery, estimates of catch a...
Inland fisheries make substantial contributions to food security and livelihoods locally, regionally, and globally but their conservation and management have been largely overlooked by policy makers. In an effort to remedy this limited recognition, a cross-sectoral community of scientists, practitioners, and policy makers from around the world conv...
The COVID-19 global pandemic and resulting effects on the economy and society (e.g., sheltering-in-place, alterations in transportation, changes in consumer behaviour, loss of employment) have yielded some benefits and risks to biodiversity. Here, we considered the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced (or may influence) freshwater fish biodive...
South Africa is in the process of developing a National Freshwater (Inland) Wild Capture Fisheries Policy. A properly focused research strategy is essential to guide the policy development process, and thus a dedicated ‘Inland Fisheries’ workshop was convened by the South African Society for Aquatic Scientists in June 2018 to update and further dev...
The European eel (Anguilla anguilla (L.)) is critically endangered after a multi-decadal decline. Anthropogenic disruption to downstream migration, including at water control structures such as pumping stations, is thought to be one of the contributing factors. Some pumping stations only operate during floods and river water drains through sluice g...
In their Policy Forum “Engage with animal welfare in conservation” (7 August, p. 629), N. Sekar and D. Shiller state that the “overwhelming evidence that animals think and feel” is the basis for their call to include animal welfare in conservation practices. This feelings-based approach is problematic because there is substantial scientific uncerta...
Diadromous fishes, those that migrate between fresh and marine waters, are among the most vulnerable species to river infrastructural development. These fish need to move between fresh water and the sea, so any obstruction to migration can block access to critical habitat areas. The Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) is experiencing an unprecedented boom in...
Diadromous fishes Connectivity of Mekong fishes between freshwater and marine habitats Many Mekong fishes are associated with saline water and require movement between freshwater sections of the river, the delta and the sea. Our work has found that around 11 percent of Mekong fish species distribute in a wide range of environments (freshwater, brac...
Millions of individuals worldwide rely on recreational fishing activities for leisure, food, and employment. Recreational fishing is the dominant freshwater fisheries sector in much of the highly developed world and plays a growing role in the marine realm, but in developing countries recreational fisheries occur within a different set of contextua...
Natural hydrological regimes encompass varying seasonal flow characteristics that provide fish with cues and opportunities for upstream spawning migrations, but these flows are often modified/absent in regulated rivers. Compensatory artificial flows (freshets) can be released from reservoirs to replicate these characteristics, but studies testing t...
Competition and resource partitioning can have profound implications for individuals, populations and communities, and thus food webs, ecosystems and the management of biota and environments. In many species, the impacts of competition and resource partitioning are believed to be most severe during early life, but our understanding of the mechanism...
Globally, our knowledge on lake fisheries is still limited despite their importance to food security and livelihoods. Here we show that fish catches can respond either positively or negatively to climate and land-use changes, by analyzing time-series data (1970–2014) for 31 lakes across five continents. We find that effects of a climate or land-use...
Inland fishes and fisheries make substantial contributions to individuals, society, and the environment in a changing global landscape that includes climate, water allocations, and societal changes. However, current limitations to valuing the services provided by inland fish and their fisheries often leaves them out of key decision‐making discussio...
Inland capture fisheries provide food for nearly a billion people and are important in the livelihoods of millions of households worldwide. Although there are limitations to evaluating many of the contributions made by inland capture fisheries, there is growing recognition by the international community that these services make critical contributio...
Inland fisheries play important roles in food and economic security in the riparian countries surrounding the Great Lakes of Africa. However, the lakes are being systematically degraded by anthropogenic pressures, in combination with the huge population growth prevalent in the region. This paper summarises the outcomes of an international conferenc...
Irrigated agriculture and inland fisheries both make important contributions to food security, nutrition, livelihoods and wellbeing. Typically, in modern irrigation systems, these components operate independently. Some practices, commonly associated with water use and intensification of crop production can be in direct conflict with and have advers...
Irrigated agriculture and maintaining inland capture fisheries are both essential for food and nutrition security in Myanmar. However, irrigated agriculture through water control infrastructure, such as sluices or barrages, weirs and regulators, creates physical barriers that block migration routes of important fish species. Blocking of fish migrat...
• The ecosystem services provided by freshwater biodiversity are threatened by development and environmental and climate change in the Anthropocene.
• Here, case studies are described to show that a focus on the shared dependence on freshwater ecosystem functioning can mutually benefit fisheries and conservation agendas in the Anthropocene.
• Meeti...
Telemetry investigations to gather essential information about fish migrations are reliant on the behaviour, condition and survival of the animals being unaltered by the tagging procedure. Twaite shad (Alosa fallax Lacépède; 'shad') is a threatened clupeid fish for which there is a considerable knowledge gap on their ana-dromous movements. They are...
We revisit the evidence attributing sentience-pain-suffering to aquatic animals. The objective is to inform readers of the current state of affairs, to direct attention to where research is needed, and to identify "wicked" questions that are difficult to resolve unequivocally. By separating the ethical from the scientific debate, applying organized...
Small, 1st and 2nd-order, headwater streams and ponds play essential roles in providing natural flood control, trapping sediments and contaminants, retaining nutrients, and maintaining biological diversity, which extend into downstream reaches, lakes and estuaries. However, the large geographic extent and high connectivity of these small water bodi...
Example on-farm mitigation measures targeting different components of the water pollution cascade.
Downstream passage of European eel Anguilla anguilla (L.) in catchments with pump(s) for water level management is a major concern. Catchment‐wide acoustic telemetry revealed silver eels quickly migrated downstream through unobstructed reaches (n = 12; mean ± SD = 17.9 ± 1.9 km/day). Fourteen of 17 acoustic‐tagged eels detected at the pumping stati...
Fisheries are an important resource in Zambia, but are experiencing overexploitation and are under increasing pressure from external development activities that are compromising river ecosystem services and functioning. One such system is the Kafue Flats floodplain, which is under threat from hydropower development. This paper reviews the effect of...
The exploitation of riverine systems for renewable energy has resulted in large numbers of small-scale hydropower schemes on low-head weirs. Although considered a clean and ‘green’ energy source in terms of emissions, hydropower can affect upstream migrating species by diverting flow away from viable routes over the impoundment and attract fish tow...
The number of low-head barriers to fish migration far outweighs the number of large magnitude barriers and thus the cumulative negative impact on fish communities could also be far greater. Removal of man-made obstructions to fish migration is the most beneficial mitigation measure for reconnecting fragmented rivers but is not always possible and t...
This two-page policy overview of problems for small water bodies and management options to address them accompanies the paper by Riley et al. (2018)
For a long time, the lack of reliable data has hindered research on global inland fisheries and escalated the risk of investments on projects of sustainable inland fisheries. In the February of 2016, we started a global lake fisheries initiative aiming to (1) develop a global lake fisheries database that includes time series of fisheries statistics...
Flood Risk Management (FRM) is often essential to reduce the risk of flooding to properties and infrastructure in urban landscapes, but typically degrades the habitats required by many aquatic animals for foraging, refuge and reproduction. This conflict between flood risk management and biodiversity is driven by conflicting directives, such as the...
Discerning behaviours of free-ranging animals allows for quantifcation of their activity budget, providing important insight
into ecology. Over recent years, accelerometers have been used to unveil the cryptic lives of animals. The increased ability
of accelerometers to store large quantities of high resolution data has prompted a need for automate...
The third revision reviews the status and trends of inland fisheries catch at global, continental and subcontinental levels. It places inland capture fisheries in the context of overall global fish production, and calls attention to the importance of inland capture fisheries with respect to food security and nutrition and the Sustainable Developmen...
This report is BioRA Technical Report Series. Volume 4: Assessment of Planned Development Scenarios.
The main objective of BioRA was to provide clear and comparable information on the impacts of existing and proposed water-resource developments included in the scenarios on the aquatic resources of the study area. The report provides predicted eco...
The United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development defines the formidable challenge of integrating historically separate economic, social, and environmental goals into a unified ‘plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity.’ We highlight the substantial contribution inland fisheries can make towards preventing increased poverty...
Despite considerable investment in river restoration projects, there is still limited information on the efficacy and success of river restoration activities. One of the main reasons is poor or improper project design, resulting in common problems such as: not addressing the root cause of habitat degradation; not establishing reference conditions,...
Man-made, physical barriers have disrupted longitudinal connectivity for migratory fish in many river systems throughout the world for centuries. These barriers are considered to be a key reason for the decline of many fish species in river systems. To date, most research to ease movement of anadromous salmonids past such barriers to help dwindling...
Information about the socioeconomic drivers of Silurus glanis anglers in the UK were collected using questionnaires from a cross section of mixed cyprinid fisheries to elucidate human dimensions in angling and non-native fisheries management. Respondents were predominantly male (95%), 30–40 years of age with <10 yr angling experience for S. glanis;...
Significant socio-economic aspects of specialist S. glanis anglers in the study.
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Data obtained from questionnaire in this study.
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Questionnaire used in the study.
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