We aspire to facilitate networking between practioners in the fields of marine envrionmental history / historical marine ecology. If you would like to have your research project listed here, please submit details to OPI at: info@oceanspast.org.
NorFish is a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant led by Prof Poul Holm in Trinity College Dublin, focuses on the premise that a 16th century shift in marine fish pricing and supply in conjunction with the Little Ice Age and lowering of sea temperatures not only rise to the North Atlantic Fish Revolution but also forms one of the first documented examples of the disrupting effects of globalisation and climate change.
The project examines the role of the Fish Revolution for a range of inter-related aspects of North Atlantic history, with NorFish’s interdisciplinary team drawing on archaeology, history, cartography, geography, and ecology to develop interpretative frameworks that synthesise a broad spectrum of source data to assess the overall objective of the project.
CONCHA is an EC funded staff exchange project, based on CHAM (NOVA FCSH—UAc, Lisbon, Portugal) that joins around 50 researchers from 11 partner institutions from Europe, Africa and the Americas.
CONCHA’s main goal is to address the different ways port cities developed around the Atlantic during the early modern period in relation to differing global, regional, and local ecological and economic environments. Speaking to different literatures on port cities in the Atlantic, material and immaterial culture, and environmental history, CONCHA aims to produce an Atlantic history of seaports in which the ocean – its ecosystems and species – is included as a dynamic player.
The Oceans Past Initiative is closely linked with the expert working group, WGHIST of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES): The ICES Working Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (WGHIST) brings together fisheries scientists, historians, and marine biologists working on multidecadal to centennial changes in the marine environment.
WGHIST aims to improve the understanding of the long-term dynamics of fish populations, fishing fleets, and catching technologies. The results are used for setting baselines for management, restoration, and conservation of marine resources and ecosystems.
EU COST Action Network
The Oceans Past Platform (EU COST Action IS1403) was launched earlier 2015: The Action calls on historians, archaeologists and social scientists as well as colleagues from the marine sciences to engage in dialogue and collaboration with ocean and coastal managers. OPP will develop historical descriptors and indicators for marine and coastal management.
Oceans Past Platform
The Action, Oceans Past Platform (OPP), aims to measure and understand the significance and value to European societies of living marine resource extraction and production to help shape the future of coasts and oceans. The Integrative Platform will lower the barriers between human, social and natural sciences; multiply the learning capacity of research environments; and enable knowledge transfer and co-production among researchers and other societal actors, specifically by integrating historical findings of scale and intensity of resource use into management and policy frameworks.
The oceans offer rich resources for feeding a hungry world. However, the sea is an alien space in a sense that the land is not. Fishing requires skills that must be learnt, it presupposes culinary preferences, technical ability, knowledge of target species, and a backdrop of material and intangible culture. OPP asks when, how and with what socio-economic, political, cultural and ecological implications humans have impacted marine life, primarily in European seas in the last two millennia.