Putting the coast in the Sea Around Us project

When most people try to visualize the “Sea” they envisage large marine expanses, and their underwater ecosystems. Until recently, the Sea Around Us project (SAUP) was way offshore, too. Yet, the sea also includes the coast – where the land meets the sea and where one finds some of the world’s most productive marine areas such as reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds. Coastal areas are of great importance to fisheries, not to mention tourism, aquaculture, transportation and gas and oil. Adding an emphasis on the coast is a natural progression for the Sea Around Us as it moves into low latitude areas, i.e., the Caribbean, West Africa and the tropical Indo-Pacific, where large numbers of fishers depend on coastal resources. So what does this mean for the project?