South Africa
The Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI) is a division of the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR) which strives to stimulate community awareness of the marine environment through education and promote wise, sustainable use of marine resources through scientific investigation. ORI is based at uShaka Marine World in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Much of the work of the institute is focused on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
The overall objective of the demonstration project is to contribute to the SAPPHIRE principal goal of achieving effective long-term marine and coastal ecosystem management in the Western Indian Ocean LMEs in line with the Strategic Action Programme as endorsed by the participating countries. Moreover, most of the countries in the WIO region have already developed national strategic approaches towards the green and blue economies which are consistent with and complement the LMEs SAP.
Marine litter—and its effects on marine life, beaches, and fisheries —has become a pressing issue for South Africa. The proponents underscore that the country has grown increasingly concerned about beach litter originating from river systems. The project will demonstrate how a 'Source to Sea' approach in five river systems in KwaZulu-Natal, can reduce litter generation and recover litter with river basin-wide interventions.
My professional career has primarily focused on human-shark conflict and shark and ray ecology, conservation and management.
Geospatial analysis and multispectral remote sensing expert, focussing on coastal and other landscape dynamics and degradation, and coastal climate change adaptation. Recently developed South African coastal and estuarine climate change related flood and erosion risk indices on a national level.
I work on demersal trawl fisheries of the western Indian Ocean and I coordinate the WIOFish Project which collates fisheries information for eight countries of the WIO.
Project Summary:
Shannon Hampton is the Programme Manager at IOI-SA. She coordinates the IOI-SA Course in Ocean Governance for Africa that runs annually. She is passionate about responsible fisheries practice and helped initiate the IOI-SA’s Small-scale fisheries work in 2016. She completed her PhD in a multidisciplinary study on small pelagic fish stock structure at the University of Cape Town. Her MSc, also at UCT, investigated the impact of flipper bands on African Penguins while her BSc (Hons) projects focused on inter-tidal invasive species.