The University of Kerala’s Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries has awarded the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, the Prof. N. Balakrishnan Nair Memorial International Fisheries Guru Award for his notable contributions to fisheries science.
The Memorial International Fisheries Guru Award was instituted in memory of Prof. N. Balakrishnan Nair (1927–2010), a marine biologist, ecologist and the founder president of Kerala Science Congress, who is best known for his advocacy of a trawling ban during the monsoon season in the southwestern Indian state, and for his research on wood-boring mollusks and on the conservation of tropical wetlands and mangroves.
The Prof. N. Balakrishnan Nair Memorial International Fisheries Guru Award was presented to Dr. Pauly on March 12, 2021, during the conference “Sustainable Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture: Policies, Packages and Perspectives in the Blue Economy Paradigm,” organized by the University of Kerala’s Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries and New Delhi-based Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.
Following the ceremony, Dr. Pauly offered a keynote lecture titled “Assessing the status of exploited tropical fish populations: the challenges and their solutions”.
Besides offering information on computer-intensive methods to assess the status of fish populations, during his presentation, Dr. Pauly recalled the first time he was in India, back in 1983, and taught the uses of ELEFAN and other stock assessment methods.
