A quarter of the global fish stocks are regarded as overfished, half of these been exploited to the limits of their capacity. Overfishing occurs when more fish are continuously being caught than naturally proliferate. Scientists fear that many stocks will collapse if the politics and management of fisheries do not change drastically. This means that fisheries activities must be coordinated internationally and that fish as a resource must be handled sustainably by law. From an economic perspective, overfishing is a problem which has developed because fish stocks are a common resource. A fish in the sea belongs to everyone; a caught fish belongs only to the fisherman.

The online game ecoOcean addresses this issue and shows that large catches do not necessarily bring the best results. In ecoOcean the players become fishermen and have to develop the best possible strategy for sustainable fishing.

The Idea

The online game ecoOcean was designed in association with the Cluster of Excellence “The Future Ocean” at Kiel University from the research of the “Sustainable Fisheries” work group.

In “The Future Ocean”, economists, lawyers, fishery biologists, oceanographers and geologists work together on developing new approaches and models for the realisation of a sustainable fisheries management concept. http://www.futureocean.org

Contact

info@ecoocean.de

Scientific Coordination

Jörn Schmidt, Martin Quaas, Till Requate, Rudi Voss

Software Development and Art Direction

Tobias Nissen, Dennis Nissen, Pierre Beitz, Michel Magens, http://www.naymspace.de,

ecoOcean at International Conferences and in Museums

ecoOcean is regularly used at conferences and congresses inside and outside of Germany. Moreover ecoOcean is a permanent exhibit in the “Ozeaneum” in Stralsund (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) and in the “Deutsches Museum” Munich (Bavaria), in the section for environment.