At its annual meeting in October last year, ICES Council elected Fritz W. Köster as ICES President for the next three years (November 2018 til October 2021).
We sat down with the new President for a Q&A on what he sees the future holds for our organization.
1. How did you become a fisheries scientist? What
got you into the field?
At the age of 15, I joined the German Federal Research Centre for
Fisheries (now known as Thünen Institute) as an intern. The training there included
seagoing activities in the North Sea and I found it so interesting that I
continued to work on contracts at the institute during my school holidays. I
realized that I would actually like to continue working in the area, so I studied
biology and marine sciences at the University of Kiel.
I continued working for Thünen Institute during my studies, taking on
many tasks; from seagoing activities to laboratory and analysis jobs as a technician,
as well as taking over as cruise leader for standard surveys.
2. When did you get involved with ICES?
My first experience with ICES was in 1985. I presented my Master’s
thesis on the stability of biological reference points for fisheries management
at the statutory meeting that year in London. Afterwards, one of my first jobs
was to install ICES stock assessment software to the computer system of EU
Directorate for Fisheries.
3. What were your further roles in ICES?
Since 1988, I have worked on Greenlandic and Baltic fish stocks at Thünen
and also the Institute of Marine Research in Kiel. I recognized the importance
of environmental change and ecosystem interactions on fish stock and fisheries
dynamics in both these areas. This of course meant that I was involved in ICES
stock assessment and multispecies expert groups, as well as the GLOBEC Cod and
Climate Change initiative. I also became a member of the German Commission on
Marine Research, which coordinated ICES work.
I moved to the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research in 2002, became a Baltic
Committee member and Council Delegate in 2004, and since then I have served in the
Advisory Committee for Fisheries Management, in various Council initiatives, the
Bureau, and the Finance Committee. So I have had quite a few roles within the
organization!
4. What are you looking forward to the most during
your three years as president?
ICES is an important and unique scientific organization and I am proud to
be part of it. However, I believe in teamwork: a single person can act as the
figurehead of an organization but the success of the organization depends on
the people in the network and their collaboration and effort in various expert,
steering, and planning groups, and committees. I see myself as one part of this
team, which includes a dedicated Secretariat and collaboration with the member
states on both sides of the Atlantic, partner scientific organizations and our clients.
5. What do you consider as ICES biggest challenges over
the next three years?
Collaboration. We need, for example, to strengthen the education and
training aspects of ICES, which includes more collaboration with universities. This
will have a positive effect in broadening our science base.
Strengthening our training and relationship with academics should go hand
in hand with intensifying international collaboration with other scientific and
advisory organizations. Working together with others in the Arctic, the
Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the North Pacific, including both areas within
and beyond national jurisdiction, will ensure that we develop into a truly global
actor.
We have recently acquired observer status in the United Nations (UN), so there
is the recognition that ICES has much to share with other partners: our work
methods, approaches, scientific standards and methods, data policy, and
operational data products. Through strengthened collaboration, we are contributing
to the global ocean agenda and its regional implementation.
We need to also recognize that our advisory function takes place in a
highly dynamic political landscape and this is a challenge. Changes within the
European Union (EU) will have an impact on our work, and, in my opinion, ensures
that ICES role is even more necessary.
Traditionally, ICES has focused on fisheries, and more recently again on
aquaculture. Adopting an ecosystem approach recognizes that fisheries and
aquaculture are only two of several drivers of change in the marine ecosystem.
We have done this increasingly over the past 20 years. The development has been
positive and encourages our advice clients to broaden their requests to address
wider environmental issues. The
ecosystem approach requires enhanced coverage of human drivers and
socio-economic aspects, areas that have not been an ICES stronghold; here we
need advancement in both our science and the advisory side, making our work
increasingly complex.
A great example of progress is the work carried out by our data centre,
including populating and handling regional databases for stock assessment,
environmental databases, developing and distributing analyses tools and
results. However, I believe data collection coordination can be even more
efficient, utilising modern technology without compromising our invaluable
long-term data series.
6. How are you going to tackle those challenges?
We do this by intensifying cooperation between our science, advisory, and
data programmes, by strengthening education and training, and by strengthening collaboration
with regional and global partners across various scientific disciplines. Our
new strategic plan, which will be launched later this month, frames the different
areas we will be working on. This is complemented by our science plan, which describes
seven areas that will be the focus of our work in the years to come.
Our aim is to advance and share scientific understanding of marine
ecosystems, to meet conservation, management, and sustainability goals, and
provide the scientific advice that managers need to make decisions ensuring the
sustainable use of our seas and oceans.
So to sum up, the principles for tackling these challenges are cooperation,
dialogue, more inter/multidisciplinary work, and a greater engagement in education
and training.