History of Marine Animal Populations

The History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) is an international, interdisciplinary research initiative. It comprises the historical component of the Census of Marine Life and is designed to measure and explain patterns of long-term change in the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans.

The overarching aim of the HMAP project is to improve knowledge and understanding of the interaction of humankind with the marine environment since the earliest times. Attaining this goal will yield information on long-term changes in stock abundance, the historic ecological impact of large-scale human harvesting and the role of marine resource utilization in the development of human societies. Such evidence, in turn, will broaden and deepen knowledge of the contemporary condition of the marine environment and provide the time series and ecological insight required to assess the future sustainability of marine animal populations.

HMAP engages in three principal types of activity:
Discipline building
To further the twin sub-disciplines of marine environmental history and historical ecology, HMAP organises graduate summer schools, conferences and workshops; the HMAP approach is firmly embedded in the teaching and research effort of several universities around the globe: Roskilde University and the Technical University, Denmark, University of Hull and Cambridge University, UK, University of New Hampshire and University of Connecticut, USA, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, Murdoch University, Australia, Simon Bolivar University, Caracas, Venezuela, University of Haifa, Israel, and the European University of St Petersburg, Russia.

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