Publications

Shun Kageyama, Madlen Sobkowiak, Henrik Österblom, Robert Blasiak. 2025. Exploring evidence of cascading change towards stewardship in the Japanese seafood industry. Marine Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2025.106626

There is a growing global demand for a more sustainable seafood industry, and pre-competitive initiatives have emerged on multiple continents to meet this demand. Such initiatives could have “cascading effects,” suggesting that their impacts may extend beyond their direct participants to effect broader, industry-wide change. To date, little research has been conducted to determine whether pre-competitive initiatives are trigge...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Jessica M. da Silva, Robert Blasiak. 2025. How transdisciplinarity can help biotech-driven biodiversity research. Trends in Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2025.04.008

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework marks a significant step toward conserving genetic diversity on a global scale. Sequencing advancements have broadened biodiversity studies by enabling the mapping of species distributions, increasing understanding of ecological interactions, and monitoring genetic diversity. However, these tools are hindered by inequalities and biases, particularly in biodiversity-rich develo...

Frida Bengtsson, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Shinnosuke Nakayama, Erik Zhivkoplias, Colette C. C. Wabnitz, Robert Blasiak, Elizabeth R. Selig, Henrik Österblom. 2024. Who owns reefer vessels? Uncovering the ecosystem of transshipment in fisheries. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn3874

A central barrier to effective governance and accountability in fisheries is the limited transparency of corporate ownership. Transshipment—the transfer of catches, fuel, parts, or crew between fishing and cargo vessels known as reefers—is often criticized for its opacity and poor governance. Better insight into the beneficial ownership of vessels involved in transshipment and their operational patterns could lead to more effe...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Paul Dunshirn, Agnes Pranindita, Robert Blasiak. 2024. Growing prominence of deep-sea life in marine bioprospecting. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01392-w

Marine bioprospecting, which involves the exploration of genetic and biochemical material from marine organisms, can be used towards addressing a broad range of public and environmental health applications such as disease treatment, diagnostics and bioremediation. Marine genetic resources are important reservoirs for such bioprospecting efforts; however, the extent to which they are used commercially for natural product discov...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Agnes Pranindita, Paul Dunshirn, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Robert Blasiak. 2023. Novel database reveals growing prominence of deep-sea life for marine bioprospecting. Nature Sustainability/Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3136354/v1

Perceptions that marine bioprospecting will deliver vast commercial benefits have placed ‘marine genetic resources’ at the center of key policy processes yet our knowledge about their importance remains limited. Here, we introduce a novel global database of marine gene sequences referenced in patent filings, the MArine Bioprospecting PATent (MABPAT) Database. It includes 25,682 sequences from 1,092 marine species associated wi...

Robert Blasiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Diva J. Amon, Joachim Claudet, Paul Dunshirn, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Agnes Pranindita, Colette C. C. Wabnitz, Erik Zhivkoplias, Henrik Österblom. 2023. Making marine biotechnology work for people and nature. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01976-9

Robert Blasiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Albert Norström, Cibele Queiroz, Colette CC Wabnitz, Henrik Österblom. 2023. The Ocean Decade as an instrument of peace. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101319

The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021–2030 (the ‘Ocean Decade’) is poised to stimulate new cooperation for ocean science, but makes no mention of conflict or peace. We contend that this is a missed opportunity, and use an environmental peacebuilding typology to review how ocean science has historically contributed to peace. Such considerations are timely in the context of an increasingly c...

Zoie Diana, Kelly Reilly, Rachel Karasik, Tibor Vegh, Yifan Wang, Zoe Wong, Lauren Dunn, Robert Blasiak, Meagan M. Dunphy-Daly, Daniel Rittschof, Daniel Vermeer, Amy Pickle, John Virdin. 2022. Voluntary commitments made by the world’s largest companies focus on recycling and packaging over other actions to address the plastics crisis. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.10.008

Plastic pollution has caused significant environmental and health challenges. Corporations that contribute to the manufacture, use, and distribution of plastics can play a vital role in addressing global plastic pollution and many are committing to voluntary pledges. However, the extent to which corporations’ voluntary commitments are helping solve the problem remains underexplored. Here, we develop a novel typology to charact...

Österblom, H., Blasiak, R.. 2022. Credibility at stake in Sweden. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf4127

Swedens legacy as a global leader in the push to put climate and the environment at the heart of government decision-making may have come to an end on 18 October 2022. The first casualty of the countrys new right-wing government was the Ministry of the Environment, eliminated on Day 1. A key question is the extent to which this change derails progress made toward building a sustainable nation and world. Sweden has long been a...

Blasiak, R., Jouffray, J., Amon, D., Moberg, F., Claudet, J., Søgaard Jørgensen, P., Pranindita, A., Wabnitz, C., Österblom, H.. 2022. A forgotten element of the blue economy: marine biomimetics and inspiration from the deep sea. PNAS Nexus. doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac196

The morphology, physiology, and behavior of marine organisms have been a valuable source of inspiration for solving conceptual and design problems. Here, we introduce this rich and rapidly expanding field of marine biomimetics, and identify it as a poorly articulated and often overlooked element of the ocean economy associated with substantial monetary benefits. We showcase innovations across seven broad categories of marine b...