Maciej TomczakResearcher

About me

Fish and fisheries in a border ecosystem perspective is the focus for my research. At the Baltic Sea Centre I’m working to improve Baltic fisheries management and assessment towards ecosystem based management system.

Biography

I am a marine ecologist with a PhD in Oceanology at the Institute of Oceanology, Gdansk University in Poland, and Sea Fisheries Institute (SFI) in Gdynia. In 2007 after completed my PhD I started as a researcher at DTU-Aqua and in 2010 I moved to Stockholm to work within Baltic Nest Institute (BNI) at Stockholm University. Since 2014 I’m a Baltic Eye researcher at the Baltic Sea Centre.

Previous research

At SFI I completed my PhD thesis on evaluation of management strategy of Central Baltic Herring stock. At DTU-Aqua and BNI my research focused on fisheries in food-web and ecosystem context. In 2010 I worked with a FORMAS project “Regime Shift at the Baltic Sea ecosystem” and investigated changes in the food-web using different modeling tools to understand non-linear and abrupt changes of Baltic Sea ecosystem. During my work I was involved in a number of European and national projects as i.e KnowSeas, IMAGE, InExFish, MEECE, ECOSUPPORT. Since 2001 I am highly involved at activities within International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), i.e co-chairing ICES/HELCOM Working Group on Integrated Assessment of Baltic Sea and many others.

My role in Baltic Eye

Fisheries are integral part of the Baltic Sea ecosystem and any assessment and management cannot work properly without taking in to account border context and ecosystem. It is crucial to understand the complexity of those interactions. For me it is a great opportunity, but also a challenge, to use available research results, synthetize multidisciplinary information and communicate it in a integrated form in order to support actions leading to improving Baltic Sea fisheries and support managers by presenting current knowledge necessary to take science based political decisions.

My current scientific activity is driven by two main questions:

• How to use and implement the Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management at the Baltic Sea?
• What does sustainable use of Baltic Sea fish resources mean? Both under a changing environment and within a historical long–term perspective?

Current project

• DEMO - DEMOnstration exercise for Integrated Ecosystem Assessment and Advice of Baltic Sea fish stocks
• MareFrame - Co-creating Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management Solutions
• ClimeFish - Forecasting and anticipating effects of climate change on fisheries and aquaculture
• BalticApp - Wellbeing from the Baltic Sea – applications combining natural science and economics

Tweets av @maciejttomczak

Research projects

Ongoing

Completed

BalticCAT – Cumulative effect Assessment Tools for the Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea ecosystem and marine life are exposed to many different impact factors at the same time. The BalticCAT research project further develops a food web model that will calculate the effects of a large number of natural and human impact factors.

FutureMARES – Climat Change and Future Marine Ecosystems Services and Biodiversity

The goal of the project FutureMares is to provide socially and economically viable actions and strategies in support of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.