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Held on 17-19 April 2024 in Groningen, Netherlands, the second Trilateral Swimway Conference and 32nd Waddenacademie Symposium set a focus on understanding and preserving diverse fish life cycles in the world's largest tidal flats system.

150 leading fish migration experts from the Wadden Sea region gathered in Groningen, Netherlands, from 17-19 April 2024 for the second Trilateral Swimway Conference.

This week, leading fish experts are gathering in Groningen, Netherlands, for the highly anticipated second Trilateral Swimway Conference.

Scheduled from 17-19 April 2024, in Groningen, Netherlands, the second Trilateral Swimway Conference is dedicated to understanding and preserving diverse fish life cycles in the world's largest tidal flats system.

Just over 200 participants joined the international marine conservation conference "Progress in Marine Conservation" (PMC) themed "How to stop biodiversity loss - from knowledge to action" in September 2023 in Stralsund, Germany.

Focusing on applying scientific evidence to manage human impacts on fish life cycles, the conference approach is to balance the outcomes of the latest research on fish life cycles with contributions on the practical implementation of scientific findings to dedicated and effective conservation efforts.

The trilateral Wadden Sea is a highly dynamic area, providing shelter from predators and rich feeding grounds for a host of fish species.

In the past months, a team of experts and students from DTU Aqua (Denmark), the University of Kiel (Germany), Groningen University (Netherlands) and the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat (CWSS) worked on the reconstruction of the historical fish assemblage of the Wadden Sea in the project "Systematic review for historical reconstruction of the Wadden Sea fish assemblage – Swimway historical reference" (SHIRE).

What did the fish community in the Wadden Sea look like in historic times? What were the drivers of change? These questions will be addressed in the project "Systematic review for historical reconstruction of the Wadden Sea fish assemblage – Swimway historical reference" (SHIRE).

In the Leeuwarden Declaration, the Wadden Sea Board (WSB) was instructed to further develop and contribute to implementing the SWIMWAY Vision (at Annex 3 of the Leeuwarden Declaration) as an integrated approach to achieving the Trilateral Fish Targets by investigating, monitoring, managing and communicating topics concerning the ecology of fish of the Wadden Sea Area.

World Fish Migration Day is a one-day global celebration to create awareness of open rivers and migratory fish celebrates this year on 24 October.

The report titled "Trilateral Fish Monitoring: Overview of monitoring and research for SWIMWAY" presents an inventory of monitoring and long-term research programmes that include marine and estuarine fish in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

The World Fish Migration Foundation partners with Wildlife Forever to promote aquatic conservation through art by collaborating on their State-Fish Art contest.

What are the drivers of fish populations that utilise coastal marine environments during their life cycle? What are potential bottlenecks? And do current management measures reduce those risks effectively? Those are among the central questions the first international Swimway conference focused on.

The Wadden Sea is home to a large number of fish species, but in recent decades populations have steeply declined. The shallow area provides shelter, food, spawning or living habitat in at least one of the life stages of these fish species.

The populations of many fish species in the Wadden Sea have steeply declined in recent decades.