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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. Dedicated to understanding and preserving diverse fish life cycles in the world's largest tidal flats system, the symposium featured the latest research advancements alongside discussions on practical measures to uphold and restore the viability of fish populations within the Wadden Sea.

This week, leading fish experts are gathering in Groningen, Netherlands, for the highly anticipated second Trilateral Swimway Conference. The symposium is dedicated to understanding and preserving diverse fish life cycles in the world’s largest tidal flats system and beyond. It features the latest research advancements alongside discussions on practical measures to uphold and restore the viability of fish populations within the Wadden Sea.

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. The programme includes the latest research on fish life cycles, accompanied by discussions on practical measures to safeguard these populations. Emphasising learning from both successful and unsuccessful management approaches, the conference aims to address the complexities facing fish populations in the Wadden Sea. Registration is still open with a few spots still available.

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. In over 50 presentations and 8 workshops, they discussed how to tackle the marine biodiversity crisis. The Common Wadden Sea Secretariat (CWSS), representing the Trilateral Wadden Sea Cooperation, actively participated in the event.

In the framework of the Trilateral Wadden Sea Cooperation (TWSC), the second Trilateral Swimway Conference will be held from 17-19 April 2024 in Groningen, the Netherlands. 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 to 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. Present long-term data sets used for determining conservation strategies and targets only go back as far as 1960, a period in which the area was already under extensive anthropogenic pressure. To be able to set realistic targets for conservation strategies aimed at pre-defined objectives such as the trilateral fish-targets, additional data is required that go further back in time.

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), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV).

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), funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), the Netherlands, conducted from January to July 2022.

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.

The World Fish Migration Foundation partners with Wildlife Forever to promote aquatic conservation through art by collaborating on their State-Fish Art contest. As a part of the contest, the organisers created the international Fish Migration Award with Jeremy Wade as ambassador. Children ages 5-18 can submit their wonderful illustrations and the winners will be announced on World Fish Migration Day (May 16, 2020). This global competition is an opportunity for young children to connect to one another and show how their Love Flows for migratory fishes.

What are the drivers of fish populations that utilize 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. On 24-26 September 2019 in Hamburg, Germany, about 90 scientists, managers, policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders concerned with fish in coastal areas participated in the event and seized this as a forum to explore opportunities for cooperation and protection of migrating fish.

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. Similar to the crossroads function for birds (compare Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative), the Wadden Sea forms a junction along the life trajectories of fish. Yet, compared to birds in the Wadden Sea, fish are less well studied and received far less research attention.