Carles Bas i Peired

Biography Carles Bas i Peired of Scientia Marina 76(3) 2012.-- 4 pages, 3 photographs

[...] The biography of a person is often linked to that of other people, and Bas talks with respect as a person and professional about Tomàs, an old fisherman from Blanes. During their long conversations, Bas linked science and popular knowledge, and what is more important, learned to recognize the technical concepts of fisheries and the importance of being in the field and on board. Bas concluded this period with a trip along the whole Catalan coast. The result of this trip was a classic and fundamental book for understanding fisheries in Catalonia, La Pesca en España. I Cataluña (Patronato Juan de la Cierva, CSIC. 1955), which he wrote with his colleagues of the time, Manuel Rubió and Enrique Morales. [...] In 1962 he moved to the Institute of Fisheries Research (Instituto de Investigaciones Pesqueras, IIP), where he coincided with Bonaventura Andreu and Ramon Margalef. At the Institute he also met Fernando Lozano from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (Instituto Español de Oceanografía, IEO), with whom he undertook a project in which fisheries and environment were considered together for the first time. [...] We should mention a series of positions and responsibilities that Bas undertook over two decades. I highlight here some of the most important: he was vice-president and president of the Marine Resources Committee of the Food and Agriculture Organisation - General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (FAO-GFCM) (1962-1964 and 1972), vice-president and president of the Catalan Society of Biology (1973-1979), special commissioner of UNESCO in Mauritania, Encomienda de la Orden del Mérito Civil (1973), president of the Scientific Advisory Council of International Commission for South East Atlantic Fisheries (1977), president of the National Centre of Fisheries Research (1980), winner of a medal in the Fisheries Award of the Catalan Government (1990), special commissioner in Uruguay for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO and the United Nations Development Programme (1990), honorary rector of the Aulas del Mar of the University of Murcia and honorary doctor of the University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria (2005). [...] Bas has been an active scientist: one of field research, management, organisation and education. He taught us that understanding fisheries means going to the level of the fishing vessels, the field, the fishermen, the fish market. All this results in a systematic education that includes the environment, economy and sociology for the understanding of the system [...]

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