Name: Poul Degnbol
Position: Head of Advice Programme, International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)
Family: gifted with a marvelous wife, two wonderful daugthers and a not less wonderful granddaughter
Other: These days, when I no longer go to sea on research vessels, my most direct contact with the sea is sea kayaking

What are you reading at the moment?
‘Revolution’ by Jakob Ejersbo – a novel about survivorship under cultural and political tensions in eastern Africa which leaves no reader untouched. It revives some of my strongest memories from an early part of my career, working with fisheries on the great lakes in eastern Africa.

What is your strongest memory of fish?
Experiencing a canoe fisherman on Lake Nyassa, standing upright in his canoe made from a hollowed tree log, trying (and succeeding) in pulling a line with 2 m fighting catfish at the end onboard. Anybody trying to kayak will know what this means in terms of balance skills and power. He was very skilled and it was very visible what getting this catch onboard meant to him as a fisherman in absolute poverty - and in afterthought also how dependent he would be of the lake still producing such fish.

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