Fisheries

Fisheries, from small-scale sustenance to large-scale industrial fisheries, are critical for food security, employment and economic development for billions of people. This dependence on fishing is reflected by the central role that fish and fishing play in many cultures all over the world. Salmon are a fundamental cornerstone in the First Nation cultures of the Pacific Northwest and this is just one example among many that reflect the cultural importance of fish. However, our appetite for fish in combination with population growth and the development of industrial-scale fishing has had a disastrous impact on this treasured resource, as almost all global fish stocks are overexploited and severely depressed compared to historic levels. Not only is this highly problematic for aquatic ecosystems, but also for the millions of people who depend on them for their livelihoods, food security, and cultural identity. Developing sustainable fisheries is imperative to secure fish stocks for future generations, but accurate scientific assessments on stock and ecosystem health as well as fishing practices are key in making this a reality.

At UBC, researchers are studying the biology and physiology of fish (Brauner, Randall, Richards, Schulte, Hinch, Healey, Pauly, Schulte, Taylor) to better understand how they are dealing with environmental stressors. Fish ecology is another mayor research avenue pursued at UBC (Cheung, Clark, Hinch, Healey, Schulte, Taylor, Pakhomov) that then is used to model fish stock abundance and health (Christensen, Clark, McAllister, Zeller, Pitcher). Integrating all this information then leads to the management of fish stocks (Foster, Menzies, Walters, Zeller, Palomares, Sumaila, Pitcher) and conservation efforts if need be (Foster, Cheung, Vincent, Palomares). In parallel, researchers at UBC are also exploring the socio-ecological importance of fish to human cultures (Newell, Zeigler, Palomares, Sumaila)

 

Colin Brauner

Professor
Zoology
Website
Email

Brauner investigates environmental adaptations (mechanistic and evolutionary) to gas-exchange, acid-base balance and ion regulation in fish, by integrating responses from the molecular, cellular and organismal level. This information can be applied to issues of aquaculture, toxicology and water quality criteria development, as well as fisheries management.

 

William Cheung

Professor and Director; Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change
Institute for Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

The Changing Ocean Research Unit studies the effects of global climate and ocean changes on marine ecosystems, biodiversity and fisheries social-ecological systems. Led by Dr. William Cheung, the Unit assesses the biophysical and socio-economic vulnerabilities and impacts of marine climate change, and identifies mitigation and adaptation options. Its vision is “Predicting the future ocean under climate change”. Mission is to improve understanding of the past, current and future responses of marine ecosystems and fisheries to global change; and explore and inform policy-relevant solutions at local and global scales to improve human well-being and the sustainable use of ocean biodiversity and ecosystem services. Its strategies are to integrate multidisciplinary datasets and information across scales and domains, and facilitate democratization of knowledge through innovative partnerships, capacity building and outreach initiatives; and to apply and develop scenarios and models to understand the dynamics of changing oceans and ecosystems.

 

Villy Christensen

Professor
Zoology; Institute for Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

Christensen specializes in ecosystem modelling—in particular data-driven ecosystem model construction. Past work has described global ocean models, studied global fish biomass and biodiversity trends in relation to seafood demand, and outlined new habitat capacity models.

 

Colin Clark

Professor Emeritus
Mathematics
Website
Email

Clark’s research is in behavioral ecology and the economics of natural resources, with emphasis on commercial fisheries management. Dynamic optimization and game theory arise prominently in these areas.

 

Sarah Foster

Program Manager
Project Seahorse
Website
Email

Foster’s research and conservation work spans the areas of trade and bycatch – specifically the listing of marine species on The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the issue of small fish species in bycatch. Project themes include trade and policy, sustainable fisheries, and conservation education.

 

Michael Healey

Professor Emeritus
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website
Email

Healey’s lab researches the ecology of Pacific salmon and they use these species to explore hypotheses about strategies for reproduction, energy allocation, and habitat choice. The variety of life history patterns displayed by Pacific salmon, and the fact that each species exists as many reproductively isolated populations, provides a rich opportunity to explore how related organisms solve ecological problems.

 

Scott Hinch

Professor
Forest and Conservation Sciences
Departmental Website and Laboratory Website
Email

The Hinch lab studies salmonid ecology, behaviour and physiology, and provides management systems with information needed for the conservation and sustainable use of fish resources. Research topics include physiology of migrations; social science and information exchange with stakeholders; environmental impacts on migrations; land-use impacts and restoration; effects of capture and release; stress, disease and pathogens; physiology and behaviour of offspring; and hydropower, fish passage and olfaction.

 

Murdoch McAllister

Associate Professor
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

The McAllister lab is applying Bayesian methods to fisheries stock assessment and providing quantitative decision support to non-governmental organizations, corporate clients, intergovernmental organizations, and government agencies.  Complex population dynamics and fisheries dynamics are being modeled. Statistical evaluation of model uncertainty in models fitted to data.

 

Charles Menzies

Professor
Anthropology
Website and Publications
Email

Hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies), member of Gitxaała Nation, conducts research and teaching on the ethnography of Western Europe and Coastal British Columbia, natural resource-dependent communities and resource management policies, and the political economy of social struggle. His book, “People of the Saltwater: An Ethnography of Git lax m’oon” discusses an economy based on natural-resource extraction by examining fisheries and their central importance to the Gitxaalas’ cultural roots. He is also the Director of The Ethnographic Film Unit at UBC https://anthfilm.anth.ubc.ca/

 

Dianne Newell

Professor Emeritus
History
Website
Email

Newell’s research interests include Canadian social and economic history; science and technology in late industrial society; women in Cold War science fiction and 1970s radio documentaries; Aboriginal women in the industrial economy; and Pacific/Northwest Coast fisheries and anthropology.

 

Evgeny Pakhomov

Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website and Publications
Email

The Pakhomov Lab has a broad range of interests covering topics from species ecology, at the level from zooplankton to fish, to ecosystem structure as well as physical-biological and biochemical coupling. Recently, Pakhomov has developed interests in stable isotope ecology, in particular in techniques that use compound specific measurements to reconstruct trophic pathways in pelagic ecosystems.

 

Maria Lourdes ‘Deng’ Palomares

Senior Scientist
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Website
Email

Maria Lourdes ‘Deng’ Palomares is a Senior Scientist with the Sea Around Us Project in charge of the Sea Around Us catch databases. She also handles issues related to FishBase, an information system for the world’s fishes and is the Project Coordinator for SeaLifeBase, an information system for the world’s marine organisms other than fish. She is interested in traditional ecological knowledge by fisher communities.

 

Daniel Pauly

Professor
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries; Zoology
Website and Publications
Email

Dr. Pauly’s research interests include aquatic ecosystems, Ichthyology and Fisheries management. He is also devoted to studying, documenting and promoting policies to mitigate the impact of fisheries on the world’s marine ecosystems. Pauly is also co-founder of FishBase.org, the online encyclopedia of more than 30,000 fish species, and he has helped develop the widely-used Ecopath modeling software.

 

Tony Pitcher

Professor
Zoology
Website and Publications
Email

Pitcher’s research addresses the impacts of fishing on aquatic ecosystems, the development of quantitative, multi-criteria evaluation frameworks and rapid appraisal techniques for evidence-based assessment of fisheries, management instruments and management goals, and a predictive understanding of how fish shoaling behavior impacts fisheries.

 

David Randall

Professor Emeritus
Zoology
Website and Publications
Email

Randall researches the regulation of ammonia production and excretion in fish, as well as the aquatic toxicity of ammonia and hypoxia. Further, the relationship of hemoglobin structure to oxygen and carbon dioxide transfer and tissue oxygen levels are explored as well as cellular responses of fish to hypoxia, including the role of hypoxia inducing factor and erythropoietin in response to hypoxia.

 

Jeffrey Richards

Professor
Zoology
Website
Email

The primary goal of the Richards lab’s research program is to understand the adaptive significance of the mechanisms coordinating cellular responses to stress. Specifically, they are interested in the physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms that act to balance energy supply and demand during short- and long-term exposure to environmental stress and the signal transduction pathways responsible for coordinating acclimation.

 

Patricia Schulte

Professor
Zoology
Departmental Website, Laboratory Website, and Publications
Email

The Schulte lab is interested in studying the physiological adaptations that allow animals to live in particular environments. They take advantage of intraspecific variation in fish to study the evolution of the mechanisms that allow animals to respond to a changing environment. Specific research projects focus on thermal adaptation in killifish, conservation genomics of Atlantic salmon, and the evolution of exercise performance in three-spine stickleback

 

Rashid Sumaila

Professor
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Departmental Website, Research Unit Website, and Publications
Email

Sumaila specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the economics of high and deep seas fisheries. Sumaila has worked in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atlantic region, Namibia and the Southern African region, Ghana and the West African region and Hong Kong and the South China Sea.

 

Eric Taylor

Professor
Zoology
Website and Publications
Email

The Taylor lab researches patterns of genetic variation within and between natural populations, the processes that promote and organize such variation, and their relevance to the origins and conservation of biodiversity. In particular, they are interested in population structure and the processes that influence population structure, speciation and hybridization, and the implications of these processes for conservation.

 

Amanda Vincent

Professor
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

The Vincent Lab mobilizes conservation action to improve the status of marine species and habitats. She is actively involved in biological and social research, empowering local communities, establishing marine protected areas, managing small-scale fisheries, restructuring international trade, promoting integrated policy, and advancing environmental understanding.

 

Carl Walters

Professor Emeritus
Zoology
Website and Publications
Email

Walters’ areas of research include the development of rapid techniques for teaching systems analysis and mathematical modeling to biologists and resource managers. His primary foci are fish population dynamics, fisheries assessment and sustainable management. He has undertaken extensive fisheries advisory work for public agencies and industrial groups.

 

Barbara Zeigler

Professor
Art History, Visual Art & Theory
Website
Email

Zeigler’s artistic practice is structured around an extended inquiry into ever-shifting relations between ecosystems and human, cultural structures. She has a particular interest in the language used to represent British Columbia’s fish populations and marine ecosystems.

 

Dirk Zeller

Senior Scientist
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Departmental WebsiteLaboratory Website, and Publications
Email

Zeller leads research on global catch reconstructions and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and engages in research on coral reef fisheries, ocean governance, and fisheries policy. He collaborates closely with the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, with the Changing Ocean Research Unit, and with the UBC Faculty of Law.