The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) has awarded the 2017 Sir John William Dawson Medal to UBC fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly.
Dr. Daniel Pauly
Dr. Pauly is a leader in fisheries science and biodiversity research, whose contributions have created an extensive knowledge infrastructure that fishery scientists and experts working on aquatic biodiversity use every day in their work. He is a University Killam Professor – UBC’s highest honour – in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Project, a large research project devoted to identifying and quantifying global fisheries trends.
Pauly is also co-founder of FishBase.org, the online encyclopedia of more than 30,000 fish species, and played a foundational role in the ecosystem modelling approach Ecopath, which has evolved into the world’s most widely used ecosystem modeling approach. Dr. Pauly’s work presents novel concepts for thinking about marine conservation issues (e.g., ‘fishing down food webs’, ‘shifting baselines’, ‘Malthusian overfishing’), new methods and/or software for estimating vital statistics of exploited populations (e.g., the growth and natural mortality of fishes), or consists of work intensive global assessments of major impacts on marine life (e.g., the fraction of primary production of the global ocean required by fisheries, the subsidies they receive from governments, the impact of Chinese fisheries on global fisheries statistics, or the real fisheries catch of the world, which is far higher that the catch officially reported).
Founded in 1882, the RSC is Canada’s oldest and most prestigious scholarly society, whose primary objective is to promote learning and research in the arts and sciences. The Sir John William Dawson Medal, created to honour the RSC’s first president (1882-1883). Sir John William Dawson was the foremost Canadian promoter of learning in his day, and this medal is awarded biannually to a scholar who makes important and sustained contributions to interdisciplinary research.
This year’s RSC award winners will be celebrated during the Induction and Awards Ceremony on Friday, November 24, 2017 at the Fairmont Winnipeg Hotel, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Tags: Awards, Daniel Pauly, Faculty, Sea Around Us