Congratulations to Vanessa Fladmark and Melanie Ang, who are the recipients of the IOF Student Society Travel Grant 2018 – Summer!
Melanie Ang’s research presents a contribution towards understanding the impacts of climate change on small-scale fisheries compared to large-scale fisheries in Pacific North America, in the context of vulnerability and adaptability. By implementing an interdisciplinary approach, she projects the impacts of climate change on exploited species in the region, and explore vulnerability and adaptive capacity characteristics that could enable these fisheries to adapt to climate-induced changes. Thanks to the IOF student travel grant, Melanie was able share her research at the Effects of Climate Change on World’s Ocean conference in Washington, D.C.
In addition to her thesis work that focuses on juvenile salmon feeding habits across different coastal productivity regimes, Vanessa Fladmark also co-wrote a manuscript with Ocean Leaders graduate students Cassandra Konecny and Santiago De la Puente on shoreline litter data, accepted by Marine Pollution Bulletin. The project began as a requirement for the Ocean Leaders course FISH 507 and through partnerships, the data was provided by the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a volunteer initiative by Ocean Wise and WWF-Canada. In addition to the research article, an interactive, web-based Shiny app was created by the co-authors to display shoreline litter types and volunteer efforts across coastal British Columbia. This freely accessible app is being utilized as an effective way to engage the public on the influences they can have on shorelines, through participating in cleanups and creating changes in their behaviour regarding plastic use. This grant will allow Vanessa to present the work on how to make data more available, improve awareness and marine citizenship in the general population for this crucial issue of marine debris and plastic litter, during the Science Communication session at the PICES conference in Japan this October.
The IOF Student Society would like to thank all applicants for taking the time to apply for the travel grant, and encourage all to apply again in the future.
Tags: awards, IOF Student Society, IOF students