William Cheung

Director and Professor Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries Canada Research Chair Tier 2, Ocean Sustainability and Global Change Director and Principal Investigator Changing Ocean Research Unit (CORU) Solving the Sustainability Challenges at the Food-Climate-Biodiversity Nexus (Solving-FCB) Partnership (www.solvingfcb.org) Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists Advisory Board and Scientific Committee Member Sea Around Us, Ocean Decade Regional Collaborative Center for the Northeast Pacific, Pacific Salmon Foundation, Ocean & Climate Platform Editorship Editor-in-chief: Discover Oceans Associate Editor: Global Change Biology Editorial board: Fish and Fisheries, Frontier in Ecology and the Environment, Fisheries Oceanography

Degrees: BSc (Hons); MPhil; PhD

Contact Information

Email: w.cheung@oceans.ubc.ca
Office phone: 604-827-3756
Websites: Changing Ocean Research Unit, Solving FCB

Research Unit

Changing Oceans Research Unit
Solving FCB

Research Interests

Dr. William Cheung is the Principal Investigator of the Changing Ocean Research Unit at UBC. He serves as Director for a 6-year SSHRC Partnership Solving-FCB (Solving the Sustainability Challenges at the Food-Climate-Biodiversity Nexus). His research topics include (1) assessing the responses and vulnerabilities of marine ecosystems, fisheries and dependent human communities to global change, (2) examining trade-offs in managing and conserving living marine resources, (3) aquaculture development in a changing ocean; (4) developing and using scenarios and models to explore solution options and pathways to desirable and sustainable ocean futures. His work addresses policy-relevant research questions, cut across multiple disciplines, from oceanography to ecology, economics and social sciences, and range from local to global scales.

Biography

Dr. William Cheung is a Professor and Director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, the University of British Columbia. He is a Canada Research Chair in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change. He studies the nexus of food-climate-biodiversity in the ocean. He is the Principal Investigator of the Changing Ocean Research Unit at UBC. He serves as Director for a 6-year SSHRC Partnership “Solving the Sustainability Challenges at the Food-Climate-Biodiversity Nexus”. He is an international leader in developing and using scenarios and models to explore solution options and pathways to desirable and sustainable ocean futures. His work addresses policy-relevant research questions and cuts across multiple disciplines, from oceanography to ecology, economics and social sciences. His research ranges from local to global scales.

William has published over 220 peer-reviewed papers and more than 50 book chapters and reports. He is actively involved in international and regional initiatives that bridge science and policy. For instance, he was a Coordinating Lead Author in the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in the Changing Climate and core author of the Synthesis Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment. He has received multiple international and national awards and recognitions, including the Prix d’Excellence Award of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, the E. R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, and named by Reuter as the top 20 world’s most influential climate scientists. William obtained his BSc and M.Phil. from the University of Hong Kong and completed his PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies at the University of British Columbia.

William obtained his BSc in Biology and M.Phil. from the University of Hong Kong. He worked for WWF Hong Kong for two years, after which he completed his PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies at UBC. From 2009 to 2011, he was Lecturer in Marine Ecosystem Services in the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.

Teaching

• EOSC 478 – Introduction to Fisheries Science
• FISH 520 – Fisheries Conservation, Governance, and Evaluation

Publications

Google Scholar

Related stories:

Climate change will have an adverse impact on trophic amplification in marine food webs

Climate-driven changes in ocean environmental conditions — ocean warming, deoxygenation and acidification — are projected to affect the physiological functions of marine organisms, their geographic distributions, biological life cycles and total biomass.

Fish buffered from recent marine heatwaves, showing there’s still time to act on climate change

Fish were surprisingly resilient to marine heatwaves before 2019, highlighting the need to keep seas from warming further, according to new research.

European fisheries under threat, climate change may impact on future catch

Without rapid adaptation or aggressive mitigation tactics, climate change is projected to induce profound negative consequences on future fisheries production in Europe.

Op-ed: To Prove its Climate and Biodiversity Ambitions the EU Must Protect the Ocean’s Carbon Engineers

An op-ed article by Drs. William Cheung and Rashid Sumaila regarding the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, that is currently taking place opened in Montreal.

Kx Spotlight – Collaboration, the key to fighting climate change

With partnerships spanning across disciplines, sectors and borders, and with academics and non-academics (including Indigenous communities, NGOs, policy makers, businesses and media) collaboration is at the centre of their work.

New Working Paper: A rich analysis of the economic, social and environmental effects of harmful fisheries at the ecosystem level

The effects of harmful fisheries subsidies in three marine ecosystems, chosen for their importance in terms of food security, size and diversity; and three different management scenarios are examined.

IOF goes to Ottawa

Drs. William Cheung, Daniel Pauly, Andrea Reid, and Rashid Sumaila attended the Oceana Canada’s Science Symposium in Ottawa

Global fish stocks can’t rebuild if nothing done to halt climate change and overfishing, new study suggests

“We are at a turning point. What we need is a coordinated global effort to develop practical and equitable marine conservation measures to support effective biomass rebuilding under climate change,” said Dr. William Cheung

BC is facing a steep decline in sockeye salmon

The sockeye population has been in decline for a century - since 1913, returns in the Skeena River have dropped by 75% - and while there are many factors at play, says Dr. William Cheung, “climate change is definitely one of them.”

5 things you can do to help BC’s marine ecosystems

In the face of declining fish stocks like sockeye salmon, marine heatwaves and massive coastal die-offs, it can sometimes feel as though protecting our ocean ecosystems is a hopeless task. But there are things we can do.