Dr. Marie Auger-Méthé. Photo credit: RSC
Dr. Auger-Méthé is an Associate Professor, and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Statistical Ecology, jointly appointed in the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) and Department of Statistics. She is a global leader in the development of novel statistical methods that advance the understanding of statistical animal ecology, and allow for the formulation of effective management and conservation policies. These methods provide unique insights into the ecology, movement, health, and behaviour of animals of ecological, economic, and cultural significance.
The Killam Accelerator Research Fellowships (KARF) promote research excellence and support early-career scholars by providing time and resources for them to focus on their research, to enable them to have a significant impact in their field of scholarship, and to launch them into the next stage of their career.
Dr. Auger-Méthé’s KARF project will enable her to create tools that recovery teams can use to identify Critical Habitats quickly and accurately, facilitating the protection of such habitats via governmental policies (e.g., recovery strategies and marine protected areas). She will also create an open-access repository of Critical Habitat information that can be used by NGOs, First Nations, and other groups when advocating for the protection of imperilled species. Such work is urgently needed to address biodiversity loss and generate systematic ways of meeting Canada’s conservation goals. To demonstrate the usefulness of these tools, she will apply them to marine mammals and seabirds data in areas with increasing shipping and energy developments.
Congratulations, Dr. Auger-Méthé!
Oxygen is invisible, but it quietly decides where marine life can live, how it behaves, and how productive ecosystems can be. In a recent study, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries researchers Dr. Hongsik Kim and Dr. Rashid Sumaila argue that ocean deoxygenation is not only a physical, chemical, and biological crisis. It is also a socio-economic one, because the impacts do not stop underwater. They travel into fisheries, food security, and livelihoods.
One of those threats has a deceptively gentle name: thiamine deficiency complex. Thiamine is vitamin B1, a nutrient essential to fish health. Salmon build thiamine stores at sea through what they eat. Those stores help adults endure migration and are passed from mothers into eggs, supporting fry in the earliest, most fragile stage of life. When thiamine in eggs drops too low, survival can collapse. In severe cases, fry mortality can exceed 90%. As the authors put it, “Low levels can lead to high incidence of fry mortality (> 90%).” The scary part is that the problem can be hidden: adult returns may look normal, while the next generation quietly fails.
For the IOF, that impact can start in unexpected places, including deep water. Salome Buglass is about to defend her PhD thesis, focused on characterizing a novel kelp forest in the Galápagos and assessing its vulnerability and resilience in the face of climate change. This is a major milestone. At the heart of her research is a gap she says matters: deep-water mesophotic tropical kelp ecosystems are largely understudied, yet they may play an important role in climate resilience as deep-water thermal refugia. Her work also emphasizes accessibility. By developing low-cost methods to study these systems, she aims to support scientists, conservation practitioners, and policymakers working to protect marine ecosystems in a changing climate. One achievement she is especially proud of is uncovering the presence of a novel mesophotic kelp forest in the Galápagos Archipelago, a discovery that expands how we understand where kelp ecosystems can exist and what they might mean for resilience.
The science undertaken by women is aimed directly at changing how the ocean is used and protected. Dr. Amanda Vincent, Professor and Director of Project Seahorse, says her personal passion right now is to end bottom trawling in most of the ocean through a combination of science, management, policy, and communication initiatives. Her team’s work lies in seahorse science, marine protected areas, non-selective fisheries and wildlife trade, blending research and action to effect change at local, national, and global scales. The problem she points to is urgent and wide-reaching: bottom trawling is highly destructive and non-selective, creating ecological, economic, and social problems. For her, the goal is transition, moving toward less damaging and more sustainable gear that can reconcile fisheries and conservation while bringing socioeconomic benefits and reducing pressure on ecosystems.
STEM also includes scholarship that bridges disciplines and insists that fisheries are never only about fish. Dr. Dianne Newell, Professor Emerita in the Department of History and IOF and Interim Director of the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, describes current work that spans species, ecosystems, and the long impacts of colonialism. She is about to submit a paper with Dr. Daniel Pauly on white sturgeon in British Columbia, their life history and the history of sturgeon fisheries. She is also a co-author on a paper examining colonialism and salmon in the lower Fraser River, and she has co-authored a review focused on the ecological importance of the decline in kelp forests, offering a framework on the value of Macrocystis kelp forests globally. Across these projects, she emphasizes the deep value of fish and aquatic plant species for Indigenous communities, including nutritional, economic, social, cultural, spiritual, and ceremonial meaning, and she notes how communities have had little or no access to some of these species for more than a century while the species themselves have declined. She also points out the scale of risk, noting that sturgeon as a family are among the most endangered vertebrates globally in the 2020s.
That same commitment to justice-oriented work is central to Dr. Sara E. Cannon, Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow at CIF. She works in partnership with First Nations to support just and effective aquatic governance. Her current research focuses on Pacific salmon and the cumulative impacts of industrial fisheries on Indigenous rights, access, and stewardship responsibilities. Sara is leading a project titled “Toward social justice and sustainability in Canadian salmon fisheries: industrial transboundary fisheries and Indigenous rights,” examining how marine mixed-stock salmon fisheries intercept salmon before they return to Indigenous territories, and what that means for Indigenous fishing rights, food security, and cultural continuity. She explains the core concern in simple terms: many First Nations fisheries operate in rivers or near river mouths, catching salmon when they return home to spawn, and First Nations have long raised concerns that industrial mixed-stock fisheries at sea undermine constitutionally protected rights by intercepting salmon before they return. Her work aims to address an evidence gap by collating interception data and combining it with First Nations perspectives, with research designed to benefit Indigenous communities first and foremost, while also informing policy, conservation, and cross-border governance. She notes that this work may inform upcoming renegotiations of the Pacific Salmon Treaty set to be renewed in 2028.
