PhD dissertation
FISH 699 Credits: 0
Ph.D. candidates would normally register in section 100 (Term 1 & 2).
If you plan to complete your degree during Term 1, register in section 101 (Term 1). You will still have the option of registering in section 102 for Term 2 should it take longer than anticipated.Terms 1, 2 & 3
Masters of Science thesis – 18 credit program
FISH 549B Credits: 18
If you are in the 12-credit thesis program, please sign up for FISH 549A.
If you are in the 18-credit thesis program, please sign up for FISH 549B.
M.Sc. candidates would normally register in section 100 (Term 1, 2 & 3).
If you plan to complete your degree during Term 1, register in section 101 (Term 1). You will still have the option of registering in section 102 for Term 2 should it take longer than anticipated.Terms 1, 2, 3
Masters of Science thesis – 12 credit program
FISH 549A Credits: 12
If you are in the 12-credit thesis program, please sign up for FISH 549A.
If you are in the 18-credit thesis program, please sign up for FISH 549B.
M.Sc. candidates would normally register in section 100 (Term 1 & 2).
If you plan to complete your degree during Term 1, register in section 101 (Term 1). You will still have the option of registering in section 102 for Term 2 should it take longer than anticipated.Terms 1, 2 & 3
Directed Studies in Oceans and Fisheries
FISH 548 Credits: 1-3
This directed studies course is offered mainly to Graduate Students in the Oceans and Fisheries (OCF) Masters and PhD programs. If a graduate student would like to have specialized instruction in a particular topic that is not offered in the UBC calendars, then the graduate student could make a request to their supervisor or some other IOF Faculty member for a FISH 548 directed studies course to be proposed and designed on the desired topic. The course could be library-based, lab-based or fieldwork-based. The instructor would need to provide a proposed course syllabus to one of the IOF graduate advisors for their approval at least one month prior to the term’s start date. The minimum credit is 1 to allow for a topic that could be covered in about two hours of directed study time per week. The maximum is set at 3 to place a reasonable maximum limit on the expected directed study time per week and credit hours attainable from a directed studies.
Any Faculty Member in the IOF could propose and offer FISH 548.
Term 1 & 2
Fisheries Conservation, Governance and Evaluation
FISH 520 Credits: 6
This core OCF graduate course focuses on surveying the literature and conceptual foundations for the ecology, economics, governance, and management of fisheries, common methods of analysis, and developing students’ interdisciplinary problem-solving skills. Particular emphasis is given to reviewing the evolution of aboriginal fisheries, conservation initiatives, fisheries ecosystem models, fisheries economics theory, methods and applications, fisheries stock assessment, human dimensions of conservation, governance, and management of fisheries. This course will provide students with a shared interdisciplinary understanding of the various components that contribute to fisheries conservation, governance and evaluation and skills essential to carrying out some of the most generic types of fisheries data and modeling analyses.
Term 1 & 2
Bayesian Decision Analysis for Fisheries Management
FISH 510 Credits: 3
Exploring the use of Bayesian decision analysis as a quantitative technique with which to inform decision makers about the extent to which alternative decision options may enable them to achieve their objectives, taking into account available information and uncertainty over factors that affect the outcomes of interest. Students will learn about the conceptual framework for Bayesian decision analysis, attitudes to risk and uncertainty, risk averse and other types of utility functions, minimax and maximin regret and other types of decision making criteria, the concept of expected value of perfect information, different approaches to assigning probabilities to alternative hypotheses, including Bayesian statistical methods, different software options for Bayesian decision analysis calculations, approaches to communicating results obtained from Bayesian decision analysis, the roles of decision analysis results in the making of decisions, and the advantages and limitations of Bayesian decision analysis as an approach to facilitate the use of science in resource management and policy decision making.
Not offered 2025/26
Bayesian Methods for Fisheries Stock Assessment
FISH 509 Credits: 3
An introduction to Bayesian data analysis and statistical modeling methods that are commonly utilized in fisheries stock assessment. Methods covered include approaches that have been applied in fisheries stock assessment to formulate priors, grid-based, importance sampling, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods for integration of posterior distributions for fisheries model parameters, introduction to WinBUGS software for fisheries modeling, diagnostics to assess convergence and goodness of fit, methods to compute Bayes’ posteriors (or factors) for alternative fisheries models, fisheries hierarchical models, and Bayesian mark-recapture methods and state-space population dynamics models for fish stock assessment. Minimal entry requirement: first year undergraduate calculus and FISH 504.
Term 1
Fisheries Economics and Management
FISH 508 Credits: 3
The course covers the bioeconomic theory of fisheries, game-theoretic approaches to the management of shared resources, and topical issues in fisheries economics and management. The course begins with a discussion of environmental and natural resource economics and how fisheries economics fits into the general picture. This is followed by a discussion of the theory underlying fisheries economics. Bioeconomic theory of fisheries will be presented using simple models. These models will be used to introduce fundamental economic results, such as the importance of cost relationships and the consequences of open access. Fisheries regulations will be an integral part of the course. Regulatory regimes such as taxes, quotas (including ITQs) and marine protected areas will be discussed.
Not offered 2025/26
A History of Fisheries
FISH 506E Credits: 3
This multi-disciplinary course examines the history of human fishing from ancient times in order to understand its impacts on natural ecosystems, biodiversity and human communities, drawing lessons for sustainability and future development. Focused on the development of fishing technology, the course is illustrated with many examples and case studies world-wide, and includes a historical review of BC fisheries. Some prior knowledge of fisheries and fishing gear (such as covered in FISH 520) will be useful and as part of the study of the origins of fishing technology, students may learn how to make a net (this will depend on help from Joe Bauer).
Not offered 2025/6
Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Fisheries Management – Current Topics in Fisheries
FISH 506F / ANTH 461 Credits: 3
This course will focus on the role of traditional & local ecological knowledge in environmental assessment processes and in the development of resource management plans. Natural resource management approaches have long been critiqued for highlighting bio-economic features over cultural and social aspects of the human/environmental interface. Practitioners have come a long way over the past several decades and are now open to incorporating local systems of knowledge into management plans. The difficulty is how to do this.
Not offered in 2025/26
Economic Foundations of Environmental Policies
FISH 506G / SPPG 544 Credits: 3
Environmental and natural resource economics: externalities, property rights, public goods, market failure, inter-generational trade-offs, and optimal extraction of biological and depletable resources. Environmental regulation, industrial competitiveness, and distribution of income and welfare.
Term 1
Statistics in Ecology and Marine Sciences
FISH 506H / STAT 547N Credits: 1.5
Data in ecology and marine sciences are frequently associated with large challenges. This class will introduce some of the challenges of using statistics to answer questions in ecology and marine sciences and the statistical tools developed to handle them. This course is a statistics class for graduate students in the Department of Statistics (STAT) and the Ocean and Fisheries Graduate program (OCF). This class is intended for students with good statistics background and some familiarity with R. The class is not recommended for students with little experience analyzing data and those with limited R programming skills.
Term 1
Governance and Relationality in Indigenous Fisheries
FISH 506I / EOSC 448 Credits: 3
This course creates an opportunity for network-building and co-learning across the province of so-called British Columbia and beyond. Students can enrol as graduate students (FISH 506i / EOSC 448) and undergraduate or non-degree seeking students, and we welcome registrants from and beyond UBC. Admission to this course is by application (linked here once posted each year), and given our focus and intentions for this course, priority access is given to BC First Nations.
Term 2
Managing nature: the case of fisheries
FISH 506J Credits: 3
Course will be taught online, with part of the audience at UBC and part at Paris-Dauphine. It is projected that available technology will allow 7 sessions to be held in-person at UBC, with the Dauphine audience attending remotely, and 7 sessions to be held in-person at Dauphine, with the UBC audience attending remotely. If technology fails, 12 sessions will be held remotely at both sides, and 2 sessions will be held, in-person and separately, at each site.
Rashid Sumaila and Ivar Ekeland (Dauphine)
Not offered 2025/26
Effective scientific poster communication
FISH 506M Credits: 1
Most scientists, particularly in the early phases of their career, are expected to present the results of their research in the form of a conference poster. Yet unlike oral presentations, students receive little training on this mode of scientific communication. The course material will be conveyed through a series of weekly instructor and student-led seminars that include presentations and group discussion. This course is offered in-person only.
Not offered 2025/26
Quantitative Analysis of Fisheries 2
FISH 505 Credits: 3
This course examines advanced concepts and methods in fish population dynamics and stock assessment, with emphasis on design of harvest policies for sustainable fisheries. Through a mixture of lecture and tutorial sessions, students learn to apply the main methods used today for fisheries assessment, along with pitfalls and examples of where these methods have failed.
Not offered 2025/6
Indigenous Community-Based Researcher Pathway
FISH 506P Credits: 3
The Indigenous Community-Based Researcher Pathway was established by IOF’s Indigenous Initiatives Committee (with unanimous IOF support) in 2023. We created this Pathway to enable graduate students to complete their program requirements at a distance, if desired, in whole or in part, so they may reside in their Indigenous community context(s) during their studies. By creating a flexible learning environment for students, this Pathway supports a range of UBC and IOF institutional and strategic goals, namely UBC’s Indigenous Strategic Plan
Term 1
Fisheries and Population Modelling Methods Using R
FISH 506R Credits: 3
R (R Core Team 2019) is the most commonly used programming language for fisheries and ecological modeling and data analysis. Courses in ecology and statistics have become commonly taught with R as the statistical software of choice. R is used, among other things, for conventional statistical analyses, for plotting purposes, to code up computer simulation models representing fish, invertebrate and mammal population dynamics, and to manage implementations of Bayesian statistical packages such as WinBUGS, JAGS and STAN.
Not offered 2025/26
Community Driven Science: Developing Tools For Partnered Research With A Focus On Indigenous Communities and Aquatic Science
FISH 506Y Credits: 3
This course will provide students and those new to community-driven research–especially in partnership with Indigenous communities–with the knowledge, skills and ethical foundations needed to engage in anti-colonial research. With an emphasis on fisheries and aquatic research, this course challenges traditional academic approaches where students will explore how to collaborate with Indigenous communities to co-create knowledge and engage in research supporting Indigenous sovereignty, knowledge systems and priorities.
Term 2
Quantitative Analysis of Fisheries 1
FISH 504 Credits: 3
This course provides an introduction to the quantitative theories of fishery dynamics, and the use of various types of analytical methods for fishery assessment. Lectures are supplemented with tutorial sessions, mainly using Microsoft Excel, where students first work on set problems in class, followed by extended analyses to consolidate understanding and familiarity with methods of analysis.
Not offered 2025/6
Ecosystem Modeling with Ecopath with Ecosim
FISH 501 Credits: 3
The course is focused on how the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE, www.ecopath.org) modelling framework can be used to address scientific questions related to food web modelling, and notably how to address questions as part of an Ecosystem Based Management process.
Not offered 2025/6
Issues in Fisheries Research: Seminars
FISH 500 Credits: 3
This course consists of weekly IOF seminars on Friday at 11 am, followed by a discussion class later that afternoon. Seminar speakers present the latest research in a wide range of disciplines related to freshwater systems, the oceans, and fisheries.
Terms 1 & 2