Courses

  • 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.

    Sections (3)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
    100 Thesis 1-2
    101 Thesis 1
    102 Thesis 2
  • 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).
    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.

    Sections (3)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
    100 Thesis 1-2
    101 Thesis 1
    102 Thesis 2
  • 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.

    Sections (3)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
    100 Thesis 1-2
    101 Thesis 1
    102 Thesis 2
  • 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.

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Murdoch McAllister

    Sections (1)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Murdoch McAllister
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Murdoch McAllister

    Section (2)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Rashid Sumaila
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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).

    Tony Pitcher
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Charles Menzies
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Rashid Sumaila

    Sections (1)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Marie Auger-Méthé
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • Co-Creating Aquatic Science

    FISH 506I Credits: 3

    This course, co-created with members of the Haida Nation, will train and empower the next generation of researchers seeking to co-create science for the betterment of aquatic systems. Co-Creating Aquatic Science is an interdisciplinary, multi-generational, and profoundly relational course. This course is presented ONLINE, with an in-person gathering. Enrolment in this course is selective, and class size is small.

    Andrea Reid

    Section (2)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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)

    Section (2)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    David Rosen

    Sections (1)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Murdoch McAllister
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Murdoch McAllister
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    Murdoch McAllister

    Sections (1)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
    001 Lecture 1 Murdoch McAllister
  • 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.

    Villy Christensen
    Not offered in 2023/24

    Sections (0)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors
  • 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.

    David Rosen | Rashid Sumaila

    Sections (1&2)

    Section Activity Term Days Times Instructors