This scientist is taking an international jellyfish tour to explore mucus and medusae

This scientist is taking an international jellyfish tour to explore mucus and medusae

Jessica Schaub. Photo © Vancouver Aquarium

From some of the largest jellyfish in the world in Japan to the tiny venomous Irukandji in Australia, UBC doctoral student Jessica Schaub is about to set off on an international tour of jellyfish.

A doctoral student in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences, Schaub will explore jellyfish blooms, huge groups of the floating ‘medusae’ in Japan, France, Argentina, and Australia, thanks to a Hugh Morris Fellowship. An Indigenous scientist, Schaub hopes her trip will inspire Indigenous youth to consider careers in science.

What’s a ‘medusa’?

Jellyfish actually have two forms. One is the floating, pulsating creature that everyone knows, called a medusa. The other is a tiny polyp that lives attached to the ground. Medusae and polyps have the same DNA, so they’re effectively clones. Large groups of medusae are known as blooms, which occur seasonally along the world’s coastlines. These blooms can cause economic and ecological hardships, including when fishers catch jellyfish instead of fish. Interestingly, polyps determine the success of blooms, such as their size, but research into these tiny creatures is scarce.

During my journey, I will travel to France and Argentina, to learn about polyp research from some of the few existing specialists, while also experiencing some of the impacts of blooms in Japan and Australia. My travels are funded by a Hugh Morris Fellowship, administered by the Kimberley Foundation, which allows Canadian graduate students researching a priority area related to earth sciences to “undertake a program of self-guided travel and experiential learning.”

What are you doing with mucus, tourists, and venomous jellyfish in Australia?

Jessica Schaub. Photo © Vancouver Aquarium

I’ll be observing a project on the Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth, Australia. This reef attracts about 40,000 tourists each year during the whale shark migration, which unfortunately often coincides with the appearance of dangerous Irukandji jellyfish. These jellyfish are tiny and difficult to see, but their sting is very powerful and has been fatal in some cases.

To protect tourists, researchers from the Government of Western Australia and Griffith University’s Sea Jellies Research Lab are working together to develop a type of rapid test using environmental DNA (eDNA) to sample the water prior to sending tourists out for swims. This rapid test would determine if Irukandji jellyfish are present based on the mucus they release into the water that could be detected via DNA. The higher the level of mucus, the more Irukandji are in the water, and the more dangerous it is for tourists to swim.

What do you hope the trip will mean to Indigenous youth?

Indigenous people are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-related fields due to many barriers, both historical and contemporary. For example, Indigenous methodologies are often disregarded as rigorous science, despite offering alternative and often complementary approaches to tackle joint issues. These Indigenous perspectives, like many other perspectives, are very important in STEM since they offer new ways to approach problems.

I think representation is one of the key ways that we can shift the narrative and encourage Indigenous youth to pursue STEM careers, so I try to be open and honest about the positive and negative aspects of my journey as a scientist. I hope that by sharing my story, young people can relate and see themselves as scientists too. This journey will allow me to highlight many of the things I like about science – learning, collaboration, travel, and new experiences – and I hope this will be appealing to those considering a career in STEM.

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IOF professors head to United Nations Ocean Conference

UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) professor and Director, Dr. William Cheung, and University Killam Professor, Dr. Rashid Sumaila, who is also cross-appointed in UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, are off to Lisbon, Portugal shortly for the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC). They bring with them a message for policymakers worldwide: ending overfishing is climate action.

Running from June 27 to July 1, the UNOC brings together Heads of Government and State with leaders from the private sector, the scientific community and other partners to “chart a new pathway that would ensure the protection and conservation of the ocean and its resources.”

Dr. Sumaila and Dr. Cheung have partnered with European NGO Our Fish to join a panel of experts from universities around the world for a science symposium being held in Lisbon on June 26: Fisheries Management as Climate Action.


“This symposium is about how reducing overfishing can also help climate change mitigation,” Dr. Sumaila said. “Why? Because scientists estimate we take out 2.5 times the fishing effort needed to catch fish sustainably. In doing so, we’re truncating the food web and weakening life in the ocean so it is not as resilient when there’s a climate shock. There’s also the fuel used to overfish which releases CO2 unnecessarily; bottom trawling, which releases stored carbon at the bottom of the ocean; and the fact that many elements of marine life actually sequester carbon for us. Ending overfishing is both climate mitigation, and climate adaptation.”

All of the panelists invited to the June 26th symposium contributed studies to a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, which detailed how cutting back our fishing efforts can also help us confront climate change, and they will present these findings at the symposium. Dr. Sumaila’s contribution explored how putting a stop to overfishing would reduce the number of carbon-emitting boats in the water, and keep fisheries sustainable.

“Before now we’ve always been talking about how climate change will impact life in the ocean, and therefore fisheries,” Sumaila said. “However, it’s not unidirectional. Now we’re seeing that our fishing activity can impact climate change. Now that this connection has become clearer, fisheries research can feed into the work done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Dr. Cheung will present his findings on how marine protected areas and good fisheries management can help reduce the impacts of climate change on rebuilding and conserving fish stocks. He hopes that the conference will raise awareness about the role that the oceans play in mitigating climate change, and highlight the dangers of neglecting them in national and international carbon reduction strategies.

“Ultimately our goal is to inform policy decisions,” Dr. Cheung said. “Countries are updating their commitments for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and they need to build policies that end overfishing into their portfolio of climate change solutions. We hope that by having this side event, we can provide further justification of why overfishing needs to be included.”

The IOF and Our Fish have also organized a cocktail reception, a “swim and breakfast” event, and two “breakfast briefings” to take place throughout the week.

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UBC-led team to find out how to feed the world while protecting nature with new grant

An international team led by UBC researchers will study five case studies across five continents to model a range of solutions to an urgent question: how can we feed everyone on Earth, and those to come, sustainably?

The Solving Food-Climate-Biodiversity (FCB) project, led by Dr. William Cheung, professor in UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF), focuses on the Earth’s capacity to sustain life and support human wellbeing, food security, climate mitigation, and safeguarding biodiversity. The project has received $2.5 million in funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council partnership grant today, with a further $2.8 million contributed by partner organizations.

The international project team spanning 10 countries will spend the next six years co-developing solutions with researchers, knowledge-holders and policy-makers to achieve sustainable and desirable futures for Earth’s strained global ecosystems. These ecosystems continue to be vulnerable to increased demands from rising populations and food security, decreased biodiversity and climate change.

Figure. 1. Conceptual diagram illustrating the food-biodiversity-climate nexus on ocean and land: (A) Example of synergistic effects and feedbacks; (B) Examples of trade-offs and antagonistic feedbacks.

“Finding transformative solutions for sustainable food production, climate mitigation and adaptation, marine, freshwater and land-based biodiversity conservation is the ultimate goal of this project,” said Dr. Cheung, Canada Research Chair in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change. “We aim to show policy- and decision-makers that there are viable solutions to these kinds of global problems, that saving our resources, and protecting and feeding people now and in the future, is achievable.”

The five case studies in Canada, China, Costa Rica, Ghana and Nigeria, and the Netherlands are deliberately diverse and include a range of socio-economic and environmental contexts, allowing the team to model solutions in a range of contexts, said Dr. Cheung. “We want to make sure we’re evaluating solutions that are applicable and effective under different circumstances, not just for North America.”

The case studies will focus on a variety of topics, from exploring coastal First Nations’ seafood systems that provide nutritional security and environmental stewardship in Canada, to examining aquaculture innovation in China to increase seafood supply, contribute to carbon offsetting and supporting coastal biodiversity. In Ghana and Nigeria, the focus will be on examining ways to resolve illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in the Gulf of Guinea to ensure marine ecosystems survive under climate change.

“We have gathered partners and collaborators from across the globe, integrating input from Indigenous communities, universities, domestic and international government, and non-government organizations,” said Dr. Cheung. “Integrating their expertise and the results for the case studies, will, we hope, result in an integrated set of biodiversity, food security and climate mitigation solutions that can be implemented world-wide.”

He also noted that the scale and urgency of the challenges this research nexus will address have been featured in recent high-level international and national assessments and reports, including those published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Managing these challenges will require exploring pathways to dealing with the food-climate-biodiversity goals, not on a case-by-case basis, but simultaneously, and with awareness of the complex and diverse social and ecological contexts occurring around the world, particularly for small-scale and Indigenous operations. “Each group brings something to the table that integrates with the others,” says Dr. Cheung. “We’re putting together different puzzle pieces to build something great.”

Gulf of Guinea. Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Dr. Rashid Sumaila, professor in IOF and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, is co-director of the project and will lead the Ghana/Nigeria case study. He said focusing on the Gulf of Guinea and surrounding countries would provide an excellent case study as it is a very active area of fishing by both domestic and international players. “We will be viewing a social-ecological system that will serve as a powerful laboratory for delivering real solutions that will have direct positive impacts on biodiversity as well as the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. We are excited to discover what differences become evident between the case studies, but also the similarities.”

While the project is Herculean in scope, Drs. Cheung and Sumaila are optimistic. “It is exactly the diversity of it that’s key,” says Dr. Sumaila. “We have so many case studies, we have different continents we’re looking at, different issues, and we’re going to learn from a diverse group of people while training new scholars for a sustainable and equitable future. I believe this project is going to succeed in so many different ways.”

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World Oceans Week 2022 – Kasey Stirling

Earth’s oceans are being severely damaged by climate change, pollution, overfishing and other destructive, human-caused shock waves.

To restore the oceans, and prevent their health from deteriorating further, decision makers and knowledge creators around the world must act together, and quickly—hence the theme of this year’s UN World Oceans Day: “Revitalization: collective action for the oceans.”

We asked IOF researchers how their research contributes to collective action for ocean health, what they have found are the biggest roadblocks to collaboration between groups, and how we can overcome these obstacles.

 

Kasey Stirling

Kasey Stirling, a Nlaka’pamux, Mi’kmaq, and Acadienne researcher, is a master’s student in the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF).

Along with fellow master’s student, Kate Mussett, Stirling works in partnership with the First Nations Fisheries Legacy Fund, a collective of six Lower Fraser First Nations (Katzie, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Tsawwassen), to co-develop a more culturally relevant framework for watershed health assessment.

“I’m working on a genetic survey of single-celled algae called diatoms,” Stirling said. “These diatoms are very beautiful. They look like underwater snowflakes, but they are also linked to the presence of salmon in stream systems, and the amount of salmon in those systems.”

Understanding how diatoms connect to salmon abundance could improve salmon survival odds in an era when climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, and other environmental hazards are collapsing fisheries.

“Getting an idea of what algae are in a stream system at any given time could tell us a lot about the health of that habitat for salmon, especially for salmon spawning,” she said.

Stirling hopes that this work can be used by other First Nations looking to improve stewardship and investigate environmental conditions on their lands.

“The main goal of this project is to co-create with the First Nations Fisheries Legacy Fund a field guide or framework for how we’re working through this process, specifically in the Lower Fraser context, so that other Nations could learn from this and adapt it to their own needs,” she said

It is all part of enhancing Indigenous collective action for the natural environment, she said.

– Footage by Kateri Jones

Although Indigenous Peoples are increasingly working collectively to solve environmental problems that affect Earth’s oceans, challenges remain when it comes to collaborating with the Canadian government.

“There is a long history of bad relations between Canada’s government and Indigenous Nations in all aspects of Indigenous life,” Stirling said.

Canada’s government has a duty to consult with Indigenous Peoples when making decisions that may have consequences for Indigenous rights, including the construction of industry projects, such as oil and gas pipelines, that impact the natural environment. However, these consultations are typically an empty gesture, and the perspectives, experiences and expertise of Indigenous Peoples have been ignored, Stirling said.

She believes that Indigenous communities must be empowered participants who have control over the stewardship of ancestral territory before any true collective action with Canada’s government can happen.

“We have stewarded our lands for thousands of years. We don’t need to be told what to do; we need to be listened to,” she said.

“Something people can do to work more collaboratively with Indigenous Nations is find out what projects are already going on on the territories that you are living on and working on. See if the Nations are looking for help, and work in the ways they ask for, rather than ways you think they might need.”

 

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World Oceans Week 2022 – Dr. Juan José Alava

Earth’s oceans are being severely damaged by climate change, pollution, overfishing and other destructive, human-caused shock waves.

To restore the oceans, and prevent their health from deteriorating further, decision makers and knowledge creators around the world must act together, and quickly—hence the theme of this year’s UN World Oceans Day: “Revitalization: collective action for the oceans.”

We asked IOF researchers how their research contributes to collective action for ocean health, what they have found are the biggest roadblocks to collaboration between groups, and how we can overcome these obstacles.

Dr. Juan José Alava

Dr. Juan José Alava is research faculty member at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) and the principal investigator of the Ocean Pollution Research Unit.

Along with IOF master’s students Karly McMullen and Dana Price, he looks at microplastic pollution in Earth’s oceans, trying to understand how these small (less than 5 millimetres) plastic fragments accumulate and harm marine animals—specifically Galapagos penguins, Galapagos penguin prey, and B.C. sea otters. He also investigates other human-created pollutants, such as persistent organic pollutants and emerging contaminants of concern, affecting B.C.’s iconic orca whales, including endangered southern resident killer whales, and the presence of mercury in Galapagos sea lions and fur seals, and yellowfin tuna around Galapagos waters.

An ongoing project by Dr. Alava and Dr. Marcia Moreno-Báez of Tufts University, as part of the Nippon Foundation Ocean Litter project, aims to map the distribution of the microplastics footprint in every corner of Earth’s oceans, and predict microplastic exposure in coastal communities heavily reliant on seafood and marine resources.

“This map can be used as a tool by researchers around the world to understand the potential exposure risks to these pollutants,” Dr. Alava said.

It also highlights the areas most impacted by micro plastic pollution: the North Atlantic, Central Atlantic, North Pacific, Central Pacific, the Antarctic, and even the Antarctic Peninsula.

Saving the oceans from microplastics and other pollutants starts with individuals’ behaviour, their purchasing habits, and their willingness to divorce from plastics, but needs to be driven by smart leadership and policymaking, Dr. Alava said.

He thinks that the recent UN resolution to begin drafting a globally binding agreement to end plastic pollution is a great first step, but it needs “to be a concerted and proactive effort.”

“Developed nations, which produce most of the plastic, really need to consider actions to help developing nations that are facing plastic pollution that is not really produced in developing countries, but is coming from other parts of the world,” he said.

Any international effort to end plastic pollution must also contend with wealth disparities between nations, according to Dr. Alava. While it would be wise for developed nations to cultivate a “circular economy of plastics,” in which plastic materials get reused and recycled as much as possible to keep them in a “loop” that doesn’t leak into the natural environment, many developing nations do not yet have the infrastructure to create such a system.

“In some developing countries, the reality is that people survive on plastic garbage,” he said. “I am Ecuadorian. In my country, I have seen fathers, sons, daughters, grandpas, grandmas, going to the open dumps and landfills to collect items for recycling, or to be reused and sold in the market.

“New policies to end plastic pollution must prioritize local knowledge and the needs of people living in developing nations.”

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World Oceans Week 2022 – Santiago De la Puente

Earth’s oceans are being severely damaged by climate change, pollution, overfishing and other destructive, human-caused shock waves.

To restore the oceans, and prevent their health from deteriorating further, decision makers and knowledge creators around the world must act together, and quickly—hence the theme of this year’s UN World Oceans Day: “Revitalization: collective action for the oceans.”

We asked IOF researchers how their research contributes to collective action for ocean health, what they have found are the biggest roadblocks to collaboration between groups, and how we can overcome these obstacles.

 

Santiago De la Puente

Santiago De la Puente understands that relationships between different stakeholders in our staggeringly complex global seafood market can be tense.

A PhD candidate in the Global Ocean Modelling Lab at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF), De la Puente follows seafood value chains, tracking fish as they travel from the oceans to final consumers. With his modelling work, he aims to assess the socio-economic trade-offs of alternative management actions in favour of making seafood supply chains as economically efficient, socially just, and environmentally sustainable as possible.

One of De la Puente’s current projects has him detailing the value chain of Norwegian snow crab fisheries. Considered an invasive species in Norway, where king crab is preferred, snow crabs are still very popular throughout the world. Warming ocean temperatures, due to climate change, have brought more snow crab to Norway’s shores, while in countries where snow crab demand is high, stocks are plummeting.

“Climate change is affecting the oceans in many ways, and for some countries, like Norway, this presents as an opportunity, particularly for snow crab fisheries,” De la Puente said. “Norwegians have a chance to become important trade partners for the global snow crab market.”

However, if Norway chooses to export snow crab and not sell the crustaceans to its own market, only a small set of companies will benefit, according to De la Puente.

“If Norway builds an internal demand for snow crab, they could get more jobs and potentially get more income from seafood distribution and retail,” he said.

Global fish markets are as complex as the ocean itself, according to De la Puente. Changes in ocean temperature or to a nation’s political climate can create upheaval in markets across the world. The war between Russia and Ukraine, for example, has left Norway’s snow crab fisheries uncertain whether they can distribute to parts of Asia, and to Russia. The tightly interconnected nature of these markets, and the many different stakeholders involved in selling fish, challenges ocean sustainability efforts.

“Most stakeholders will agree that sustainable fisheries are a desired outcome,” De la Puente said. “But every step we take comes at a cost… for some fishers it might be a reduction in expected catch, for politicians it might mean they are less popular.”

In order for fishers, companies, governments, NGOs, and other interested groups to act collectively for the good of Earth’s oceans, a baseline level of trust needs to be established, De la Puente said. “Most stakeholder groups have a history of being at odds with each other.”

Fishers may be reluctant to share information about their fishing practices with other fishers if it could cost them an advantage in the market. Companies may hesitate to work with NGOs if they believe NGOs are seeking to cut industry profits.

“We need a common language,” De la Puente said. “For example, what matters to us as researchers, versus stakeholder groups, is quite different. A common language can help us all decide collectively what we want so we can move forward. The most important thing is that we approach this with humility. If we assume to know what other stakeholder groups want, we will definitely fail.”

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World Oceans Week 2022 – Dr. Nicola Smith

Earth’s oceans are being severely damaged by climate change, pollution, overfishing and other destructive, human-caused shock waves.

To restore the oceans, and prevent their health from deteriorating further, decision makers and knowledge creators around the world must act together, and quickly—hence the theme of this year’s UN World Oceans Day: “Revitalization: collective action for the oceans.”

We asked IOF researchers how their research contributes to collective action for ocean health, what they have found are the biggest roadblocks to collaboration between groups, and how we can overcome these obstacles.

 

Dr. Nicola Smith

Dr. Nicola Smith, a Liber Ero postdoctoral fellow with the Changing Ocean Research Unit  at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF), has been connecting with diverse groups across Canada for her latest project.

She is working with IOF Director Dr. William Cheung, IOF Professor Dr. Rashid Sumaila, and the Tula Foundation, a charitable organization,  to uncover the true scale of greenhouse gas emissions created by Canada’s ocean industries, and ways to best offset these emissions.

“Although we cover some sectors very well, like marine shipping and offshore oil and gas extraction, other sectors such as fisheries and aquaculture are missing from this puzzle,” Dr. Smith said.

Understanding the size of the problem is the first step in a larger project that will help Canada reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Dr. Smith will work with the Canadian government, academics, NGOs, Indigenous groups and interest groups to outline a series of options that the government can choose from to cut emissions.

These “portfolios” will provide the government with an overview of a variety of net zero strategies, which differ depending on whether the country wants to save money, minimize legal hurdles, or get the job done as quickly as possible, among others.

“Some strategies give us money when we implement them, for instance, marine renewable energies, but other strategies require us to put money in to get to net zero, such as carbon capture and storage,” she said.

One of the most challenging parts of the project will be bringing a diverse group of people with different areas of expertise and different priorities to the table to achieve consensus on how to build the different paths to net zero.

Right now, Dr. Smith is working on a plain language summary document that will help everyone “start on the same page.”

“It’s like creating an alphabet we’ll use to have a common language,” she said.

“This problem is enormous, and it requires all hands on deck to solve it. The great thing about having a collaborative effort is that different groups bring different values and perspectives to the table. We want to make sure the solution reflects the diversity of values and perspectives that make up Canada.”

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World Oceans Week 2022 – Dr. Deng Palomares

Earth’s oceans are being severely damaged by climate change, pollution, overfishing and other destructive, human-caused shock waves.

To restore the oceans, and prevent their health from deteriorating further, decision makers and knowledge creators around the world must act together, and quickly—hence the theme of this year’s UN World Oceans Day: “Revitalization: collective action for the oceans.”

We asked IOF researchers how their research contributes to collective action for ocean health, what they have found are the biggest roadblocks to collaboration between groups, and how we can overcome these obstacles.

 

Dr. Maria Lourdes Palomares (Deng Palomares)

Dr. Maria Lourdes Palomares—who goes by “Deng”— is a senior scientist and project manager with the Sea Around Us initiative at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF).

She works on three massive online databases that contain information about all known fish species in the world (FishBase), all other marine organisms (SeaLifeBase), and all global fisheries catch (Sea Around Us).

These platforms spur collective action for ocean health by making information about fish, marine life and fisheries freely available to anyone with internet access.

“This in part solves the issue of accessibility of scientific results,” Dr. Palomares said. “We’ve also, via social media, built discussion forums into the databases. This encourages users to share knowledge and experience to help us improve these information systems, and maybe even improve management of our marine resources.”

Dr. Palomares grew up in the Philippines during the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos.  She believes oppressive states are a threat to humanity’s efforts to steward natural resources sustainably, and to take collective action.

“Corrupt and oppressive governments whose aim is to enrich themselves, funnel money out of government budgets, away from environmental programs,” she said.

She added that the instability and environment of mistrust inflicted by these governments makes good environmental management impossible.

Another major challenge that prevents collective action both between and within nations is poverty, she said.

“Poverty creates an impenetrable wall to the acquisition of knowledge,” she said. “In the Philippines, where the poorest of the poor live in the coastal areas, it would be difficult to convince people not to go out fishing. This is their source of food, cheap food, and their source of living. They will not understand people asking them to stop, for example, trawl fishing.”

To combat this problem, we must share knowledge about how to keep ecosystems healthy, Palomares said. However, solutions to trawl fishing, overfishing, ocean pollution, and other obstacles won’t come by forcefully managing the resources of developing nations. Instead, they must be rooted in the local knowledge and needs of the people who rely on fish for survival.

“They need to take pride in their own efforts to save their coastal environments.”

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Scientists urge WTO to ban subsidies that promote overfishing

Scientists are calling on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ban subsidies that can cause overfishing at its meeting next week.

The organization’s topmost decision-making body is meeting next week, June 12 to 15, and almost 500 scientists have urged it take steps to protect fish stocks for the future. Dr. Rashid Sumaila (he/him), professor in UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, discusses what subsidies need to go, and how Canada will be affected.

Which subsidies are harmful? What would banning them mean?

Fuel subsidies comprise the largest type of fisheries’ subsidies worldwide, and they indirectly cause overfishing, because when fuel costs are covered, boats go out to fish more than they would otherwise. Other harmful subsidies include those that lower the cost of vessel construction, and the construction of special jetties for fishing fleets.

Banning them would mean WTO member countries would not be allowed to provide these subsidies anymore. We need a global solution because the oceans are interconnected and the global seafood market is highly integrated. Essentially, we have one global ocean since fish do not need visas to cross country’s waters or enter the global seafood trade.

Image by Kmeel Stock from Pixabay


Banning such subsidies would reduce the pressure on fish stocks. We estimate about $44 billion is given to the fisheries sector in subsidies each year by governments around the world, which is about 30 per cent of fisheries’ gross revenues. They can then spend money on increasing activity, e.g., going out to fish with, say, two boats, rather than one.

How can countries support fishers otherwise?

It’s important to note, we really are not interested in taking money out of the fishing community. What we’re concerned about is tax payer money that goes to deplete the fish stocks that the communities depend on. That doesn’t help anyone because while fishers get money in the short term, with depleted or non-existent fish stocks, their livelihood is gone forever – no fish means no fishing.

So we’re talking about redirecting the subsidies. One solution could be to use these subsidies to instead pay fishers to ‘catch plastic’ rather than depleted fish stocks. The fishers have a livelihood, the fish can restore their numbers, and the ocean gets cleaned.

Another option could be to use the subsidies to hire fishers to help with the collection and analysis of fisheries data, as well as monitoring to reduce illegal fishing and improve management.

Basically, let’s think a bit more before we provide subsidies, so that the money works for both people and nature, rather than undermining nature, and in turn, people.

How would Canada be affected?

The Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development has expressed her support for the WTO coming to an agreement on this. In addition, Canada gives relatively fewer capacity-enhancing subsidies than countries and entities such as China, the EU and Japan.

Canada is interested in a blue economy, or developing ocean sustainability and helping people adjust to this, including helping fishers transition to less environmentally damaging economic activities such as whale watching, which is popular in B.C.

As well, Canada has committed to protecting 30 per cent of its marine territory by 2030 and will need resources to do this and to manage these protected areas effectively. Harmful subsidies could be redirected to strengthen ocean resilience for the benefit of both fish and fishers.

This is a tough decision, but it’s a short-term pain for long-term gain. If you look at the Canadian Fisheries Act, its goal is to ensure that our fisheries are here for future generations too, and we have to stop harmful subsidies in order to achieve that.

We can find a way to help the fishers without allowing nature to be destroyed – we surely have the brains and empathy to do so, so let’s get going!

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Interview language(s): English, Hausa, Norwegian (Sumaila)

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PhD student Alexander Duncan appointed to Indigenous Leadership Circle in Research

Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) PhD student, Alexander Duncan, has been appointed to the Indigenous Leadership Circle in Research. This new group will advise the presidents of Canada’s three federal research funding agencies — Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) — and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, on the implementation of a strategic plan to support Indigenous research and research training in Canada.

A member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in southwestern Ontario, Duncan joined the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries at the IOF in 2021. His work focuses on Indigenous fisheries in the Great Lakes, specifically Indigenous and human dimensions of sea lamprey control. He wants to understand Indigenous perspectives on the methods used to control the invasive and parasitic sea lamprey, which cling to fish using their suction-cup mouths, and drain fish blood, on which they feed, with their sharp teeth and spiny tongues.

“My interests align closely with the mandate of the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries: conducting fisheries research with and for Indigenous people,” he said.

The setting new directions to support Indigenous research and research training section in Canada’s 2019-2022 strategic plan outlines a path to increase Indigenous participation and leadership in research, establish clear guidelines for working respectfully with Indigenous communities, enable Indigenous student success, and much more.

Duncan will join an 18-member group of scholars from across Canada whose role will be to monitor progress of the plan’s implementation, look for issues and opportunities, recommend approaches to support the plan’s successful implementation, and provide guidance on matters that could enhance support for Indigenous research and training.

“In the past there have been some initiatives for Indigenous research and scholarship, but they aren’t always led and guided by Indigenous people,” Duncan said. “The plan, and the creation of the Leadership Circle, mark an important shift towards better inclusion.”

Duncan hopes that his background in social sciences and fisheries research will help inform the decision-making processes of the Leadership Circle when they meet for the first time this June. He is one of two students in a group comprised of Indigenous thought leaders and researchers.

“My main priority will be to provide my perspectives and input, and be honest and upfront. I obviously have a vested interest in Indigenous Peoples, and I’d like to advocate for fisheries across Turtle Island; I’m in fisheries, and I think they’re really important,” he said.

“I’m very pleased to be representing not only my nation and the Great Lakes, but also UBC, the IOF and the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries.”

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