STUDENT PROFILE: Meaghan Efford

STUDENT PROFILE: Meaghan Efford


Meaghan Efford is a second-year PhD student with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). Many students study zoology or ecology before coming to the IOF, but Meaghan’s background is in archaeology. She’s been able to put her unique skillset to use in her research with IOF professor Villy Christensen and his team as they work with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to create a model of what the Burrard Inlet’s aquatic ecosystems would have looked like prior to contact with European settlers.

How did you come to the IOF?

I grew up learning stories about people who worked at the IOF from my grandfather, who worked in the old Department of Fisheries. I didn’t think I would apply for an ecology PhD. I was just curious. They had posted a position on Tsleil-Waututh website, and the IOF opportunity page, which got a lot of applications quickly. No one, including myself, expected an archaeologist to get into an ecology PhD program.

I emailed Villy and asked to talk about the position, saying that I would be visiting Vancouver and what days I would be able to visit UBC. He suggested I attend the Friday public seminar, and we could chat afterwards. This got my foot in the door, and I got to learn about the position, see what IOF was like from the inside, and hear from Villy’s students what it was like in the Global Oceans Modeling Lab.

What has been your biggest learning experience since joining the IOF?

Learning how to model was a big learning curve for me. I wasn’t used to memorizing mathematical formulas and it was a challenge for someone with no coding background. It’s a very different way of thinking, but I enjoyed it. Learning to work with Ecopath (ecosystem modelling software) was very challenging and slowed my work down a bit. But no one made me feel bad about it; it was just a challenge – and I had a lot of support from teaching assistants and mentors.

What has surprised you most about the IOF?

I was expecting to come in and be the odd one out, and feel really dumb, and not remember any of my biology from high school and early undergrad. But for me, the IOF has been incredibly supportive and encouraging. The people, the students themselves, have incredibly diverse backgrounds. Not everyone has the same master’s, or undergrad or life journey. The graduate students each bring their own background, skills, and interests, and this is what makes IOF special.
 
Related article: Mapping the evolution of coastal waters in Metro Vancouver: The Burrard Inlet
 
 
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Salmon diet database gives researchers a new “window into the lives of salmon”

By Riley Tjosvold

Sockeye salmon. / License: CC0 Public Domain

Scientists investigating North Pacific salmon have a new tool at their disposal in the form of an open-access salmon diet database, thanks to the work of Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) researchers Caroline Graham, Brian Hunt and Evgeny Pakhomov.

Developed as part of Project Salmon Resilience, a larger undertaking that aims to explore the impacts of fisheries and climate change on salmon populations, this database will fill gaps in scientists’ understanding of the late marine phase of the salmon life cycle, which is challenging to study at a large scale because of the long distances salmon swim from shore when they leave rivers and streams and enter the ocean.

“The diet database gives us a window into the lives of these salmon as they travel thousands of kilometres and experience different ecosystems and conditions,” said Caroline Graham, a graduate of the IOF’s Master of Science program who built the database as part of her Master’s thesis. “It’s about fitting the puzzle pieces together to see what conditions these fish face in the open ocean, and answering questions like: what food is available for them? is there competition for this food? how does this relate to environmental variability and salmon returns?”

Data for the database came from published, peer-reviewed studies and “grey” (non-peer reviewed) literature from countries across the North Pacific. Graham spent months combing through papers, extracting the data from them, and then translating the data into a standardized format that could be used to draw inferences about salmon, as well as be replicated for use in diet data collection for other fish species. To gather some data from places, such as Russia, the team had to negotiate with overseas agencies and hire translators to make sense of fish research and documentation. The work has already paid off by giving Graham some insights into salmon behaviour.

“What we’re seeing is that different species of salmon have different dietary habits. These differences tell us a lot about not only the ocean conditions but also competitive interactions between species of salmon, and how this plays out on a spatial scale,” Graham said.

Ultimately, the creators of the database hope that researchers collecting diet data on salmon in the North Pacific will add their findings to it, and that researchers studying Pacific salmon and North Pacific ecosystems more generally can use it in their work.

“One of the objectives for this project was to help bring the community together and hopefully inspire collating more data into this database,” said Brian Hunt, assistant professor and UBC Hakai professor of oceanography at the IOF who worked on the project.

He added: “There are a lot of other species of fish out there. We’d like to expand this database to more species and liberate diet data that are lurking in the literature or with agencies to make it available to the community. Everyone talks about ecosystem-based management, and to do that you really need to understand the interactions between animals. Most of that happens through the food web, so we need to provide access to information. Hopefully this is a small step in that direction.”

The number of samples for each type of salmon data reported between 1950–2011.

The spatial distribution of  salmon diet samples across the North Pacific Ocean.

Graham, C., Pakhomov, E.A. & Hunt, B.P.V. A salmon diet database for the North Pacific Ocean. Sci Data 7, 332 (2020).

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What’s Killing Killer Whales?

Orca report covering a decade of necropsies identifies threats

Southern resident killer whale J50 follows her mother, J16, in the Salish Sea in August 2018. (Photo: Katy Foster/NOAA Fisheries)

Pathology reports on more than 50 killer whales stranded over nearly a decade in the northeast Pacific and Hawaii show that orcas face a variety of mortal threats—many stemming from human interactions.

A study analyzing the reports was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. The study findings indicate that understanding and being aware of each threat is critical for managing and conserving killer whale populations. It also presents a baseline understanding of orca health.

The study was conducted by a team of marine mammal and orca specialists led by the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and coordinated through the SeaDoc Society, a Washington-based program of the University of California, Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine. The lead author, Dr Stephen Raverty, and coauthor, Dr John Ford, are adjunct professors at the University of British Columbia Institute of Oceans and Fisheries and Department of Zoology.

The whales include those from healthy populations as well as endangered species, such as the southern resident whales regularly sighted off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

“Half of the southern killer whale deaths identified in this study were caused by human interactions.”

Of 52 whales stranded between 2004 and 2013, causes of death were determined for 42 percent. For example, one calf died from sepsis following a halibut hook injury. Another starved from a congenital facial deformity. Two whales died from the blunt force trauma of vessel strikes. Additional causes of death include infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies.

‘We can do better’

Despite there being no singular common cause of death, the study found a common theme: Human-caused deaths occurred in every age class — from juveniles to subadults and adults.

“In British Columbia, we lost nine southern resident killer whales: 2 adults, 2 subadults and 1 calf died from trauma; one was a confirmed propeller strike, with one adult and two subadults from suspected ship strikes,” said lead author Stephen Raverty, a veterinarian pathologist with the BC Ministry of Agriculture and adjunct professor at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “One of these iconic species passed away from an infection secondary to satellite tagging. Another death was due to natural causes and the other two undetermined. Half of the southern killer whale deaths identified in this study were caused by human interactions.”

The 18-year-old male southern resident killer whale, J34, stranded near Sechelt, British Columbia on December 21, 2016. Postmortem examination suggested he died from trauma consistent with vessel strike. (Photo: Paul Cottrell, Fisheries and Oceans Canada)

“Nobody likes to think we’re directly harming animals,” said co-author and SeaDoc Society Director Joe Gaydos, a wildlife veterinarian with the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “But it’s important to realize that we’re not just indirectly hurting them from things like lack of salmon, vessel disturbance or legacy toxins. It’s also vessel strikes and fish hooks. That humans are directly killing killer whales across all age classes is significant; it says we can do a better job.”

In 2004, Raverty and Gaydos co-developed a standardized killer whale necropsy protocol. Revised in 2014 with help from Judy St. Leger, a pathologist working for SeaWorld, this guide helped improve examinations of deceased whales.

“The results from systematic necropsies of dead killer whales in this review is unique and will establish critical baseline information to assess future mitigation efforts,” Raverty said. “This work contributes to a better understanding of the impacts that ongoing human activities and environmental events have on killer whales.”

The authors acknowledge the report is an incomplete picture of orca health and mortality. Necropsies can only be performed on whales found in an adequate state to receive them, and even then, the cause of death cannot always be determined. But the report offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the multitude of human and environmental threats affecting killer whales and can help inform strategies to better protect them.

Background

“Pathology findings and correlation with body condition index in stranded killer whales (Orcinus orca) in the northeastern Pacific and Hawaii from 2004 to 2013”, was published in PLOS ONE.

Additional coauthors include scientists from a wide range of institutions including Cornell University, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Alaska Veterinary Pathology Services, Marine Mammal Pathology Service in Maryland, UC Davis One Health Institute, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Cascadia Research Collective, University of Illinois-Brookfield, Portland State University, and Oregon State University.

Funding was provided by NOAA Fisheries and multiple grants from the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program. Additional support came from Fisheries and Oceans, Canada; Vancouver Aquarium Research Program; SeaDoc Society; SeaWorld; Animal Health Center of the BC Ministry of Agriculture; Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife; and numerous First Nations, Alaska Native, and Inuit communities.

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FCRR: Ecosystem modelling to support fisheries management efforts in the Nyali-Mombasa area, coastal Kenya


Anthropogenic and ecological impacts affect not only the environment, but also the livelihoods of the fishers and communities reliant on them. It is, therefore, crucial to study the entire chain of well-being for an ecosystem, from changing environmental conditions, to the impacts of humans and social processes, to the effect of high-level policies and ecosystem services. As part of the Sustainable Poverty Alleviation from Costal Ecosystem Services project (SPACES), this research addresses the important question: how can we best develop sustainable, effective fisheries decisions while preserving the livelihoods of fishers and their dependents?

This volume investigates the consequences from the effective ban of different fishing gears at Nyali-Mombasa, a site on the Kenyan coast. Using ecosystem modelling, it explores different scenarios for evaluating high-level impacts of various intervention or management decisions, as well as the resulting socio-economic consequences on relevant communities. The work has mapped various aspects of the Nyali-Mombasa ecosystem through the creation of a food web model, reproducing and quantifying main energy flows, and holistically investigating dominant food-web dynamics, and the role of fisheries on the system. With the exception of a simple Maputo Bay model (Silva et al. 1993), this research is the first to develop an Ecopath model for a coastal area in East Africa.

Specifically, the work described herein is intended as a preliminary step towards the estimation of the broad community, ecological, and economic effects of anthropogenic and ecological impacts on Kenyan coral reef ecosystems. Specifically, we sought to investigate the ramifications of the effective ban of different fishing gears at two specific locations along the coast of Kenya: Nyali-Mombasa (described here) and Vanga-Shimoni (described in a separate report). This initial step consists of the construction of a trophodynamic ecosystem model (using the freely available software Ecopath with Ecosim www.ecopath.org) for the locations of interest. Next steps will include simulations which might inform fisheries management decisions, as well as the identification of gaps in the data, and guidance for future research programmes.

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China’s policy efforts to limit bottom trawling are not working

by Riley Tjosvold

A recently published paper by researchers at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) tracked the changes in China’s bottom trawl fishing policies from the 1950s to today.

By analyzing policy changes over time, the researchers were able to highlight the difficulties of managing the bottom trawling industry in China, a country that operates one of the world’s largest networks of bottom trawling fisheries both in its own waters and off foreign coasts in Africa, Asia and Oceania.

The Effect of Trawling the Seafloor for Groundfish. (A) The coral community and seabed on an untrawled seamount. (B) The exposed bedrock of a trawled seamount. Both are 1,000–2,000 meters (1094–2188 yards) below the surface. (Photo by CSIRO Marine Research.)

Bottom trawling vessels deplete fish stocks and damage marine habitats when they drag fishing nets across the sea floor, disrupting the ecosystems in the sediment there and polluting ocean water.

“China claims to lead sustainable fisheries development. Chinese leaders really want to make change so my intention with this paper is: if you want to make a change, you need to know about your history. What have you done over the past seven decades?” said Xiong Zhang, a postdoctoral research fellow with the IOF who led the study.

Since the 1970s, China has gradually implemented more sustainability-minded fisheries policies that, in theory, limit the amount of bottom trawling that can happen on China’s coast and elsewhere. However, the researchers found that these policy measures have not been effective at curtailing the harmful industry as compliance to them is likely low and China lacks a robust system of data collection for fisheries.

“There’s a growing demand for fish and for fishmeal to feed the agriculture. So, there is a strong incentive to still invest in bottom trawling. You cannot just stop bottom trawling entirely by ignoring the fact that the industry has incentive to grow,” Xiong said.

The paper also outlined steps that China can take to reduce its ecological footprint.

“One of my suggestions, or insights drawn from the history is that you have to get the attention of the general public, of the consumers, because they can drive change in the industry. They can motivate some of the top leaders to make change, to enforce the laws and policies. That’s a hope, that China may eventually move forward to sustainability,” Xiong said.

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SPOTLIGHT: Marine Mammal Energetics and Nutrition Lab carries on with research despite COVID-19 setbacks

by Riley Tjsosvold

Researchers with the Marine Mammal Energetics and Nutrition (MMEAN) lab are looking forward to continuing their work with marine mammals at the Vancouver Aquarium, even though access to lab facilities and animals in the aquarium’s care has been limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite these setbacks, members of the MMEAN lab team produced two recent publications that appeared in The Canadian Journal of Zoology and Marine Mammal Science.

Northern fur seals

For one of the studies, MMEAN researchers fed northern fur seals various diets made up of different prey species. By collecting and analyzing scat samples, they discovered that higher-fat diets helped northern fur seals retain fat without dramatically decreasing their ability to digest proteins.

The study’s findings have implications for northern fur seal survival rates. Individuals within this species tend to specialize in their diets, with some foraging on food that is more fat-heavy and thus more beneficial to maintaining their health, while others feed on less ideal types of fish.

“If they eat food item A, then they have to eat 7 per cent more than if they’re eating food item B. That may not make a difference for most of the population, but when times get tough, especially for the animals in the population that are barely making it, that might make a huge difference in survival at the population level,” said David Rosen, an assistant professor at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) and principal investigator of the MMEAN lab.

Rosen also led another recently published study on two juvenile walruses sent to the Vancouver Aquarium from Quebec. Rosen measured the resting metabolic rate (the rate at which an animal burns calories when not moving) and underwater swimming metabolism of the two Walruses. To get these measurements, Rosen and the Vancouver Aquarium training staff spent days coaxing the walruses to swim and then rest inside a chamber that measured the animals’ oxygen consumption. One surprising discovery: the young walruses had resting metabolic rates closer to those seen in adult marine mammals – an indication that walruses expend less energy when resting than researchers might expect.

Dr. David Rosen

However, the study also revealed something potentially grimmer:

“The resting metabolic rate doesn’t take up too much energy. However, that is vastly overshadowed by how much energy they expend swimming,” Rosen said.

Walruses typically stay near their food sources — places like clam beds, for example. However, the ice that they rest on when they reach these food sources is melting, meaning that they are having to travel greater distances to eat.

“They still have to go to those foraging beds and they still have to haul out on that ice. So, it becomes further and further away that they have to do this. There’s no real way to offset that cost. It’s kind of a vicious circle, because they need to swim further to get that food, but they also need more of that food because they’re swimming further,” Rosen said.

Staying busy outside the lab

Rhea Storlund, a PhD student working in the MMEAN lab, has been away from the Vancouver Aquarium since March when COVID-19 caused research to shut down.

However, distance from the aquarium gave Storlund time to collaborate with a group of undergraduate engineering students to begin building an “inflation testing rig.” The device mimics the flow of blood through the heart and circulatory system of marine mammals, allowing Storlund to see up close the unique characteristics of the organ as it beats and pulses. This project has been temporarily put on hold.

When she returns to the aquarium, Storlund hopes to test whether sea lions can consciously control their heart rates when they spend long periods of time underwater. She will use an echocardiogram (a device that produces an image of the heart using sound waves) to measure the sea lions’ heart rates while they do “trick dives” – a dive where the trainer prompts the sea lion to stay underwater longer than it expects before the trainer calls it back to the surface.

The research is important in helping to understand how well marine mammals can survive in changing habitats.

“If these animals are limited by how low their heart-rate can go, that affects how long they can stay underwater, which in turn has effects on what they can do in the wild, and where they can forage,” Storlund said.

On the horizon

With COVID-19 restrictions making travel to locations like Alaska more difficult, Rosen said that he plans to expand local field work.

“Vancouver is a really interesting place because we love our nature, but we also love our development, so we’re getting a couple studies off the ground looking at what that urbanization means to our local marine mammal populations,” Rosen said.

Additionally, he hopes to explore surprising marine mammal behaviours that researchers have been observing in the wild near Vancouver, like the re-emergence of certain dolphin populations and transient killer whales entering Vancouver waterways.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has created limitations for scientists doing research in every field, Rosen remains optimistic:

“It just means we have to be creative to keep research going.”

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Dr. William Cheung awarded E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship

Dr. William Cheung, professor in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, has been awarded a E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship.

E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships are awarded annually by The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), to recognize early-stage academic researchers and to support them to enhance their research capacity. Ultimately, the fellowship is to assist these researchers as they become leaders in their field and inspire others.

Dr Cheung is a Professor with UBC’s Changing Ocean Research Unit, Director (Science) of the NF-UBC Nereus Program and Canada Research Chair in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change (Tier 2). His main research studies the risks and impacts of fishing and climate change on marine ecosystems and their goods and services, and examine potential solutions to support ocean sustainability that reconcile the interactions between these impacts.

“When I was a student in Hong Kong, I dreamed about becoming a marine scientist and making discoveries that could contribute to a better future for our world’s ocean. It is a remarkable journey to realize this now,” said Dr. Cheung. “This award will help expand my works and their impacts, as well as inspire others to pursue their career in science and to find solutions that address the urgent problems of climate change and other threats to our ocean.”

Internationally renowned, Dr. Cheung is highly effective in helping local and international communities understand how their actions are affecting the oceans, and informing policy and practice changes to ensure the sustainability of living marine resources. He was taking lead authorship role in various high-level international environmental science-policy assessments including those for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and Global Biodiversity Outlook. He also serves as associated editor for Global Change Biology and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, member of the editorial board of Fish and Fisheries and Fisheries Oceanography, and as scientific advisors in a number of international and local organizations including the IUCN, Ocean and Climate Platform and Ocean Wise.

By receiving this award, Dr. Cheung will undertake a research project entitled, “Boosting resilience of marine ecosystems to climate change challenges.” The project will develop knowledge to identify general principles for designing climate adaptation intervention through marine protected areas, fisheries and conservation management to reduce climate-risks in the ocean. It will develop new data-infrastructure and innovative coupled human-natural system modelling to explore effective ways to facilitate climate adaptation for marine social-ecological systems. Dr. Cheung hopes that the outcomes will improve our understanding of the effectiveness of interventions to boost adaptation of marine systems and provide critical knowledge for policy discussion on ocean-based climate solutions in Canada and elsewhere.

“With climate change already impacting our ocean and the dependent human communities, everything from our seafood choices to policies on protected areas need to adapt to get us through these climate impacts before we successfully mitigate greenhouse gases emissions,” said Dr. Cheung. “This award will help me and my research team discover ways that we can do climate adaptation effectively in the ocean.”

UBC announcement
NSERC release

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Q & A: The EU needs to end its provision of harmful fisheries subsidies

by Riley Tjosvold

 
The European Union is re-evaluating where it allocates subsidies that go to fisheries and fishers. These changes will come at a time when fish populations globally are expected to shrink and when developing a robust sustainability plan to grow fish stocks is essential.

However, some researchers fear that the EU, despite its best efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, will backslide and provide subsidies that encourage overfishing.

A recently published paper in the ICES Journal of Marine Science tracked the evolution of fisheries subsidies in the EU over the past 20 years. The authors argued that although the EU has increased its provision of beneficial subsidies, it still needs to cull a great number of harmful ones.

Daniel Skerrit

We talked to Daniel Skerritt, one of the authors of the retrospective and a postdoctoral research fellow with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, about the paper’s findings.

What the EU has done in terms of fisheries subsidies in the past?

Every few years the EU evaluates its funding and financing to establish what it aims to achieve and improve. You get these steps in changes over time. The fundamental aim has always the same, which is to have sustainable fisheries that are economically viable, that support the fishers and provide food for European citizens. They have gradually tried to emphasize ecological and environmental sustainability.

On paper what the EU have done over the past 20 years is great. They’ve been slowly moving towards what you might think is a more sustainable fishing sector. But in reality, every iteration of this funding mechanism has failed to achieve the EU’s objective. The objective is to have fishing that is in line with ecosystem limits, that is sustainable. And that still isn’t the case. There’s been slow progress but they still aren’t achieving what they set out to achieve. That’s what made me want to write the paper.

Why was it important to do this retrospective now?

There’s a lot of talk in the European Parliament and the European Council about trying to bring back fisheries subsides that are demonstrably negative to marine ecosystems and fish stocks.

One of the issues that often arises when I talk about EU fisheries subsidies is that people think you can provide harmful subsidies if your fish stocks are sustainable. And even if that were true, the EU fish stocks still aren’t sustainable. There are still numerous fish stocks that are below this point that everyone seems to have agreed is the level of sustainability.

Freshly caught mackerel in a European market. Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay

What types of fisheries subsidies continue to cause harm to sustainability efforts?

Subsidies to modernize fishing vessels are one example. The objective might be to replace old engines on fishing vessels with newer, more fuel-efficient engines to reduce global warming. Great on paper, but what happens when you fit vessels with these more efficient engines is that they can fish further, and longer, they can fish more for the same fuel price. What you’re actually doing is making a more effective fish-killing machine. The difficulty with fish subsidies is the unintended consequences. The objective may be sustainability but the execution fails.

What recommendations would you make to the EU members as they decide where to allocate subsidies?

Don’t bring back subsidies you already got rid of. Don’t provide support or harmful subsidies to fisheries that are fishing on unsustainable stocks, and third, remove some of the most egregious subsidies — like fuel tax subsidies — and replace them with investment in things like marine protected areas or fisheries management.

What do you want EU citizens and stakeholders in the fisheries sector to take away from this paper?

We still believe that the fishing sector and the fishing community should be supported but we think that there are better ways to do that; ways that have a long-term vision

The problem with harmful fisheries subsidies is that although they might support job security and raise income, they’re really shortsighted. They undermine a renewable resource that is technically owned by everyone. Fishing can’t exist without the fish.

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Management of exploited transboundary fish stocks requires international cooperation

Marine fish species are migratory in nature and not respectful of human-made territorial boundaries, which represents a challenge for fisheries management as policies tend to focus at the national level. With an average catch of 48 million tonnes per year, and USD $77 billion in annual fishing revenue, these species support critical fisheries, and require international cooperation to manage, according to UBC research.

The researchers focused on fish species that cross the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of two or more coastal states which are most often targeted by fisheries operating within those EEZs. They identified over 633 exploited transboundary species worldwide and found that the catch and revenue from these fisheries had been severely underestimated and over-exploited.

“We found that some countries get over 80 per cent of their catch from transboundary species. These are not small numbers or small nations: these catches are specifically important in terms of revenue for Northern America and Eastern Asia,” said Juliano Palacios Abrantes, a doctoral student in UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and lead author on the study. “Fishing nations such as China, the USA, Russia, Peru, and Japan alone are responsible for 41 per cent of the yearly global fisheries revenue from transboundary species.”

“Fisheries that include transboundary fish species, such as anchoveta in Peru’s transboundary area with Chile or pollock in the U.S., Russia and Japan transboundary Alaskan region, catch on average 48 million tonnes per year, or USD $77 billion in annual fishing revenue,” said William Cheung, senior author and professor in in UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “The catch from these fish species are declining at a much higher rate than non-transboundary species.”

Chilean fishing vessels. Photo by Jens Johnsson on Unsplash

There are agreements between countries in many of these EEZs. Peru and Chile recently signed an agreement towards standardizing stock assessments and management of the southern anchoveta stock. However, transboundary fisheries have led to some notorious fisheries-related conflicts, including those between those Canada, the USA, Russia, and the European Union. The EU, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark’s Faroe Islands continue to be at odds over the allowable catch sizes for Atlantic mackerel, a transboundary fish species that has changed its distribution patterns due to climate change.

“Climate change is going to continue changing the distribution of fish stocks among countries, with some new transboundary species emerging and some disappearing,” said Palacios Abrantes. “This can only lead to more difficulties if nations are not able to adapt and manage fisheries through effective international cooperation.”

“Collaborations are going to be needed to maximize long‑term ecological, social, and economic benefits of shared marine species, particularly as stocks decline due to overfishing, and as fish populations move about the ocean in different patterns due to climate change,” said Cheung. “Nations will have to adapt to these anthropogenic changes in our world as quickly, if not quicker, than fish species are having to do.”

“The transboundary nature of the world’s exploited marine species” was published in Scientific Reports.

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UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries stands with Mi’kmaw Fishers

Following our colleagues at Dalhousie University’s Department of Biology’s recent statement of solidarity, the IOF wishes to express that it too stands with Mi’kmaw fishers.

The Canadian courts have unambiguously recognized the right of the Indigenous fishers to fish to support their livelihoods, and we respect the rule of law and abhor the use of violence for settling disputes.

We strongly denounce the acts of violence perpetrated against Mi’kmaw harvesters pursuing their rights, and also denounce any claim that such actions are justified in the name of conservation. There is no credibility on biological grounds to the conservation concerns, given the terms of the fishery initiated by the Mi’kmaw community.

We call on the Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia, and the RCMP, to support and protect Mi’kmaw harvesters as they pursue their legal fishery. We further call upon Minister Jordan of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to support the creation of a fisheries management regime that embraces Mi’kmaw rights and establishes new, effective measures for conservation and protection of livelihoods of all harvesters in coastal communities.

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