Management of exploited transboundary fish stocks requires international cooperation

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Tags: , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , ,

IOF student award winners

The Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) is pleased to announce the winners of the recent round of competition for IOF student awards/scholarships:

Please join us in congratulating:

  • Alicia Anderson (MSc, OCF) who received the Lawrence Edward Hassell Graduate Field Research Award. This award recognizes a graduate student in fisheries who is engaged in field research pertaining to sustainability.
  • Natalie Benoit (MSc, OCF) and Thomas Smith (MSc, OCF) who will receive the Brian Jessop Graduate Award. This endowment was established by Brian Jessop for graduate students whose research focuses on freshwater and/or diadromous fisheries.
  • Roshni Mangar (MSc, OCF) who will receive the COSMOS International Graduate Travel Award. This travel award goes to an international graduate student who needs support for research or field work to be conducted in their region or country of origin.
  • Karly McMullen (MSc, OCF) who received the Cecil and Kathleen Morrow Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded for best academic proposal for research travel work using techniques developed at the IOF.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Tags: ,

Posted in 2020, IOF Honours, IOFNews | Tagged with ,

Andrew Trites and Daniel Pauly join UBC’s Quarter Century Club, Eden Fellner joins 25 Year Club

by Riley Tjosvold

This year marks a milestone for three members of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) as faculty members Andrew Trites and Daniel Pauly are inducted into UBC’s Quarter Century Club, and Graduate Program Officer Eden Fellner joins the 25 Year Club for UBC staff.

Started in 1996, the Quarter Century Club/25 Year Club honours faculty and staff who have spent 25 years at UBC. New club members celebrate this achievement each fall at a dinner (postponed in 2020), where they receive a pin and a card that provides them with free access to the Botanical Gardens, discounted admission to the UBC Aquatic Centre and free parking at UBC campus upon retirement.

“UBC has been good to me, and I feel I have been good for UBC as well,” said UBC Killam Professor Daniel Pauly.

The research methods, concepts and software pioneered by Pauly continue to create innovations in the fields of fisheries science, marine biology and marine conservation as they are adopted by newer generations of researchers.

He said that some of his fondest memories of the past 25 years are of working in the huts when the IOF was still the Fisheries Centre.

“There was a magical period from 1995 to 2005 where the fisheries centre was working together on ecosystem modelling and the professors had each taken a different chunk of the work, which is very rare… We had a period of close collaboration between different labs. This grew apart, because such things cannot continue forever. But this was an extraordinary time that I recall with lots of joy,” he said.

Professor and marine mammal researcher Andrew Trites grew up in Nova Scotia and had planned to return to the East Coast one day but said that the research opportunities provided by UBC, as well as the close proximity to marine mammals in the North Pacific, kept him here. Here, Trites leads a research program that furthers the understanding and conservation of marine mammals, particularly Steller sea lions, northern fur seals, and harbour seals.

“The university has always been very supportive and encouraging for allowing me to build the research program I wanted,” he said.

One of Trites’ favourite experiences since joining UBC was helping to procure Big Blue, the massive blue whale skeleton on display in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing people of all walks of life and of all ages come and marvel at it. It would not have happened without the support of the faculty and the Dean’s office. They just gave me the green light to go ahead and do it. That’s one of the things I like about the IOF and UBC: if you’ve got an idea — no matter how wacky it may seem — someone’s going to encourage you to explore it,” he said.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOF Honours, IOFNews | Tagged with , , , , , ,

FCRR – Assessments of marine fisheries resources in West Africa with emphasis on small pelagics

Fisheries have to be managed if they are not to end up overexploiting their resource base. Yet, how often have we heard that reasonable effort control or other essential management tools cannot be implemented because “there are no data”? Fisheries scientists have worked for decades on how to overcome this issue. Some scientists have been developing stock assessment methods with limited requirements, while others have been working on creating databases with data useful for assessing any exploited stock in the world.

These efforts converged during the training course entitled “Utilisation de la méthode CMSY pour l’évaluation des stocks ouest-africains” held in September 23-27 2019 in Dakar, Senegal, hosted by the Regional Sub-Commission for Fisheries (Commission Sous-Régionale des Pêches, CSRP) with the support of the MAVA Foundation, for participants from Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone. The stock assessment methods that were taught, CMSY and LBB, were developed by Dr. Rainer Froese and colleagues. These methods require a minimum of data to provide estimates of B/BMSY, i.e., the current biomass of an exploited stock relative to the biomass that generates maximum sustainable yield (MSY).

The course was successful because delegates from each of the participating countries contributed applications of the CMSY and/or LBB method based on data that they brought along. A number of these applications should, however, be considered to be very preliminary. In the LBB case, the length-frequency (L/F) data analyzed did not necessarily reflect the wealth of L/F data available in the CRSP countries. In the CMSY cases, the national data used did not generally reflect the fact that the stock in question (e.g., of sardinella) may range over the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of two or more CRSP countries.


The short contributions presented in this report should be seen as tentative in terms of their specific results. However, they certainly express that the CMSY and LBB methods are well-suited for use in the CRSP region, and that the course participants will be using these methods in the future.

To illustrate the power of international cooperation and to obtain reliable assessments of small pelagic stocks in the CSRP area, a chapter has been included detailing how national data can and should be pooled into (sub-)national assessments of 14 shared stocks of small pelagic fishes. We hope that this chapter and the report as a whole will be found useful to all countries of the sub-region even though we translated contributions originally in French or Portuguese into English.

We hope that the general conclusions from these assessments will be that:

  • There are enough L/F and catch data series in the CRSP region for stock assessments to be performed, i.e., it is no longer the case that “there are no data”; and
  • Policymakers in the CRSP region must face the fact that assessing the major stocks in the region indicates overexploitation – a reduction of fishing effort is necessary to maintain abundant catches.

As editors of the report, and the Sea Around Us resource persons at this course, we take this opportunity to thank the MAVA Foundation, the CSRP, particularly Mr. Mika Diop, and the workshop participants and authors of the contributions herein for their enthusiasm and diligence. We also thank the FishBase and SeaLifeBase teams of Quantitative Aquatics in Los Baños, the Philippines for help preparing the resilience and biomass ‘priors’ made available to the participants and for ensuring the coverage of the small pelagic species occurring in the region.

Maria Lourdes ‘Deng’ Palomares
Myriam Khalfallah
Jessika Woroniak
Daniel Pauly

Link to FCRR 28 (4) Assessments of marine fisheries resources in West Africa with emphasis on small pelagics

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

New World Wildlife Fund reports call for better policy to save fish from climate change

by Riley Tjosvold

 
Two new reports funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) highlight the need for immediate action to halt the effects of climate change on ocean life.

Tropical countries that are reliant on small-scale fisheries to sustain their local economies are poised to lose the most to climate change as fish either migrate to cooler waters or stay put and perish in warming habitats, according to the WWF report Small Scale Fisheries in a Warming Ocean: Exploring Adaptation to Climate.

The report was produced in collaboration with the University of British Columbia (UBC), Agrocampus Ouest (France), National Institute for Fisheries (Ecuador), Charles Darwin Foundation (Galapagos) and WWF Germany. The authors of the report used climate modelling as well as interviews and workshops with local fishers to assess the current and future impacts of climate change on fish populations in Ecuador, the Philippines and South Africa.

The researchers’ climate models predicted that even after implementing a stringent, global-scale greenhouse gas mitigation strategy, the fish populations most sought-after by local fishers in the three countries would still see a significant decline. The report recommends that fishery-reliant communities start finding ways to adapt as soon as possible, and outlines policy measures that will aid in establishing sustainable fisheries sectors.

Collaborating with local fishers was critical for developing climate adaptation strategies tailored to the three countries’ unique needs, according to Juan José Alava, who is the Principal Investigator of the Ocean Pollution Research Unit and a researcher with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) at UBC, who drafted the proposal with Dr. William Cheung for the project and oversaw research in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

“You need to take a bottom-up approach: coming from the bottom with the local people to produce strategies that make sense to them… to produce knowledge and effective action that is based in the community,” Alava said.

Proposed strategies included things like creating “exit jobs” for fishers leaving the industry, establishing better compliance with fishing regulations through increased monitoring of the industry, and using more eco-friendly fishing vessels.

According to Alava, Ecuador’s current climate change action plan lacks detail and a vision.

He quoted the report, stating that, “In the Anthropocene, anthropogenic climate change and overfishing are intertwined, affecting and reshaping foodwebs and fisheries, as well as marine biodiversity. Bold and proactive climate change adaptation strategies and government decision-making processes engaged and empowered from a bottom-up fisheries policy approaches are urgently required for healthy small-scale fisheries and sustainable management of seafoods in the face of global environmental changes for generations to come. The WWF-Fish Forward report provides one of the first adaptation frameworks and concerted guidance for fisheries, based on several study cases from around the global ocean, including our last Eden, The Galapagos Islands, to foster and accomplish that pathway.”

“We want all of this information to be used to guide decision-making at the government level so that policy-makers can incorporate it in the national program for adaptation to climate change and so we can rely on sustainable fisheries in the long-term,” he said.

William Cheung, a researcher with the IOF who was co-principal-investigator for the study, said he is optimistic that its findings will help shape policy in the three countries.

“With the workshops we noticed that people are already feeling the effects of climate change on their resources. Many people who are dependent on marine resources, particularly people in the developing tropical countries included in this report are most vulnerable. There’s a demand for guidance and knowledge that can help them develop effective adaptation strategies, which is why I think the report is timely and I am positive it will be a useful resource to support local policy makers,” Cheung said.

Cheung also contributed to a second report recently released by the WWF. The Living Planet Report is a collaborative document produced by researchers who track the abundance of a variety of wildlife populations and species. The WWF invited environmental researchers from diverse backgrounds to add their knowledge of humanity’s growing impact on wildlife to the report, which is published every two years.

Cheung’s contribution explored the consequences fish-dependent communities will face if pollution and greenhouse gases continue to overheat and destroy fish habitat.

As ocean temperatures rise, and ocean water becomes more acidic and oxygen-depleted, the ocean’s ability to sustain diverse life diminishes. According to the report, global fish catch potential will be reduced 20 to 24 per cent by the year 2100 if policy-makers don’t build a robust strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Cheung, who has contributed his expertise to a number of policy recommendations in his roles as a Canada Research Chair for Ocean Sustainability and Global Change, and Director of Science with the Nereus program, said governments need to get serious about instituting a robust carbon tax and increasing their nations’ reliance on renewable energy sources.

“I hope that people recognize that we are in a situation where immediate action is needed,” Cheung said. “There is no time for delay. But then we also must provide a pathway through which we can reverse the trend. We know how we can reverse the trend; we know what kinds of policies are needed, it’s just that we need peoples’ action to do so.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

In Memoriam: Arthur (Art) Tautz

The Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, mourns the passing of Arthur “Art” Tautz, who left us on September 13, 2020.

Art Tautz received his MSc and PhD from the University of British Columbia, where he studied and published with such luminaries as Peter Larkin, C.S. “Buzz” Holling, W.E “Bill” Ricker, and Cess Groot. In 1972, he joined the British Columbian government’s fisheries management agencies, and continued to be a part of its various iteration throughout his long and influential career.

In addition to his research management responsibilities, Dr. Tautz became the provincial lead for the Federal-Provincial Salmonid Enhancement Program and served as BC steelhead coordinator for over a decade. He oversaw management and research teams responsible for stock monitoring, development of enhancement tools, and a number of pieces of legislation. Over the years, he helped develop workable policies, regulations and agreements for commercial and recreational fisheries in both marine and freshwater environments.

The development of temporal and spatial models supporting decisions made in challenging political environments was an area that Dr. Tautz focused on. He has served on a variety of ministry information management committees and supported the development of several innovative systems tools in both the Federal and Provincial governments. He served on the Federal science review panel for many years, as well as on the project proposal review panels for the Pacific Salmon Foundation and Forest Renewal BC. He also was a member on two ecoregional planning teams for the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Even after retirement, Dr. Tautz retained an advisory role with the Provincial government.

One of the highlights of his career was linking UBC’s then Institute of Animal Resource Ecology and Fisheries Centre (now the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries) with the Province’s Ministry of Environment. After securing this collaboration, Art served as Manager of the Fisheries Research Branch, based at UBC where, like many he was “temporarily” located in “the Huts” for about 25 years, prior to a move to new offices in the AERL Building. He was also appointed as an as an Adjunct Professor at UBC, a position he continued to hold after his retirement.

Dr. Tony Pitcher, professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and founding director of the then Fisheries Centre, recalls that, “for our first ten years, Art provided significant funding that helped the Fisheries Centre get established. His unit helped cover the costs of research seminars, the newsletter, and many of our early Fisheries Centre Research Reports.”

“We received a great deal of his personal encouragement for our activities,” Pitcher said.

“I remember Art for being a kind, wise and curious person with a quick wit and great sense of humour. He cared about people – and they cared about him,” said Dr. Andrew Trites, professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and former co-director of the Fisheries Centre. “I particularly enjoyed talking to him about seals and salmon, and hearing his insights into the changes he observed in the Strait of Georgia over his life time.”

Dr. Art Tautz will be greatly missed.

Remembering.ca Obituary

Tags: , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , ,

Villy Christensen receives AFS Award of Excellence

Dr. Villy Christensen

Dr. Villy Christensen, a professor at the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries has received the Award of Excellence for 2020 from the American Fisheries Society (AFS).

AFS is the world’s oldest and largest organization devoted to advancing fisheries science, and this is the Society’s highest award for scientific achievement. The award is presented for original and outstanding contributions to fisheries and aquatic biology.

Dr. Christensen is one of the most influential fisheries scientists in the world today. He is the principal architect behind Ecopath, and the project leader and core developer of the expanded ecosystem modelling system Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE). The development and support of this approach is among his most outstanding contributions to fisheries science. It has become the most widely used approach for ecosystem-based management, and is freely used by thousands of scientists from throughout the world. The importance of Ecopath was recognized by NOAA in 2009 as one of ten major scientific breakthroughs in the organization’s 200-year history.

Dr. Christensen’s research unit at UBC serves as a central hub for the Ecopath Research and Development Consortium, which has 28 institutional members and for which Dr. Christensen serves as Executive Board Chair. He is highly sought after to lead international training courses and workshops to apply ecosystem approaches to fisheries management all over the world.

Dr. Christensen’s research activities focus on developing integrated assessments of future marine biodiversity and ecosystem service changes. He works in close cooperation with international colleagues, and is an integral part of a comparative modelling initiative (Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project, Fish-MIP), which supply vetted-model results for future assessments of the UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES—for which he served as coordinating lead author).

“I am honoured to receive the AFS Award of Excellence, and to follow in the footsteps of truly outstanding scientists that have influenced our discipline,” said Dr Christensen. “This recognition is a tribute to all who have worked with Ecopath and with it, ecosystem approaches to fisheries management. These approaches are now being fully operationalized and integrated into management systems, and I am proud to be a cog in that wheel. I would like to thank my colleagues for the cooperation and support that has contributed to this, and also for them recommending me for this prestigious award.”

Dr. Christensen received this award at the AFS’ 150th Annual Meeting on September 24, 2020.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOF Honours, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , , , , , , ,

New footage gives whale’s-eye view of northern and southern resident orcas

Members of the C1 and D1 pods of northern resident killer whales as they travel near Alert Bay, BC.
Photo ©UBC – Hakai Institute/K. Holmes

UBC and Hakai Institute researchers have just returned from a 30-day research trip in the northern and southern waters of Vancouver Island, where they gathered stunning new aerial and underwater footage of northern and southern resident killer whales that offers an unparalleled glimpse into the underwater lives of these whales.

The research is part of a multi-year investigation, supported by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, NSERC, the Pacific Salmon Foundation, and Hakai Institute, into whether endangered southern resident killer whales are getting enough of their preferred prey, Chinook salmon, to meet their nutritional needs. The researchers used aerial drones and underwater cameras with biologgers to study their feeding behaviour, and hydrophones to measure prey availability.

We spoke to the lead investigators, Professor Andrew Trites and postdoctoral fellow Sarah Fortune, about the trip, preliminary findings, and how COVID-19 impacted their research.

This was your second summer gathering footage and data on northern and southern resident killer whales to study their feeding behaviour. What stood out to you?

Sarah Fortune: It was so amazing to be able to travel underwater with the killer whale pods. For the first time, we were able to clearly hear and see what the killer whales experience as they search for food, capture fish, and interact with each other. The suction-cupped cameras that were temporarily stuck on the resident killer whales allowed us to see and understand them in a way that no one has ever been able to do before. Some of the things we recorded will refine current understanding of how killer whales live together, hunt, share food, and communicate with one another.

Andrew Trites: Looking at the drone footage we collected on our research voyage last year, one of the things that struck us was the extent to which resident killer whales touched each other. This year we were able see this touching from their perspective. In one instance we got to see a northern resident whale calf getting its belly rubbed by its mother’s pectoral fin as they swam side by side. It was something nobody could see if they were watching killer whales from a boat. It showed us how much goes on underwater between surfacings that no one has any idea about.

You also use hydrophones to capture data on fish availability. Are there any preliminary findings you can share?

Andrew Trites: We surveyed in the North Island Waters (e.g., Johnstone Strait and Blackfish Sound) and in the Salish Sea (e.g., off of the Fraser River and along Saturna Island), and saw large salmon-sized fish in all of those feeding areas. We can’t say which areas had more salmon yet; we have to analyze more than 500 kilometres of track lines that we surveyed. However, our first impression is that there appeared to be a lot of salmon when killer whales were absent. This suggests that not seeing southern resident killer whales frequently in the Salish Sea may not be due to an absence of food for them.

Mike deRoos (left), Andrew Trites (centre) and Sarah Fortune (right) examine the CATs suction-cup camera and data logger, and discuss programmable settings to record sound, video, depth and movements. Photo ©UBC/S. Schneider

The overall goal of our study is to determine whether southern resident killer whales are having more difficulty finding food than northern residents (which are four-times more abundant). We collected a lot of data to assess the abundance and distribution of Chinook salmon available to both populations. We also have fine-scale data on feeding behaviours to assess whether southern residents are as efficient at finding and catching fish as northern resident killer whales. Over the next 12 months, we will be pouring through the datasets to assess whether the suspected food shortage southern resident killer whales are experiencing is occurring in the Salish Sea during summer and fall, or whether it is occurring elsewhere in their range during winter and spring.

Following killer whales while they feed while collecting hydroacoustics data to assess the presence and abundance of fish. Sarah Fortune (seated) records behavioural data, while Keith Holmes (drone pilot) prepares to record overhead behaviours, and Taryn Scarff gets ready to launch the drone.
Photo: ©UBC/A.W. Trites

This was a very challenging summer for field work. How did COVID-19 impact your trip?

Andrew Trites: The research team had to self-isolate prior to boarding our research boat, and have been in a research bubble for 30 days. It’s a long time for nine people to be locked up on a small boat. We missed walking on shore, interacting and speaking with local fishers and with other researchers, as we did last year, about what they were seeing and catching. Fortunately, the scenery changed every day, as did the marine life we encountered. With fewer eyes and boats on the water this year, we were also fortunate to receive updates on whale locations and movements from the Pacific Whale Watch Association members and from shore-based observers such as SIMRES (the Saturna Island Marine Research and Education Society) that helped us plan our days.

Sarah Fortune: We saw fewer large ships this year (particularly in the north), and had the impression that things were quieter. However, we did not notice any marked change in whale behaviour to suggest that it made a significant difference to the whales. Other researchers will undoubtedly be analysing vessel movements, ocean noise and whale presence to say something more conclusive about the impact quieter seas might have had on the whales.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Mourning the passing of Ronald (Bud) Sparrow

The Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) is greatly saddened to receive news of the passing, on September 14, 2020, of Ronald (Bud) Sparrow, a remarkable hero in the fisheries arena.

The Musqueam Band stands at the forefront of aboriginal rights cases in Canada, the most prominent of which (of interest to IOF faculty and students) is Regina v. Sparrow 1990 (SCC). Not only was Sparrow the first test of the new Constitution Act, 1982, section 35(1) provision, which expressly recognizes aboriginal people and unextinguished rights, it also was the first after a long line of unsuccessful aboriginal fishing rights cases in British Columbia to succeed. In the area of fisheries alone, Sparrow opened the way for the ultimate recognition of an aboriginal right to use its catch for commercial purposes.

Ron also faced the downside of his legal action. In court he encountered the resistance of entrenched interests. In the years following the Sparrow decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, rancorous anti-Indian fishing protests and picketing took place in British Columbia, both on the water and on the front lawn of the BC legislature. A modest individual, Ron Sparrow’s reputation is that of a leading fisherman and courageous man. And so he was.

Ron was a semi-regular visitor to the IOF and he will be greatly missed. We are even more saddened that Ron’s passing comes at a time when the IOF is about to welcome our newly hired professor of Indigenous Fisheries Research, Andrea Reid, a member of the Nishga’a Nation, who will be overseeing the revitalize our Aboriginal Fisheries Research initiative.

We grieve for his passing.

 

Tags: , , ,

Posted in 2020, IOFNews, News Release | Tagged with , , ,