News

Summer 2022

• Field work in Klemtu (with Kitasoo Xais’Xais) and Bella Bella (with Heiltsuk) went great. We were able to do creek walks, dockside interviews, catch monitoring overflights, and DNA sampling on coho salmon. More to come!
• Travelled to Halifax, NS to attend the annual meeting with COSEWIC Marine Fishes SSC – we discussed all sorts of species and topics for species-at-risk assessments. Stay tuned for future updates from COSEWIC!
• Our collaborative article highlighting the value of stressor-response functions as a unifying theme in ecology was accepted in Trends in Ecology & Evolution
• Our recent work indicating the extent of declines for chum salmon along the Central Coast was published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science
• Colin Bailey’s thesis chapter on estimating size-at-age in back-calculations from scale samples was published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science
• Collaborative paper led by Mark Kaemingk highlighting the importance of the size of waterbodies on the relationship between effort and management investment in recreational fisheries was published in Fisheries Research

Fall 2021/Winter 2022

• I was appointed to a four-year term serving on the COSEWIC Marine Fishes Species Specialist Subcommittee – I’m excited for the opportunity to work on species at-risk
• Our new article in Scientific Reports highlights previously undocumented hotspots for rockfishes, corals, and sponges along the Central Coast to help in the design of a network of Marine Protected Areas throughout British Columbia – published with new CCIRA colleagues!

Summer 2021

• Nicola Jones covered our recent article on 40 years of change in the Keogh River Pacific salmon and trout community – out now in Hakai Magazine
• We published a new article on long-term changes in the community of Pacific salmonids along the Keogh River as a result of changing marine and freshwater regimes in Global Change Biology
• Work begins on assessing North and Central Coast Pacific salmon fisheries with CCIRA, the Wild Salmon Center, and Fisheries & Oceans Canada
• I joined Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance (CCIRA) as their new Applied Quantitative Biologist!
• We published a recent article for how we determined the conservation status for the endangered Athabasca River rainbow trout under COSEWIC policy in Conservation Biology

Fall 2020/Winter 2021

• Our recent work revealing a century of changes in the biodiversity for Sockeye Salmon in the Skeena watershed was published in Journal of Applied Ecology
• Recent work led by Sam Wilson and team (including myself) quantified how outmigration of Steelhead smolts matches (or mismatches) with optimal estuary conditions, like zooplankton blooms – the further the mismatch the worse smolts grow and survive in the ocean. Out now in Progress in Oceanography
• Work up on the Keogh River Steelhead project resumed, and I was also able to get up to remove acoustic receivers in Atlin Lake used to detect how Lake Trout move among a chain-of-lakes near the headwaters of the Yukon River.

Spring 2020

• The Adams Lake Indian Band invited myself and several colleagues to a community meeting in Chase, BC to present our research on ‘Trans Mountain Expansion Project and Oil Spills: Power Analysis on Pacific Salmon Data’
• Field work up on the Keogh River and Yukon was postponed – see here for some of my reflections on navigating research during the COVID19 pandemic
• I helped build a Bayesian hierarchical model to assess the conservation status for the endangered Athabasca River Rainbow Trout – in review now at Conservation Biology
• Work continues with Heiltsuk Nation on developing an integrated Bayesian catch and effort model to understand harvest patterns for the recreational and FSC Chinook and Coho Salmon fisheries – keep a look out for more as this project develops

Winter 2020

• Hear more about our work on Yukon lake trout on CBC’s Yukon Morning with Christine Genier here
• J. Applied Ecology chose our article Editor’s Choice for the February issue! Read more about it here
• Our article on Social-ecological feedbacks in Yukon’s lake trout fishery is out now in Journal of Applied Ecology. Read it here

Fall 2019

• Taking a couple days here in Vancouver to learn more SciComm strategies from COMPASS
• I gave a seminar down at University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratories on the management and ecology of BC and Yukon lake trout. Always nice to see the Gulf Coast and enjoy some great southern food!
• Went down to Reno with the Salmon Watersheds lab to give our talks at the joint AFS-TWS conference. All about that salmon!

Summer 2019

• Had a radio interview with CBC North morning show on lake trout biology
• Spent several weeks doing some field work on the Keogh River with InStream Fisheries and colleagues in the Salmon Watersheds Lab 🙂