A Letter from the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution to Minister Ashfield and PM Harper

My former supervisor, Dr. Jeffrey Hutchings, current President for the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution (of which I am a member) sent the following letter to Keith Ashfield, and distributed copies to all members of the CSEE.  I post the letter below so that my Canadian friends can see the concerns that leading Canadian scientists have about the state of science and our biological resources under the Harper government.

Seattle, Days Three through Five

The Conference of the American Fisheries Society is now officially over, and I am exhausted.  It has been a long but intellectually stimulating time, and I am thankful that I came.  I saw numerous good, some remarkably bad, and a few outstanding talks over the past few days, ranging from topics as diverse as plasticity in maximum critical temperatures for salmonids, to the negative role played by the media when it comes to reporting on overfishing (and where scientists go wrong when they create press releases); from mortality associated with catch-and-release bluefin fisheries, to how the Marine Stewardship Council's anonymous pre-assessment  for MSC certification has changed the state of the fishing industry.

Seattle, Day Two

Hello folks, I just wanted to give a brief update on the conference so far, before I run down to the Seattle Aquarium for a social.  Yesterday (Monday) was the first day of talks at the American Fisheries Society conference.

I figure most of you don't know what a science conference is like, so forgive me if I get into too much detail.

The day began dreadfully early.  The plenary talks began at 8 am at the beautiful historical Paramount Theatre.  It opened up, surprisingly, with a prayer in the language of one of the Native American tribes that fish salmon along the Washington coast.  What was even more surprising was that the prayer was not an invocation to the Great Spirit, but was actually a Christian prayer ending with 'the name of your son Jesus, amen.'  This was followed by a traditional Shaker song in a native tongue.  It was certainly an intriguing and unexpected beginning to a scientific conference.

Seattle, Day One

Sunday

Well, I have arrived in Seattle safe and sound for the 141st annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society (AFS).  If you can believe it, fisheries scientists having met every single year since just after the end of the Civil War, and today I have become a participant in that long tradition.

This is by far the largest conference I have ever attended, with over 4600 people registered, 2000 of which are giving talks and another 500 of which presented posters this (Monday) evening.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

A Response from the Minister of Fisheries!

A few months ago I wrote a letter to the Minister of Fisheries addressing a few key issues concerning Canada's oceans, as part of the social action section for a course my friend was teaching on social justice.  The issues addressed included the implementation of the Precautionary Approach for protecting Canadian fish stocks; the appalling lack of information given to consumers about the fish they consume; the lack of regulation in marine protected areas, and the paucity of such areas; and the insanity of determining an stock's endangered status based on socioeconomic considerations.  Considering that it was election time, I did not really expect a response, and so I was delighted to find a three-page letter from Senior Assistant Deputy Minister David Balfour of Ecosystems and Fisheries Management waiting for me in my mail when I returned from my trip out east.

It was a surprisingly candid and lengthy response to each of the issues I brought up.  Since we are talking about the Canadian government, there is much emphasis on what has been done and little about the criticisms.  But at least I now know that they know that there is at least one concerned Canadian out there.  For me, the most surprising admission in the letter is towards the end, in reference to the classification of endangered species in Canada.  It is somewhat shocking - see if you can spot it!

An Open Letter to the Minister of Fisheries

If you are at all concerned about the future state of our oceans, I have written a letter to Gail Shea (our Fisheries Minister).  Feel free to copy this letter, sign it, and mail it to her.  If you need a refresher as to why this matters, read my Lament for Canada's Oceans.  With an election forthcoming, now is the time to let our government know that we care about the future of our fisheries.  I must cite the work of Dr. Jeff Hutchings as the inspiration for much of this letter.

A Lament for Canada's Oceans

This weekend I had the pleasure of showing the documentary The End of the Line for a social justice class at Alberta Bible College.  This movie came out several years ago to strong reviews from the likes of Roger Ebert, and happens to prominently feature my honours supervisor, Dr. Jeff Hutchings, along with my ecology professor, Dr. Boris Worm (also of Sharkwater fame), and some other outstanding researchers from Canada and abroad.  The movie focuses on the plight of the world's fisheries, and shows how greed, mismanagement and uninformed consumers have worked together over the past sixty years to decimate our planet's fish stocks, such that historically plentiful fish (like Atlantic cod and bluefin tuna) have been hunted almost to the point of extinction.  Indeed, most of the fish species that we eat have been reduced to 10% of their normal levels, with a projected depletion of all of our fish stocks by 2048.  You can watch the trailer below: