Vicky Lam, Fisheries Economist and Senior Research Fellow (UBC), was invited by the Fraser Basin Council to give a presentation on the impacts of climate change on fisheries on the coast of northwest British Columbia, Canada. She attended the one day workshop titled “Warming Oceans and Rising Tides: Coastal Adaptation in Northwest BC”, in Prince Rupert on October 21.
There were about 60 participants attending the workshop, including the Mayor of Prince Rupert, First Nations fisheries managers, First Nations representatives, NGOs working on resource management in this region, Port Authority, and representatives from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and other NGOs such as WWF.
The workshop was divided into two sections — one about coastal adaptation and the other about climate change impacts on the resource sector. Lam presented the results of a project done with Lauren Weatherdon, Yoshitaka Ota, William Cheung et al., which focused on projecting catch potential and its subsequent socio-economic impacts on the communities along the BC coast under climate change. She also presented the results of a project conducted with Rashid Sumaila, Research Associate (UBC), and funded by Vancity, which projected the impacts of climate change on the supply and price of seafood in BC. At the end of the presentation, she proposed some adaptation strategies that might help the communities to adapt to and/or mitigate the impacts of climate change.
“I received a lot of positive feedback after the presentation,” said Lam. “They commented that our research results will be very helpful for them to design their future fisheries management strategies. The First Nations people really liked our study and highly recommended that we show our results to the provincial government. They would also like to offer their help if we are going to conduct research in their region in the future.”
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