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Crossing the River Between Fishers and Fish Science

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Sam Perrin One comment

"We need the next generation of scientists to be at the coalface, communicating good scientific information."

This article was first published in late 2018 (Image Credit: Mallee Catchment Management Authority, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped)

When a food source provides almost half a planet with protein, you can expect the people who deliver that food source to play an important role in society. Fishing is no exception. Any country that has a marine or freshwater ecosystem in close proximity will have a fishing community, and that community can play a variety of roles, from something as simple as putting food on people’s tables to campaigning heavily to keep your country from joining the EU.

So it makes sense that fishers should have access to good fish science, at every level. If you’re a multi-million-dollar corporation, you need to know how fish stocks will respond to certain catch levels over a sustained period. If you’re a local or specialised fishing community, you need to know how available your catch will be in five years given temperature increases. And if you’re one person on a boat in a river, you might want to know how best to treat an over- or under-sized fish to ensure it survives being released.

It follows, then, that there should be open communication between fish scientists and fishers. At this year’s Australian Society of Fish Biology conference, I asked a variety of delegates a simple question: Is there open communication?

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Fishers and Fish Science: The Australian Fish Scientist Perspective

Posted on December 3, 2018 by Sam Perrin One comment

Fishing is an important part of Australian society. So is communication between fish scientists and fishers strong enough? (Image Credit: State Library of Queensland, Image Cropped)

Last Thursday, I posted an article on the need for more contact communication the fish scientist community and the fishing community, which you can find here. It gives a breakdown of why better communication between the two groups is mutually beneficial, and how it could be improved. The piece was written after talks with a number of prominent Australian fish biologists, whose thoughts I’ve shared in more detail below.

The Forefront

The Changing Face of Ecology: ASFB Edition

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Sam Perrin One comment

I speak to another group of influential researchers on how ecology has changed over the recent decades (Image Credits: Sam Perrin, Mallee Catchment Management Authority, Gretta Pecl, CSIRO, CC BY-SA 2.0, all images cropped)

I’m 29. It’s not like that makes me uniquely qualified to give me the youth’s perspective on ecology today. But it does make me 100% unqualified to talk about how ecology has changed in recent decades. So when I was at the recent Australian Society for Fish Biology Conference (a line you’ll surely be sick of if you’ve been keeping up with my recent interviews), I decided to get some uniquely fishy perspectives on how our discipline has changed over the last 20-30 years.

The following commentaries are naturally from fish biologists. If you’d like a broader perspective on the changing face of ecology, check out Part One and Part Two of this series. You can also find the full interview with all the scientists below by clicking on their names.

The Forefront

Peter Unmack & Karl Moy: Saving an Endangered Fish from Extinction

Posted on November 22, 2018 by Sam Perrin 5 comments

A release of the formerly endangered Running River Rainbowfish. So how were they brought back from near-extinction? (Image Credit: Karl Moy, University of Canberra, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped)

We talk a lot about getting the public interested in conservation and ecosystems on Ecology for the Masses, but we’ve rarely talked about how conserving a species is actually accomplished. Where does funding come from? How do you decide which individuals to save? And how do you allow a population room to grow?

In 2015, Peter Unmack was sampling in the Burdekin river system in northern Queensland, Australia, when he noticed an alien population of Eastern Rainbowfish had established in Running River. Specifically a 13km stretch bounded by two gorges, which housed the Running River Rainbowfish, a species distinct to this one stretch. Knowing that the presence of the Eastern Rainbowfish could spell the extinction of the local species, he started a crowdfunding initiative, and essentially saved the Running River Rainbowfish. I spoke to Peter and postgraduate student Karl Moy about the conservation effort.

The Forefront

Eva Plaganyi: Understanding the Human Side of Ecology

Posted on November 15, 2018 by Sam Perrin 4 comments

CSIRO scientist Éva Plagányi, who has worked with researchers from social and economic backgrounds to better understand human impacts on ecology (Image Credit: CSIRO, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)

At the end of the day, the aim of an ecologist is to generate a better understanding of the natural world around us. But that can amount to nothing if that understanding isn’t translated to the people who interact directly with the aspects of the natural world that we research. So whilst understanding an ecosystem should be our main priority, understanding the people who interact with an ecosystem is integral to making a difference.

This is where social sciences like anthropology can help. At the ASFB 2018 Conference, I spoke to plenary speaker CSIRO’s Dr. Éva Plagányi, who works on maintaining the sustainability of marine life. Éva’s work includes interaction with everyone from corporate businessmen to traditional fishers, and integrating social anthropology into her work has yielded great results. I spoke to Éva on the importance of incorporating social science into ecology.

The Forefront

Resuscitating Australia’s Floodplains: Environmental Water

Posted on November 5, 2018 by Sam Perrin Leave a comment

On the left, a thriving wetland. The right, an arid forest. (Image Credit: Sam Perrin, CC BY 2.0)

I’m standing on the dry side of the Murrumbidgee floodplain in country Australia. I say dry side, because whilst I’m standing on the harsh, dusty platform of soil and desiccated leaves that is pretty standard for this area, 15 metres away there’s a thriving wetland environment. It boasts waterbirds, a flock of emus, thirsty kangaroos, and fish. All that’s separating the wetland and dry land on which I stand is a road, only about half a metre above water level.

Opinions

Gretta Pecl: Climate Change in Coastal Waters

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Sam Perrin

Gretta Pecl, founder of the Redmap project, which aims to demonstrate tangible effects of climate change to Australia's fishing community

Image Credit: Gretta Pecl, University of Tasmania, CC BY 2.0

So often the effects of climate change are somewhat intangible to us; the weather may grow warmer, but it’s a slow and gradual process, which can seem entirely at odds with the alarm bells that things like the IPCC report seem to be constantly clanging. As such, demonstrating tangible environmental changes to a community whose livelihood may depend on such changes is a great weapon in the fight against the effects of a warming climate.

With this in mind, marine biologist Gretta Pecl founded the Range Extension Database and Mapping project, also known as Redmap. Redmap aggregates public sightings of fish to show shifts in the distributions of Australia’s marine species, including some that are crucial to our fishers. At the recent ASFB 2018 conference, I sat down with Gretta to talk about changes in marine species distributions, how they’ll affect Australia, and how they might help the public understand the effects of climate change.

The Forefront

Jarod Lyon: Science Communication at the Coalface

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Sam Perrin 2 comments

Jarod Lyon believes that people still want to hear science from experts, but that our perception of what makes an expert has changed

Image Credit: Mallee Catchment Management Authority, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped

The advent of social media changed many things about the world, but if there’s one big change that’s become really quite evident in the last two years, it’s how we get our information. This has influenced ecology dramatically over the last decade, with a great deal of scientists now present on social media. But are we adapting fast enough, and in the right way?

At the Australian Society of Fish Biology’s Annual Conference last week, Jarod Lyon, who manages the Applied Aquatic Ecology Section at Australia’s Arthur Rylah Institute, gave a talk about applied science in the ‘fake news’ era. I took the opportunity to sit down and quiz Jarod as to how we need to approach public communication in the era of social media.

The Forefront

The Problem With ‘Carpageddon’

Posted on October 15, 2018 by Sam Perrin Leave a comment

The Australian government has been throwing around the term Carpageddon for a while now. So why is it a problem? (Image Credit: Ed Dunens, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

I think it’s fair to say that Australian politics can be guilty of a flair for the dramatic from time to time. From the recent spill crisis, to the name-calling that abounds in parliamentary displays, to Bob Katter announcing that he wasn’t wasting time on the marriage equality debate because “every three months a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in Northern Queensland”, Auspol enjoys the sensational. So when they heard about plans to release a virus into Australian waterways to deal with Australia’s persistent carp problem, of course they named it ‘Carpageddon’. But is this in any way an appropriate title? And why is it such a problem that we use this sort of language to sell scientific endeavours?

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Refining Nemo: Musings from the Australian Society of Fish Biology Conference

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Sam Perrin 2 comments

The Australian Society of Fish Biology's 2018 Conference delivered some of the most engaging, intriguing talks I've had the pleasure of witnessing

Image Credit: Sam Perrin, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped

As a fish ecologist living in Norway, it’s a joy to be able to travel to Melbourne and interact with the people that are driving forward fish science in my home country. So when I found out that the Australian Society of Fish Biology’s annual conference was taking place 3 days after my first flight home since 2016, I knew it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

We’re on the last day of the conference at the moment, and over the next 2 months I’m looking forward to bringing you a number of insights, including interviews with guest speakers Eva Plaganyi and Gretta Pecl and pioneers of intriguing projects like Peter Unmack and Jarod Lyon. I’ll also have a fish edition of The Changing Face of Ecology, and some articles on how the angling community and the fish science community interact in a country with one of the most unique fish assemblages in the world.