Marine fish and fisheries

The overall aims of my research are to determine causes and consequences of variation in the life history of fish and to develop practical tools for implementing this knowledge into fisheries management. The ocean is our research laboratory. We undertake collaborative research projects in a range of different ecosystems including:

sarcto-boreal ecosystems off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Barents Sea
shelf sea in the Southern Ocean surrounding South Georgia Island
coastal seas such as the North Sea and Norwegian Sea
estuarine conditions in the Northern Gulf of St Lawrence and the Baltic Sea.

We sample these ecosystems by participating in research vessel surveys and by accessing long-term databases generated from these surveys or from sampling of the commercial catch.

Much of our research focuses on two commercial species: cod and herring. Both have undergone well-documented collapses. Herring stocks in the North Sea and Norwegian Sea were overfished in the 1970s but were successfully rebuilt in the 1990s. Cod stocks in the Northwest Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic Sea are depleted or collapsed whereas the Barents Sea cod stock is currently above safe biological limits.