SFU biologists honoured with international awards
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Isabelle Cote, imcote@sfu.ca (accessible via email only)
Nick Dulvy, 011-44-797-997-0371 (cell); nick_dulvy@sfu.ca
Marianne Meadahl, PAMR, 778.782.4323
The Zoological Society of London will honour two Simon Fraser University biologists for their commitments to conservation research on June 16.
Professor Isabelle Côté’s contributions will be recognized with the Marsh Award for Conservation Biology. Nicholas Dulvy, a Canada Research Chair in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation and associate professor, will receive the society’s Marsh Award for Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.
The awards, established by British businessman Brian Marsh, are administered by the Marsh Christian Trust and seek to recognize “unsung heroes who aim to improve the world we live in.”
Côté is an internationally known scientist whose research focuses on tropical coastal ecosystems. She has pioneered the use of meta-analysis in marine conservation ecology – a technique for understanding the ‘bigger picture’ by combining all available scientific data.
She used this method to discover the 80 per cent decline in the coral cover of Caribbean reefs, a study published in the journal Science.
Another study of coral reef fisheries of 49 island countries, encompassing half the world’s coral reefs (together with Dulvy), published in the journal Current Biology,found more than half of the fisheries were being exploited unsustainably.
Dulvy has earned an international reputation for his work in fisheries ecology and conservation. He came to SFU a year ago from the Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences in Norwich, England, where he continues collaborations on research to determine the effects of climate change on fisheries and coastal communities, as well as threat and extinction risks in the context of improving fisheries management.
He earlier led studies that determined three-quarters of oceanic sharks and rays are at risk of extinction due to severe overfishing. He also found that the poorest African nations have the most to lose from climate impacts on their fisheries.
The biologists are part of a team whose research, published June 10 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London-B, unveiled the flattening of coral reefs in the Caribbean. See http://at.sfu.ca/VyCaul
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