Symposia Abstracts EEEF 2010: May 16 - 20, 2010
Title: The impacts of environmental stressors on fish behavior
Organizers: Astrid Kodrik-Brown and Sigal Balshine
Abstract: Aquatic habitats are under siege. Multiple stressors such as nutrient overload, acid rain, PCB and heavy metals contamination, endocrine disrupting compounds, hydrological project habitat alteration, aquaculture, and invasive species all pose serious threats to fish and the aquatic habitats they live in. In this symposium we highlight how fish behaviour may be altered by various man-made environmental stressors. We will bring together a group of researchers working on this issue and debate the costs/benefits and merits of using behaviour as a useful biomarker of environmental perturbation.
Title: How knowledge of behavior can aid salmonid recovery
Organizer: Gene Helfman
Abstract: Native salmonid populations globally have experienced precipitous declines due to combined threats interacting with complex salmonid life histories. Billions of dollars have been spent in the U. S. and Canada alone trying to reverse trends and aid the recovery of endangered stocks. It has long been recognized that different populations exhibit life history traits that reflect local adaptation, and recovery efforts often take into account population-specific ecological characteristics. Less effort has been directed toward understanding possible population-specific behavioral attributes. The aim of this proposed symposium is to bring together researchers whose expertise would allow us to add behavioral knowledge to our tool chest of recovery tactics, thus increasing the likelihood of success in salmonid conservation.
Title: Reconciling fisheries with conservation
Organizers: John Reynolds and Nick Dulvy
Abstract: There has been a long-standing gulf between the traditional aims of fisheries, to maximize sustainable yields, and the traditional aims of conservation, to minimize risk of extinction and wider ecological damage. How “over-exploited” does a population need to be in order to be considered at risk of extinction? There has been a great deal of controversy over this issue, which is very prominent in current discussions about extinction risk criteria, endangered species acts, and international conventions such as CITES and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The objective of this symposium will be to bring together people from a wide variety of backgrounds who have studied these issues with a wide variety of species and contexts, in order to help to reconcile fisheries with conservation.
