SAFS Bevan Series Guest Lecture: “Stories and Sense-Making – How Human Minds Fish for Meaning”, Liz Neeley, The Story Collider

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One story tells the tale of overexploitation, ecosystem destruction and an industry bent on short-term profit over long-term stewardship. The other showcases well-managed fisheries delivering products that are healthier and more sustainable than land-based animal protein. Which story do you choose? And how can you weave your own work into the next installment?
Join us Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in the Fishery Auditorium for the final installment of the Winter 2018 Bevan Series on Sustainable Fisheries as Story Collider Executive Director Liz Neeley takes the stage to show us the power, and possibility, of fish tales.
To schedule a meeting with the speaker on Thursday or Friday, email yaaminiv@uw.edu with your availability.
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If you missed Dr. William Cheung’s talk, you can find it here.
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Liz Neeley
The Story Collider
Stories and Sense-Making — How Human Minds Fish for Meaning
Abstract:
In the 2018 Bevan series, speakers grapple with the uncertainties and complexities of sustainable fisheries in a changing climate. Although we call it “fisheries management”, it is most frequently the attempt to manage human beliefs and human behaviors. Fortunately, we have rich theoretical and empirical foundations for both conceptualizing and approaching these challenges. We know that data are essential but insufficient on their own. We know that people make sense of the world around them, and make decisions about their actions, through narrative. We know that internalized stories shape policymaking and media frames, as well as influencing technological innovation, market dynamics, and even the interpretation of new biological data. The question is, what will we do with this knowledge? This talk will explore research on storytelling and persuasion, and critically consider how and why busy fisheries biologists might approach adding something like “narrative competency” to their repertoire.
Speaker Biography:
Liz Neeley is the Executive Director of The Story Collider. In live shows across the country, a weekly podcast, and intensive workshops, The Story Collider is dedicated to producing true, personal stories about science. After a decade of work in ocean conservation and science communication, Liz wanted to more deeply explore the performance and substance of narratives. From 2008 to 2015, she worked as the Assistant Director of Science Outreach for COMPASS, and was affiliate staff at The University of Washington during that time. Before that, she worked on locally-managed marine conservation in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, and on international trade policies for deep-sea corals. Her approach to communication is influenced by her graduate research at Boston University on the evolution of visual communication systems in tropical reef fishes. She was on the advisory board of the CommLab at MIT 2015-2017, and is currently sits on the Advisory Council of Ensia magazine, and holds a Lecturer appointment at Yale University. She is a contributing author to Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (2016), Effective Risk Communication (2015), and Escape From the Ivory Tower (2010). Find her on twitter at @LizNeeley.

[SAFS Bevan Series Guest Lecture]: Minding the Gap: Spanning the Boundary Between Science and Policy, Angela Bednarek of the Pew Charitable Trusts (2/8)

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his year promises to be hot as we explore the effect of a changing climate on fishery sustainability. What effect does a 3+ year marine heatwave have on North Pacific fisheries? How does acidification affect shellfish and finish sustainability? Who wins, and who loses, in the political wars to determine who can fish what where? Can our own U.S. congress reauthorize our Fishery Management Act without major (untoward) alterations? And how can we, as scientists and citizens, communicate our expertise and opinions on all of these issues?
Please join us every week on Thursday at 4:30pm in the Fishery Auditorium (reception following). You can find the speaker list attached at the Bevan Series website.
This week’s speaker is Angela Bednarek of the Pew Charitable Trusts, who will discuss turning science into policy as part of a boundary organization. Her talk details can be found below, or at this link. If you’d like to schedule a meeting with our speaker, please email yaaminiv@uw.edu with your availability. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
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If you missed Dr. Terrie Klinger’s talk, you can find it here.
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Angela Bednarek
The Pew Charitable Trusts
Minding the Gap: Spanning the Boundary Between Science and Policy
Abstract:
The question of how best to ensure that science is considered within policy-making is a pressing one. One solution is to “span the boundaries” between science and policy and create a more comprehensive and inclusive knowledge exchange process. This approach aims to improve the chances that research results and decision-making needs are more closely aligned, and includes accounting for the many types of perspectives, values, and types of knowledge involved. A challenge, however, is that sufficiently accounting for all of these moving parts can be quite an undertaking. Boundary organizations and individuals take on this work as a specific practice. The Lenfest Ocean Program, a grant-making program at The Pew Charitable Trusts, has been operating as a boundary organization for the last 13 years, with the aim of both producing and integrating policy-relevant science into decision-making about the marine environment. In this talk, I will describe the Program’s approach and outcomes, and explore some of the broader opportunities and challenges in engaging in boundary-spanning.
Speaker Biography:
Angela Bednarek is a project director at The Pew Charitable Trusts in the environmental science division. She develops strategies for enhancing and assessing the policy relevance of the division’s research investments. This includes developing scholarship and convening scholars and practitioners on improving the connections between science and policy. Before joining Pew, Bednarek was a foreign affairs officer and AAAS Diplomacy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State in the Office of Environmental Policy. While at the State Department, she was responsible for negotiating U.S. positions on the Global Environmental Facility, OECD, the environmental impacts of World Bank projects and international chemicals agreements. In addition, she served as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Dams and Development Project. She has also held several fellowships in environmental policy, including one at the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York and a Morris K. Udall Fellowship in Environmental Public Policy and Conflict Resolution. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and studio art from the University of Notre Dame, a master’s degree in biology from the University of Louisville, and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Pennsylvania.

SAFS Bevan Speaker Series (1/25): Dr. Éva Plagányi: “Caught in the Middle: Sustaining Fisheries in a Changing Climate”

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This year promises to be hot as we explore the effect of a changing climate on fishery sustainability. What effect does a 3+ year marine heatwave have on North Pacific fisheries? How does acidification affect shellfish and finish sustainability? Who wins, and who loses, in the political wars to determine who can fish what where? Can our own U.S. congress reauthorize our Fishery Management Act without major (untoward) alterations? And how can we, as scientists and citizens, communicate our expertise and opinions on all of these issues?
 
Please join us every week on Thursday at 4:30pm in the Fishery Auditorium (reception following). You can find the speaker list attached at the Bevan Series website.
 
This week’s speaker is Dr. Éva Plagányi, Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO. Her talk details can be found below, or at this link. If you’d like to schedule a meeting with our speaker, please email yaaminiv@uw.edu with your availability. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
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If you missed Lynda V. Mapes’ talk, you can find it here.
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Éva Plagányi
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Oceans and Atmosphere
Caught in the Middle: Sustaining Fisheries in a Changing Climate
Abstract:
In a world of changing climate and increasing human population size, fisheries are caught between the pressures of changing climatic influences on productivity and distribution and increasing market demand. Sustaining marine fisheries in the face of these two global drivers of change increasingly calls for Global Approaches to Fisheries. Whilst a stretch from current approaches, there are several  modelling and related tools that can be developed and used to address the increasing complexity and global connectedness of fisheries systems as well as account for changing targets and baselines. For example, global approaches include self-analysis of us humans and our role in the ecosystem, analysing fishery supply chains, and considering non-stationary conservation goals and food needs. Being prepared for climate change and responding appropriately to changes in the state and organization of ecosystems, and their dependent societies, requires pre-tested strategies and adaptation options. I make the case also that the success of future sustainability initiatives depends largely on effective communication, and may require a re-think of conventional objectives and targets for fisheries management. Moreover, we should not lose sight of the value of data as our science becomes increasingly immersed in a cyber-world of simulation testing and our fisheries face increasing changes with no historical analogues.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Éva Plagányi is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Australia. Her research is strongly interdisciplinary and focuses on the biological modelling of marine resources and ecosystems. Current projects include Torres Strait tropical rock lobster, bêche de mer and finfish, and she leads the development of MICE (Models of Intermediate Complexity for Ecosystem assessments) including applications involving outbreaking crown-of-thorns starfish impacting Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. She earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in 2004, and moved to CSIRO in 2009. As a member of the Lenfest forage fish task force, she contributed to research on global management recommendations for forage fish. Her research has contributed to the management of marine resources, from krill to whales, and has been applied inter-alia in Australia, South Africa and Antarctica.

Bevan Series (SAFS weekly seminar): Truth-telling in the Salish Sea: The Black Art of Communicating Climate Change

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The Bevan Series is a weekly guest-lecture series hosted by the UW School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences on Thursdays in winter quarter from 4:30-5:30 pm in FSH 102 Auditorium. The lectures are free and open to the public (no ticket required).

Lynda V. Mapes

The Seattle Times

Truth-telling in the Salish Sea: The Black Art of Communicating Climate Change

I will discuss the essential link between a free press, and free scientific inquiry. In a world of fake news, how do scientists, and journalists get the truth out to the public and policy makers that need to hear it, in ways they will listen? What is the unique contribution that science has to make to the public policy debate? How do scientists get their data beyond the realm of technical papers and the academy to the public realm where it can make a difference – without tarting up, compromising or dumbing down the findings? How do reporters communicate science to a lay audience that may be unfamiliar to – and not even necessarily open to – what science has to say? Truth Telling in the Salish Sea is talk not only about the how-to of effective science communication, but why it is so critical.
Lynda Mapes is the environment reporter at The Seattle Times, and author of five books. Over the course of her career she has won numerous national and regional awards, most recently a 2012 award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest professional science association. She has written four previous books, most recently Witness Tree, published by Bloombury in April, 2017 which tells the story of climate change through the life of a single 100-year old oak. Her book Elwha, a River Reborn (Mountaineers Books, 2013) about the largest dam removal project ever in history and the effort to restore a wilderness watershed in Washington’s Olympic National Park, and its once legendary salmon runs was also the subject of a major exhibit at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Her forthcoming book, Rescuing Rialto, (Houghton Mifflin, 2019) Lynda’s first children’s book, tells the story of the rescue and rehabilitation of a baby sea otter orphaned on Washington’s Rialto beach. In 2013-14 Lynda was awarded a 9-month Knight fellowship in Science Journalism at MIT. In 2014-15 she was a Bullard Fellow at the Harvard Forest, exploring the human and natural history of a single, 100-year old oak for her book, Witness Tree. She lives in Seattle.

[SAFS Bevan Series]: “Fish and Fisheries in Hot Water: (How) Do We Adapt?”

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the following message is from Graduate Student Yaamini Venkataraman, from the Roberts Lab:
This year promises to be hot as we explore the effect of a changing climate on fishery sustainability. What effect does a 3+ year marine heatwave have on North Pacific fisheries? How does acidification affect shellfish and finish sustainability? Who wins, and who loses, in the political wars to determine who can fish what where? Can our own U.S. congress reauthorize our Fishery Management Act without major (untoward) alterations? And how can we, as scientists and citizens, communicate our expertise and opinions on all of these issues?
 
Please join us every week on Thursday at 4:30pm in the Fishery Auditorium (reception following). You can find the speaker list attached, or at the Bevan Series website.
This week’s speaker is Malin Pinsky, an assistant professor in Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University. He’ll link changing ocean temperatures with impacts on fish, fisheries, and us. You can find his talk details below.
 
Malin has several open slots on Thursday, Jan. 11 and Friday, Jan. 12 to meet with students, postdocs and faculty! If you’d like to schedule a meeting with our speaker, please email me at yaaminiv@uw.edu with your availability. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
 
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Malin Pinsky

 

Rutgers University, Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources

 

Fish and Fisheries in Hot Water: (How) Do We Adapt?

 
Abstract:
The same ecological and evolutionary processes operate in marine and terrestrial environments, and yet ocean life thrives in a fluid environment that is dramatically different from what we experience in air. The ocean is, in effect, a 1.3 sextillion liter water bath with muted thermal variation through time and space and limited oxygen. In this talk, I will trace what I see as some of the important consequences for fish and fisheries, including a number of striking contrasts and similarities to patterns on land. Most marine animals have evolved narrow thermal tolerances and live close to their upper thermal limits, which makes them surprisingly sensitive to even small changes in temperature. I will show that fish and other marine animals have responded rapidly and often quite predictably to temperature change and temperature trends, across time-scales from seasons to decades. Finally, I will link these rapid ocean changes to their impacts on fisheries and on people. The tight feedbacks and lagged responses between fisheries and ocean dynamics create both immediate impacts and complex dynamics that can complicate management efforts. The magnitude and extent of climate impacts on fisheries imply the need for a new era of climate-ready management more fully informed by environmental dynamics and long-term trends.
 
Speaker Biography:
Malin Pinsky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in Ocean Sciences at Rutgers University. There, he leads a research group studying the ecology and evolution of global change in the ocean, including conservation and management solutions. He developed and maintains the OceanAdapt website to document shifting ocean animals in North America, a resource used by governments and NGOs for climate adaptation planning. He has published articles in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biology, and other international journal, and his research has received extensive coverage in the press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, CBC, and National Public Radio. He has received early career awards and fellowships from the National Academy of Sciences, American Society of Naturalists, and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Previously, he was a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an A.B. from Williams College, and roots along the coast of Maine.

The Bevan Series: weekly guest lectures at SAFS in winter

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from fish.uw.edu:

The Bevan Series is a popular annual event held one quarter each year, usually in the format of weekly seminars for 10 weeks, and on occasion as a two-day symposium. The series features internationally recognized experts seeking to examine current issues affecting fisheries and marine conservation, representing as many viewpoints as possible, focusing on solutions to pressing problems. All lectures are free and open to the public.

The Bevan Series is generously funded by the Donald E. Bevan Endowed Fund in Fisheries, the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, and Washington Sea Grant. The Bevan Series was founded by Tanya Bevan as a tribute to her late husband, Don Bevan. Don’s academic career spanned almost 50 years at the University of Washington, during which time he was director of the School of Fisheries and dean of the College of Fisheries. His work focused on the key intersection between science, economics and politics, and he was deeply involved in the enactment and reauthorization of the Magnuson Act, which governs America’s marine fisheries. He worked tirelessly to ensure that fisheries managers, industry and scientists spoke with a unified voice in changing federal regulations, and also helped found what is now the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs.

The Bevan Series seeks to continue Don Bevan’s legacy.

The 2018 Bevan Series will be held at the University of Washington in the Fishery Sciences Auditorium (FSH 102) every Thursday afternoon at 4:30 during the Winter academic quarter. The address is 1122 NE Boat Street, Seattle, WA 98105 (map).

Join us for the first SAFS lecture today (Thursday, January 4) at 4:30 pm in FSH 102 Auditorium

speaker: Professor Ray Hillborn, Aquatic & Fishery Sciences, University of Washington
talk: Is U.S. Fisheries Policy Working? Getting the Message to Congress