Major Area (Other): Marine Ecology, Spatial Analysis, Social Sciences

Natalie Ban, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Environmental Studies. She is interested in the intricate ties between people and the environment, especially in coastal and marine systems, and implications for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. Her interdisciplinary research investigates social and ecological themes to better understand how social-ecological systems function. Much of her work is collaborative, including with First Nations, and takes place across the world (Canada, Australia, Indonesia, the high seas), with a key focus here at home in British Columbia. She obtained her undergraduate and master’s degrees in geography and environmental studies from McGill University, worked for several years in marine conservation in British Columbia, and then did her Ph.D. in resource management and environmental studies at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre. Ban spent the past four years in tropical north Queensland for her postdoctoral work at the Australian Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. She has published more than 40 academic papers and book chapters.

Major Area (Other): Marine Ecology, Marine Spatial Planning, Spatial Analysis

Rosaline Canessa, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. Her research focuses on integrated coastal management, marine spatial planning and marine protected areas, as well as the application of Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) for seascape visualization and decision support, particularly in collaborative settings. Her other areas of expertise are recreational boating, shipping and aquaculture. Canessa is a board member of Coastal Zone Canada Association and Parks Canada National Marine Conservation Area Science Network. She holds a B.Sc. in marine biology from McGill University, M.Sc. in marine resource development and protection from Heriot–Watt University (Edinburgh) and Ph.D. in geography from the University of Victoria.

Major Area (Other): Marine Spatial Planning, Ecosystem-based Management

Charles “Bud” Ehler is the president of Ocean Visions, an international coastal and marine management consulting company based in Paris, France. He specializes in expert advice on strategic planning, especially marine spatial planning. He often works with UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and was the co-author of the widely used UNESCO guide to marine spatial planning. Prior to moving to Paris in 2005, he worked for 32 years as a senior executive for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He taught regional planning and natural resources management at the University of Michigan, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and Stony Brook University. He has a graduate degree in regional planning from the University of Michigan and an undergraduate degree in architecture from the Pennsylvania State University. He has published over 100 papers on coastal and marine management.

Major Area (Other): Social Sciences

Wolfgang Haider, Ph.D., is director and professor at Simon Fraser University in the School of Resource and Environmental Management (REM). Haider is interested in social science survey methods, quantitative analysis, and trade-off modeling, as they relate to decision making in resource management. Most of his work focuses on protected areas management, outdoor recreation and recreational fishing, resource-based tourism, land use planning, and landscape perception. Many of his research applications include discrete choice experiments, which permit the explicit modeling of trade-offs for a large number of land use or recreation alternatives, including currently non-existing options. Prior to joining Simon Fraser University, he worked as a social research scientist at the Centre for Northern Forest Ecosystem Research in Thunder Bay. Haider holds a master’s degree in geography and history from the University of Vienna, Austria, a master’s in geography from Carleton University and a Ph.D. in geography from McGill University.

Major Area (Other): Marine Ecology, Fisheries Science, Ecosystem-based Management

Phillip Levin, Ph.D., leads the Ecosystem Science Program and the Nearshore Ecology Team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Washington. Levin is a community ecologist and conservation biologist who is interested in bridging the gaps between theory and practice in conservation biology and fisheries science, and developing modeling and statistical approaches to inform ecosystem-based management of marine systems. The main focus of his current work is on developing scientific tools to inform integrated ecosystem assessments and coastal and marine spatial planning in the United States (and beyond). Levin is the scientific co-lead of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program efforts in the California Current large marine ecosystem and Puget Sound. In the course of this work, he has led the development of new analytical tools for characterizing ecosystem health and forecasting the cumulative effects of fisheries management and coastal zone management and climate change on living marine resources. Levin received the Department of Commerce silver award and NOAA’s bronze medal for his work on marine ecosystems, and the Seattle Aquarium’s Conservation Research Award for his work on Puget Sound sharks. He has published over 100 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and technical reports, and his work has been featured in such news outlets as NPR, the BBC, MSBNC, The Economist, among others. Levin is the senior editor of the scientific journal Conservation Letters, recently served as president of the Western Society of Naturalists, and has served on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory panels. Before joining the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1999, Levin was an assistant professor of marine biology at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of New Hampshire in and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina.

Major Area (Other): Economics

Gordon Munro, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus with the Department of Economics and Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. He is also visiting professor with the Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources, University of Portsmouth (UK), and is a partner with Clark, Munro and Associates in Vancouver, B.C. He has published extensively on the economics of fisheries management, at both the domestic and international level. He has undertaken consulting work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Canada’s Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). He has served on panels pertaining to fisheries issues established by the National Research Council (USA) and the Royal Society of Canada, and served as a member of an independent panel on the governance of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations, based at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. Munro holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Major Area (Other): Social Sciences, Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Nancy Turner, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor and Hakai professor in ethnoecology at the University of Victoria. She is an ethnobotanist whose research integrates the fields of botany and ecology with anthropology, geography and linguistics, among others. She is interested in the traditional knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of indigenous peoples, particularly in western Canada. Turner has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 40 years, collaborating with indigenous communities to help document, retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and habitats, including indigenous foods, materials and medicines, as well as language and vocabulary relating to plants and environments. Currently, she is working on several research and writing projects. In 2011, she was named to a new position as Hakai chair in ethnoecology and was awarded a $1.25-million grant from the Quadra Island-based Tula Foundation to support her ongoing work. Turner has authored, co-authored or co-edited over 20 books, and over 120 book chapters and peer-reviewed papers, and numerous other publications, both popular and academic, in the area of ethnobotany, ethnoecology, traditional ecological knowledge and sustainable resource use. She has received a number of awards for her work.

Major Area (Other): Marine Ecology

Frank Whitney is an emeritus scientist from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. He has spent his past 43 years studying coastal and oceanic waters adjacent to B.C. He participated in a variety of mesocosm pollution studies throughout the 1970s and 80s. His focus shifted to open ocean and by the early 1990s he ran the Line P Program, supporting Canadian Joint Global Ocean Flux (JGOFS) studies and World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) surveys. He retired in 2006 from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and continues to work with time-series data from the North Pacific. In 2011, he was awarded the Murray Newman medal for research, an acknowledgement of his more than 50 publications and support for a variety of university programs. Over the past few years, he has especially focused on hypoxia and nutrient distribution in the subarctic Pacific. Frank obtained a B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of British Columbia in 1969.

Major Area (Other): Marine Ecology, Ecosystem Services

Spencer Wood, Ph.D., is a marine ecologist with the Natural Capital Project, an interdisciplinary team of scientists and practitioners developing tools that account for the multiple values of ecosystems. Wood’s research focuses on understanding and quantifying interactions between humans and ecosystems, through studies of nature-based tourism and how human fit into food webs. In British Columbia, Dr. Wood works with West Coast Aquatic on Vancouver Island, supporting marine spatial planning with the Natural Capital Project’s InVEST tools. He holds B.Sc. degrees in environmental science and zoology from Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of British Columbia.