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Rachel Wang & Leah McConney, Master of Marine Management Candidates, 2012-2013, report on the recent conference.

The ‘Sustainable Oceans 2013: Building Bridges in Ocean Management’ conference took place on April 12 and 13 at Dalhousie University. Organized and led by students of the Marine Affairs Program (2012-2013) the conference is a key activity of the Sobey Fund for Oceans, a partnership of Marine Affairs and WWF Canada. The purpose of this conference was to connect the science, policy and public spheres by bringing people together from all sectors to collaboratively identify challenges facing sustainable ocean management in Canada.

Our keynote speaker, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, delivered a moving talk on the progress that has been made in ocean management and what still needs to be done. She noted that our current environmental crisis calls for interdisciplinarity, diversity and, above all, urgency.

Sarika’s talk was followed by a discussion panel moderated by Jenny Baechler (Associate Director, Corporate Residency MBA). Panelists included Maxine Westhead (government representative from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans), Christine Penney (industry representative from Clearwater Seafoods), Jessica MacIntosh (academia representative from the Marine Affairs Program 2012-2013), Tyler Eddy (science representative from the Biology Department), Iaian Archibald (public representative from the Surfing Association of Nova Scotia) and Jarrett Corke (representative and co-founder of ShARCC). The emergent themes from this discussion included the value of having all sectors at a table and discussing contentious issues, building personal relationships with those from other sectors, connecting with the younger generation through social media and TED talks, and maintaining a continuous and respectful dialogue with stakeholders. This discussion concluded with a commentary by journalist John Lewandowski who reasserted the importance of communication in breaking down the barriers between silos of knowledge and truly bridging all sectors.

The Friday evening event also welcomed five local artists (Bridget Turner, Daina Scarola, Jessica Lynn Wiebe, Mike Connors and Trevor Nicodemo) who showcased their ocean-inspired art.

On Saturday, oral and poster presentations occurred throughout the day on three broad topics: responsible industry development, stakeholder engagement and public participation, and information and knowledge management for effective ocean governance. The quality of the work was outstanding and judges had difficulty in selecting winners. Yue Yao, an alumna of the School for Resource and Environmental Studies, critically analyzed Canadian law and policy concerning the importation and exportation of shark products and was selected as the top oral presenter in the category of responsible industry development. First runner-up in the oral presentations was François Bregha, Master of Environmental Studies candidate, who spoke on the problems of scale and the flow of information. The Building Bridges award – for the oral presentation that best spoke to the overarching theme of the conference – was presented to Suzuette Soomai, an Interdisciplinary PhD candidate, who gave an insightful presentation on the quantification of the use and influence of information in policy-making with case studies focusing on Trinidad and Tobago, Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Maine.

The award for best undergraduate poster went to Haley Guest (Environmental Science) whose topic was connecting value and knowledge of marine environmental issues. Runner-up was Emilie Novaczek (Environmental Science) whose poster used quantitative and qualitative data to provide baseline information on the marine impacts of tourism on the Caribbean island of San Andrés. In the graduate category, Christine Stortini (Resource and Environmental Studies) won for her poster on the use of a spatially explicit, species-level vulnerability assessment. The runner-up was Amy Ryan (co-authors Sean Brillant, David Browne) whose poster focused on how to determine the most common threat to marine species at risk of extinction in Canada. Vanja Avdic, Scott Biggar, Karen Devitt, Robin McCullough and Katie Paroschy from the School for Resource and Environmental Studies won the People’s Choice Award for their poster titled “An investigation of the expansion of salmon farming on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia.”

Following these presentations, the Drafting a Blueprint for Building Bridges in Ocean Management workshop facilitated by the students gave everyone the opportunity to discuss the major issues from this two-day conference. Information captured during the workshop will be used to develop an editorial on a call for action to outline the next steps towards sustainable oceans management; the article will be submitted to local and national newspapers and other media.

Prior to the conference a public “dreamwall” was also used to capture the thoughts of passersby on what they could do to make oceans sustainable.

From this conference will come the editorial article (A. Flynn & J. MacIntosh), Marine Affairs Technical Series papers (editors J. Stoner & J. MacIntosh) and conference proceedings (J. Stoner & J. MacIntosh). Check out soceans.wiki.dal.ca in early May, or email sfoceans@dal.ca

Acknowledgements

A sincere thanks to all of our sponsors and supporters: the Sobey Fund for Oceans, Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students, Nexus Coastal, AGAT Laboratories, Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia, Dalhousie Faculty of Management Alumni Relations, Marine Affairs Student Society, MBA Corporate Residency Program, and the Dean’s office, Faculty of Management. We are very grateful to all the presenters, participants, artists, chairs, judges, rapporteurs and volunteers who contributed their time and talent to make this a memorable event.

For further information, please contact Jenna Stoner, conference co-chair