I think it's better for me to just describe who I am, how I got involved in sea lice, and what my expertise is. I've made the assumption that I am here to answer questions and to help when I can with information and, possibly, opinions.
As for who I am, I'm an independent biologist. I have worked independently since getting my Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of Victoria. My professional training is in fish physiology in fisheries and has concentrated on the sustainable use of aquatic biodiversity.
I have some familiarity with the biology and problems caused by sea lice because I performed two contracts for the BC Pacific Salmon Forum in 2008 and 2009. I was asked to review the relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature for research on the interactions between wild salmon and sea lice produced by the salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago. That was my brief there. I am not a sea lice biologist. I don't have personal and professional experience in regard to doing experiments on sea lice. I did one more contract after that for the salmon forum on the threats to wild salmon in British Columbia, of which sea lice was one among many.
In the first decade of my career, I applied my training mostly to projects on aquatic biodiversity conservation in developing countries and indigenous communities. After about 10 years of that, I formed what I think was a successful--it's still going--Canadian NGO, a non-profit called the World Fisheries Trust, just to apply these research results and things I had done and published, both in Canada and in developing countries. We did a lot of training and community development kinds of things. Along the way, I published four technical books on the conservation of aquatic biological diversity.
In the third decade, I left the World Fisheries Trust to concentrate more on being an independent consultant and a writer. I specialized in two things. I wrote a number of reviews, risk assessments, and policy analyses on fisheries and aquaculture issues for some national and international agencies. Then, wearing my slightly more creative hat, I wrote and published a number of articles, columns, and books on fisheries science and development. These have been written for a general audience.
I published my first real book in 2008, which is called The End of the River . It is about global water management and fisheries and has a lot to do with water management in Brazil.
Some of the places where I've found funding over the years for my projects include the FAO of the United Nations, CIDA, IDRC, Fisheries and Oceans, the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Montreal, and a number of foundations.
I've written quite a lot of risk analyses and biological synopses for DFO. Most of these are on species that are coming under the purview of COSEWIC or are listed aquatic species at risk. A couple of those that were fairly high profile were the Cultus Lake sockeye and the Nooksack dace, which is an obscure little fish but has quite a political history.
I've been doing sustainable fisheries and biodiversity conservation in Canada, southeast Asia, and Latin America for about 25 years. At one point I led quite a long-term campaign for preserving salmon genetic diversity, so I'm quite familiar with many of the salmon problems in British Columbia.
I've organized and chaired numerous international conferences and workshops on aquatic biodiversity and advised the federal and provincial governments on some of these issues, as well as first nations. I've done quite a lot of work with first nations, including the Shuswap in British Columbia, the Nuu-chah-nulth, which is a collection of nations, the Musqueam, the Carrier-Sekani, and the Sliammon.
As for what I do now, I'm a consultant and a writer. In the consulting, I concentrate on these aquatic biodiversity and policy issues.