Dr. Jackie King is the Program Head of Basin and Coastal-scale Interactions program with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.  Her research investigates linkages between basin-scale processes and coastal-scale ecosystems including climate forcing, large-scale oceanographic processes, and connectivity in large marine ecosystems. She collaborates in integrative pelagic field studies along the continental shelf, with her primary focus on understanding the factors controlling the abundance, distribution, and production of salmon and associated species in marine ecosystems.  She is also the lead for the Canadian Pacific Shark Research Program; responsible for all Canadian Pacific elasmobranch research and conservation.

Yeongha (Johan) Jung has been working with the juvenile salmon program in the Regional Ecosystem Effects on Fish & Fisheries Section at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo for 14 years. He has over 36 experience of field research related to High Seas and Strait of Georgia juvenile salmon program including trawl, purse seine and beach seine surveys. 

His specialties are identifying all salmon species from fry to adult stage, biological sampling, retrieving, preparing and reading CWT, PIT tag and otoliths. He is also able to sample oceanographic data with Seabird CTD and RBR, collecting water, phytoplankton and zooplankton. He is trained for on board acoustic equipment such as Simrad EK80/SX90 and HiPAP as well. 

He is very excited to join the IYS expedition will expand his experience on high seas beyond the station P. 

Cameron Freshwater is a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Ecosystem Science Division. His work focuses on the intersection between Pacific salmon marine ecology and fisheries management. He is particularly interested in spatio-temporal distributions, drivers of recruitment variability, and management strategy evaluations. He has participated in numerous salmon surveys since 2013 and currently manages a program to estimate adult Chinook salmon abundance, survival, and movement rates in southern BC marine regions. 

Cindy Wright is a biogeochemical oceanographer studying carbon and particulate dynamics in the NE Pacific. She works for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as an oceanographic technician supporting numerous physical, biogeochemical and fisheries programs. Along with Chelsea Stanley, her main roll will be overseeing sampling for physical oceanographic properties and biogeochemical sampling during the IYS cruise including the zooplankton sampling.

Erika Anderson works as an aquatic biologist at the Pacific Biological Station for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She completed her doctorate in biology at the University of Victoria and Advanced Diploma in Geographic Information Systems at Vancouver Island University. Her experience leading British Columbia midwater trawl surveys, studying juvenile Pacific Salmon in an ecosystem context, led to her participation in this exciting Pan-Pacific Winter High Seas Expedition. Her recent research has focused on how juvenile Sockeye Salmon energy density varies by stock and relates to early marine hypotheses regarding food, survival and competition. During this scientific expedition, Erika hopes to learn more about Pacific Salmon condition, diet, and stocks in the Gulf of Alaska, and how these findings may be used to ensure Pacific Salmon survival.

Amy Tabata is a biologist working in the Ecosystems Science division at Fisheries and Oceans Canada.  Her current work focuses on the marine migration and ecosystems of juvenile salmon, which includes participating in trawl surveys along the British Columbia coast.  She brings that experience, along with a background of working on salmon and other marine species using  molecular biology  and genetic methods.  She is looking forward to participating in the Canadian leg of the Salmon Pan-Pacific Expedition to help add  to the story of pacific salmon, and is very interested in how the data from various surveys at different times and places can work together, and how we might be able to use this knowledge to better understand the various factors that impact salmon survival.  

Tyler Zubkowski is a Senior Technician with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans out of the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, BC. He has over 20 years of experience working on juvenile and adult salmon in the marine environment. He participates in multiple Ecosystem surveys each year on the Pacific Coast.  He is looking forward to being part of a great team on this expedition

Daniel Williams is currently an aquatic science technician at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, BC.  He has been pursuing diverse experiences in the marine biology world on the Pacific Coast ever since he was old enough to walk a tideline.  It became rapidly apparent that he prefers a life at sea so now that is where he goes whenever possible.  Daniel is honoured to be participating in the IYSS and looks forward to spending time in the middle of the Pacific Ocean whilst looking at fish and playing in the lab during the less touristed months.

Hilari Dennis-Bohm is an aquatic biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Her current research focuses on understanding Pacific Herring interactions and linkages with other biological and physical variables in their environment. Hilari organizes the at-sea sampling for the annual Integrated Pelagic Ecosystem survey led by Dr. Jennifer Boldt and Dr. Jackie King. This collaborative survey examines the structure and function of the pelagic ecosystem, primarily focusing on Pacific Herring and juvenile Pacific salmon, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Hilari’s experience on these surveys and passion for field work led her to participate in the 2022 Gulf of Alaska Expedition. She completed her BSc. in Marine Biology (honours co-op) at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada and an MSc. in Marine Mammal Science from University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her research interests include factors affecting the abundance, distribution, movement, and trophic dynamics of pelagic fish. During this expedition, Hilari hopes to learn more about the condition, energy storage, and distribution of pelagic species and how lower trophic species impact the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem.

Rick Ferguson is a Senior Technician with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, working out of the Pacific Biological Station.  He has worked on Salmon and Invertebrate programs throughout the Pacific Region for over 20 years and leads or participates in multiple at-sea surveys annually.  He is keen to experience the North Pacific in February and to help collect Science that will help better understand the offshore waters in winter

Chelsea is an Aquatic Research Technician with Fisheries and Oceans Canada supporting a wide variety of programs in biological and chemical oceanographic sampling. Her main project focusses on fisheries acoustic research on the distribution of Pacific Hake in the NE Pacific. She has lent her technician skills to a wide array of surveys including those that have taken her to the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as the NE Pacific. She has a keen interest in examining the layers of marine species identified by scientific echosounders using discrete sampling plankton nets, especially in offshore areas around seamounts.

Nicholas Ens is a graduate student at the University of Victoria under Dr. John Dower and Dr. Stéphane Gauthier. His current work involves integrating remote signals from echosounders with direct net samples to better estimate the biomass and composition of pelagic organisms in the open ocean. Nic is experienced in the analysis of echosounder data and has done so in collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada for several years, along with other projects for various agencies. He has also participated in many DFO surveys where he has processed fish, zooplankton, and acoustic data. For this expedition, Nic is particularly interested in how the distribution, abundance, and composition of communities of zooplankton and micronekton vary in the Gulf of Alaska, and how these organisms influence salmon feeding and distributions.

Marta Konik is a postdoctoral fellow at the Remote Sensing and Spectral Lab at the University of Victoria, Canada. She has a background in physical oceanography and remote sensing. She obtained her PhD at the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot, Poland. During her PhD she worked on identification of cyanobacteria blooms in the Baltic Sea and phenology analyses of the blooms, based on multiyear satellite data series. 

As a participant of the International Year of Salmon 2022 expedition she will collect samples for the pigment analyses that will be used to identify phytoplankton functional types, which are the primary producers in the Ocean, present in the sea waters during winter. She works on determining biological provinces of the North Pacific based on the differences in composition of phytoplankton, as it is an important part salmon food web and one of the factors affecting salmon survival. Satellite data will help her to understand complex relationships between environmental conditions, phytoplankton and zooplankton abundance, and salmon returns rate that could be used for future predictions.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia working with Dr. Brian Hunt to investigate food web dynamics in zooplankton communities. This project uses fatty acids as dual indicators of trophic pathways and nutritional quality. We aim to understand how environmental conditions influence the fatty acid composition of microbial communities and how those dynamics in turn influence zooplankton. These processes are foundational to understanding the bottom-up effects of prey quality on salmon and other fish in the Salish Sea and along the British Columbia coast.

I grew up on San Juan Island and completed my PhD at the University of Washington with Dr. Julie Keister. My dissertation investigated the effects of ocean acidification on krill and copepods using a combination of field observations and laboratory experiments. It was during graduate school that I first had the opportunity to participate in a large systematic oceanographic cruise and I am excited to be a part of the IYS expedition because of how powerful they are for understanding an ecosystem from physical drivers up through the entire food web. 

I am a Master’s student at the University of Victoria working under Dr. John Dower and co-supervised by Dr. Akash Sastri of the DFO. The main focus of my research is zooplankton ecology and physiology, but I really enjoy participating in research cruises such as this to polish my oceanography skills. My current work involves testing biochemical approaches of measuring zooplankton secondary production in situ. This information should bring to light techniques that are easier to execute than traditional methods of measuring secondary production, while still retaining accuracy. I am very excited to be a part of this expedition and see the distribution and
abundance of the zooplankton communities along Canada’s west coast.