Please join the Department of Fisheries Biology in welcoming the Michael Scott Distinguished Lecture guest speaker, Dr. Carl B. Schreck.

 

The title of Dr. Schreck's talk is, Haruspication and Fish Biology:  Why We Do It Well and Why We Don’t on November 1, 4:00-5:00PM, in Natural Resources 101. See attached flier for additional details. We hope you can attend!

 

Doing relevant research on fisheries biology is exceptionally difficult; making appropriate management decisions is even more difficult.  I’ll share observations from my own research that support these contentions.  Difficulties arise from interacting and compounding factors.  These include the fact that in general there are no biological laws, as opposed to the physical sciences that are grounded on laws. Our research is driven by special interest groups and for this and other reasons we often do not ask the right questions.  These dilemmas are compounded by the fact that we frequently don’t or can’t address problems at the right spatial or temporal scale(s).  Further, research tends to concentrate on finding “averages” while in reality the data may not be unimodal, not alone normally distributed.  Basically, we do not understand the biology of fish as well as we need to, particularly life history and natural history.  For example, do salmon biologists really know what a smolt is, understand salmon adult migration, or why our salmon die after spawning?  Do we need to worry not just about watersheds but also airsheds?  How important are parasites as population regulatory factors?  And, are lamprey good indicators of habitat quality?  We are also hindered by journals and proposal review processes; totally novel findings or thoughts are difficult to get accepted because they fly in the face of commonly accepted paradigms perpetuated by group think.  In addition there can be ethical constraints that influence our science.