Welcome to the Salmon Watersheds Lab

About Us

The Salmon Watersheds Lab (SWL) at Simon Fraser University is a large, collaborative aquatic ecology research lab focused on salmon systems in western Canada. The SWL consists of between 12 and 25 staff and students at any given time, collaborating with more than 40 partner organizations and engaging in research across nine different projects, many of which include fieldwork across British Columbia.

Our mission is to understand the dynamics of aquatic ecosystems, from headwaters to estuaries, and inform their conservation and management, with a primary focus on salmon systems.

- News and Updates -

Who gets to catch the last salmon?

A new op-ed piece by Jonathan Moore was recently published in the Vancouver Sun. He explains how salmon-reliant people should unite and fight for salmon and salmon habitats. If we have to ask who can catch the remaining salmon, we have failed.

Read Here

New Paper Alert!

Postdoc Spencer Dakin Kuiper recently published his paper on how environmental pressures add up across the landscape and how different landscapes can be grouped by these pressures. Read the paper here.

Congratulations!

Former Lab Member, Julie Charbonneau, was awarded the Robert L. Kendall award for TAFS paper of the year! Read the paper here!

New Paper Alert!

Previous lab member, Anna Potapova, and co-authors have published a paper in ECOSPHERE on life diversity and climate exposure in adult Chinook salmon. Read it here!

Welcome!

Welcome to our new USRA student, David Pellegrinelli Bastos! David will be helping our team with fieldwork this summer! Check out his bio here.

Congratulations!

Lab Member, Christian Carson, successfully defended his Master's in Resource and Environmental Management.

Glacier Futures Workshop

Our team just got back from the Yukon where we co-hosted a Glacier Futures Gathering. This gathering was a labour of love and we are so thrilled with how it turned out. Stay tuned for more information!

Join us for a virtual workshop June 16th as we work towards finding solutions to cumulative stressors impacting salmon. In partnership with the @watershedfuturesinitiative, @pacificsalmonfoundation, the Washington State Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Register at the link in our bio.

We were up in Whitehorse May 19-20th to host a Glacier Futures Gathering at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre. This gathering was a labour of love and we are so thrilled with how it turned out.

Artwork by Amie Chaotakoongite
Photography by Sherry Young at Lens and Science

Turn up the volume 🔊 🧊

Jon, Britt and Amy made a pit stop at Tutshi Lake during a trip to the Yukon for a Glacier Futures event and caught it mid-thaw. The sound you hear is candle ice: sunlight is melting the bonds between crystals, leaving long vertical columns that chime against each other as the wind moves them. A brief springtime sound signalling breakup.

More on the team’s trip to Whitehorse to come!

Last week we celebrated Critty defending his masters thesis! We couldn’t be more proud 🥹

His work looked at how forest harvest patterns affect stream temperatures in the North Thompson, in partnership with Dr Doug Braun. This project had some challenging field conditions and complex models but he made it look easy.

Congratulations Critty!

As the semester comes to an end we are wrapping up Aquatic Ecology, an under-level undergraduate class at SFU bisc taught this Spring by Jon with Ben and Britt. Highlights of the semester were discovering some amazing invertebrates like a water scorpion and giant stonefly, as well as collaborative work to monitor juvenile salmon use of restored habitats with DFO. It was soggy, cold, and fantastic! Thanks to the awesome students and partners.

A few weeks ago SWL alum Anna Potapova published a really cool paper in Climate Ecology!

Check it out at the link in our bio

HINT: IT’S A TRICK QUESTION! Let’s try to avoid having to ask that question.

Jon just published an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun and we think it’s pretty great! Read at the Vancouver Sun or at the link in our bio.

We asked some SWL students to describe their research without using the words in their research/thesis titles.

A new article by Micheal Price and Jonathan Moore has just been published in The Conservation. They discuss how Canada is loosing track of its wild Pacific salmon at the worst possible time, just as climate change and industrial development put growing pressure on their survival.

Link to the article in our bio!

SWLs favourite papers from 2025!
A couple weeks ago we all shared our favourite papers from 2025 and voted for our favourites. Unsurprisingly they were both important studies on species conservation in a changing climate. Here are our top two:

“Indigenous Knowledge as a sole data source in habitat selection functions” by Gryba et al. (2025) - Iñupiat hunters in Alaska are showing us how Indigenous Knowledge can be just as valuable as satellite data for understanding where ringed seals live and breed. By working with scientists, their generations of observations were used to create a statistical model that can inform conservation decisions. Knowledge coproduction at its best!

“Anatomy of range contraction: Flow-phenology mismatches threaten salmonid fishes near their trailing edge” by Carlson et al. (2025) - California’s 2012-2016 drought taught us a harsh lesson. When winter rains came too late, salmon couldn’t reach their spawning grounds. While some populations were able to shift downstream, others crashed entirely. The timing of just a few storms determined which fish could and couldn’t access their spawning grounds.

Find both of these papers in the link on our bio!

A new study by postdoc Spencer Dakin Kuiper explores how environmental pressures add up across the landscape and how different landscapes can be grouped by these pressures. The study examines what these patterns mean for salmon and their spawning habitats, and how this knowledge can support management.

Congratulations Spencer and team!!

Check it out now - link in bio

Meet the team!
We’re kicking off a new series where we introduce you to the brilliant minds of the Salmon Watersheds Lab, starting with our fearless leader, Jon! Stay tuned to learn more about what we are up to this year.

Note: No crabs were studied in the making of this post

Late post, sorry!!

A huge congratulations is in order for our queen of steelhead, Julie!

Julie successfully (dominated) defended her PhD on "Shifting life histories and recreational fishery dynamics in steelhead trout”.

The lab will be a sad, empty, void without her glowing presence, but we know she is on to do incredible things.

Well done, Dr. Charbonneau 🔥

Today is a bit of a tragic one for the salmon watersheds lab 🥲🥲 Our beloved fieldwork coordinator extraordinaire (and the true creative genius behind this account) Kei is moving on to her next big adventure (outmigrating into the big open ocean if you will…LOL)! 🐟😢

Kei has been an incredible part of our team these past two years, always bringing her dedication, curiosity, creativity, humor, and love of noodles to all our field work projects and prep 🫡

We will miss her SO much and are so grateful to have had the opportunity to work alongside her!

A newly published (!!) collaborative study led by lab alumni Kirsten Bradford upholds Indigenous salmon stream caretaking knowledge and restoration, bringing together conversations with Indigenous experts as well as existing papers and reports.

Focusing on the relationships, rights, and responsibilities of Indigenous People with their salmon kin, the paper describes eight stream caretaking practices and three case studies of contemporary Indigenous restoration.

“This paper shares some of the ways that Indigenous Peoples take care of their salmon systems. These stream caretaking practices and protocols range from moving rocks and boulders for spawning habitats to returning salmon bones back to the river and moving fertilized eggs”, says Kirsten.

“These ideas and practices from our ancestors continue to be passed on today through many generations of learning and doing. My hope is that this paper will reawaken some of this ancestral knowledge”, says co-author Kii’iljuus Barbara Wilson, Haida elder and adjunct professor at the Centre of the Indigenous Fisheries at UBC.

This study was led by Kirsten during her MSc with the lab and the Aquatic Research Cooperative. The collaborative team included twelve Indigenous and non-indigenous scholars. The practices in the paper were thoughtfully shared and supported by artwork by Syilx artist, Lauren Marchand.

Link in bio for the whole thing! 🌱🐟

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#newpaper #restoration #indigenous #streams #caretaking #indigenousfisheries #fish #science

All done now 🥹🐟🥲

Our Nicola snorkelling crew finished up their fall round of snorkelling, bringing this year’s field season to a close (mostly….. lol) for our lab.

We’re feeling super, super grateful to get to do this work - it is a privilege and a joy to get to further understand these fish and the systems, people, and communities that they are deeply interconnected to. A big thank you to everyone who made this field season possible! 💌☺️

Here are a few highlights and snorkelling in-betweens, photo credit goes to Ben Zdasiuk, Kei Poon, and Brogan Neufeld.

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#merrittforever #merrittisawesome #fishinthedesert #fishareawesome #snorkelling #fish #research #fieldseason #is #over #sad

Happy Halloween from our lab to yours 🎃💖

This year, our spooktastic activity was doing our own watercolour renditions of zombie fish 😌🧟🐟

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween!

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#fishart #fish #art #science #lab #biologylab

What does it take to find a radio tag that’s fallen off of a Chinook? The answer involves a helicopter or two, antennaes, snorkellers, an ungodly amount of Mott’s Fruitsations, and a whole lotta walking throughout the watershed!

Feeling super grateful and excited to finish up the first year of our Chinook tagging program in the Nicola! Now onto analyzing the data 🤓🐟📈

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#fishscience #salmon #research #ecology #temperature #nicola

New research alert! 🚨🗣

A very (!!) recent study by Jon and co-authors shows that local management activities can either strengthen or weaken watershed resilience to climate change, affecting both salmon and people.

Linking the small-scale to the large-scale, this paper identifies four different syndromes of the combined impacts of local watershed pressures and climate change. These syndromes impair the ability of salmon and their ecosystem to cope with climate change, highlighting how cumulative harms from land use and climate change are pushing many salmon-bearing watersheds to impoverishment.

Using a downscaled application of the safe operating space concept, the study provides tangible options for local management to give salmon watersheds the time and space to cope with climate change.

“Managing for climate resilience will not be status quo but will entail strengthened environmental protections, hard decisions, and trade-offs. In some ways, the ideas are quite simple. The science is clear. There is now an urgent need and opportunity to translate this knowledge into on-the-ground action and policies for climate resilience that invest in the well-being of our futures,” says Jon.

This paper is associated with the Watershed Futures Initiative. Paper coauthors include collaborators from the University of British Columbia, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and other organizations.

Link in bio for the whole thing!

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#newpaper #newpublication #research #cumulativeeffects #salmon #policy #climatechange #climateresilience #localmanagement #environment

This year was a huge year for pink returns - folks from our lab have been encountering pinks left and right during fieldwork this fall 💅🐟

Bonus points if you can identify all of the species in the second video!

Photos/videos taken by Jon Moore and Ben Zdasiuk.

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#pinks #fisheries #salmon #pinksalmon #returns #research #biology

Inspiring landscapes, great people, and ... salmon!

Field posts as part of the Taku Salmon Resilience Initiative 🐟⛰️

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#salmon #research #fieldwork #taku #resilience #initiative #inspiring #fisheries

Looking for ET or looking for fish?

With all of our temperature tags now out in the wild, our Nicola field teams are busy trying to track and retrieve these tags. These tags have been put on adult Chinook in the watershed, and record the stream temperatures that these fish experience as they migrate to their spawning grounds.

Floating, walking, driving, and (very occasionally) helicoptering around the watershed, SWL lab members use the antennae pictured to pick up on the “pings” that these tags emit. After that, it’s up to the snorkeller to find exactly where the tag is. It’s like geocaching at level 1000!

If you happen to be in the Nicola watershed and stumble across a tag, please reach out to NicolaSalmonTag@gmail.com for a reward and our eternal gratitude 🧚🐟🫵🙏

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#antennae #fishtracking #nicola #pings #telemetry #radiotags #reward

Pacific salmon are facing unprecedented pressures from a multitude of stressors - industrial forestry, mining, urban development, aquaculture, and climate change - all regulated under separate laws that rarely account for their combined impacts.

A new study published in FACETS by SWL PhD student Marta Ulaski and coauthors delves deeper into this issue, revealing how existing regulations are enabling incremental harm to salmon ecosystems without enforceable limits or coordinated oversight.

Synthesizing ecological science and policy analysis, the authors propose a cumulative effects management cycle that links monitoring, assessment, and governance, and identify five key opportunities for reform.

Amidst growing concern over legislation like federal Bill C-5 and provincial Bills 14 and 15 that fast track projects, this study highlights an urgent need for systemic reform in our policies to ensure sustainable and equitable stewardship of salmon-bearing watersheds.   This study was the result of a collaborative project involving 14 experts in science and policy from institutions that included Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, West Environmental Law, Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance and Polis Project of Ecological Governance of the University of Victoria as part of the Watershed Futures Initiative.

Head over to the link in our bio to read the whole thing!

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#fisheries #newpaper #fishscience #cumulativeeffects #watersheds #policy #waterpolicy #britishcolumbia #canada #salmon #fisheriespolicy #environmentalpolicy #management

Big news! Marta Ulaski, SWL PhD student and power stance extraordinaire, just won the J Frances Allen Scholarship Award from @americanfisheries 🥳🥹

The J Frances Allen Scholarship was established in 1986 to honour pioneering women in fisheries. We are super proud of her, and are feeling extra lucky to get to work with such incredible folks in the lab 🥰🐟

Marta’s current work focuses on cumulative effects in salmon watersheds to inform place-based management strategies. Read more about her work on her website at martaulaski.com

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#fisheriesscience #womeninstem #scholarship #award #americanfisheriessociety #afs

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Ecology & Conservation of Aquatic Systems

Jonathan Moore and Team

Welcome to the Salmon Watersheds Lab

About Us

- News and Updates -

Who gets to catch the last salmon?

New Paper Alert!

Congratulations!

New Paper Alert!

Welcome!

Congratulations!

Glacier Futures Workshop

Follow us on Instagram

Welcome to the Salmon Watersheds Lab

About Us

- News and Updates -

Who gets to catch the last salmon?

New Paper Alert!

Congratulations!

New Paper Alert!

Welcome!

Congratulations!

Glacier Futures Workshop

​

Follow us on Instagram