Pierre Pepin,

Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre

As a senior oceanographer and quantitative ecologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada for more than 30 years, Dr. Pierre Pepin has dedicated much of his research toward the development of integrated approaches to ocean management. He has published extensively on the effects of changes in environmental conditions and trophic interactions on population and ecosystem productivity and their consequences to our relationship with Canada’s Oceans as well as a diversity of other topics. Much of his research has dealt with the dynamics of early life stages of fish and since the inception of a large scale oceanographic monitoring program his research activities have expanded to include plankton dynamics, biogeography, and the importance of changes in community structure and climate on productivity of marine systems.

Pierre’s perspective is based on a pragmatic view of how qualitative and quantitative knowledge can be applied in development of advice on management of renewable ocean resources. In light of the complexity of interactions among organisms and their environment, we can only effectively identify the processes that result in major changes in living resources while more subtle interactions may be impossible to reliably understand. The general principles that we can identify across ecosystems should serve as foundation of the basic principles from which to forecast the future state of Canada’s Oceans even though their impact may not be readily apparent in all populations or ecosystems. Pierre is currently co-chair of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization’s Working Group on Ecosystem Science Advice and leads the implementation an ecosystem approach in the provision of advice for ecosystems of the Newfoundland Shelf.