Dr. Andrew Trites
Director, Marine Mammal Research Unit
UBC Fisheries Centre
will be addressing the Vancouver Institute on March 6, 2010 at 8:15 p.m., Lecture Hall No. 2 in the Woodward Instructional Resources Centre, University of British Columbia.
Dr Trites’ main area of research is the interaction between marine mammals and commercial fisheries. This includes the population biology and bioenergetics of seals, sea lions and whales, and involves a combination of field, captive and computer studies. The nutrition of animals and how much fish they take leads, inevitably, to conflict between the animals and fisheries: "We are applying our results in an attempt to find ways of resolving that conflict." Dr Trites has convened workshops, including interactions between vessels and killer whales, and the effects of human disturbance on Steller sea lions. He is currently directing the recovery of the skeletal remains of a blue whale, the world’s largest mammal, to be prominently displayed in a glass-sided museum in the centre of UBC.
