University curiosity and government strategy: 150 years of creative tension in Canadian Great Lakes

Session: 12. - History of Great Lakes Fish, Fisheries & Governance: Dr. Henry Regier's Legacy

Thomas Whillans, School of the Environment, Trent University, [email protected]

Abstract

Canadian university research on the Great Lakes fishery reflected, until the late 1800’s, apparent curiosity about life histories and diversity of aquatic organisms, fish abundance and fish distribution. Researchers reacted to perceived opportunities and problems in the fishery. Strategic emerged in the late 1800’s after several commissions addressed the decline of fishing success and when dedicated fishery scientists were appointed to Canadian and Ontario governments, giving the two levels of government capability to understand and support fishery research. Responsibilities were ambiguous and contentious, reflecting the governments’ respective contributions to university research and their internal research efforts in basic fishery science and strategic investigation. Publications reveal periods of innovative, expanding university science. At the same time universities were recognized as inadequate platforms to sustain science that supported regulatory and management needs of commercial, recreational and Indigenous fisheries. After WW1 and WW2 university scientists were recruited by governments supporting internal strategic science and binational agreements. Since then the alignment of internal governmental strategic science with university research has varied because of political agendas, personal professional relationships, and independent institutional inertia.

1. Keyword
fisheries

2. Keyword
fish management

3. Keyword
data acquisition

4. Additional Keyword
scientific research

5. Additional Keyword
history