The Society of Canadian Aquatic Sciences (SCAS | SCSA) 2027 Conference Programme Committee is pleased to announce the session for the meeting to be held in Victoria, BC, from February 17 to 20, 2027. This conference aims to bring together scientists, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and community members from across Canada to exchange knowledge across disciplines in the aquatic sciences to promote excellence, integration, and dissemination of expert knowledge in fisheries, limnology, and aquatic sciences. The conference theme—Aquatic Ecosystems in Transition: Navigating multiple stressors in a warming world—reflects our commitment to our collective goals to find a path forward and through these challenging times.

Special sessions: 

Roundtable: Advancing the Dialogue on Hatcheries, Stocking, and Conservation Aquaculture in Canada

• Hatcheries, stocking, conservation aquaculture, and related approaches have long been subject to vigorous controversy, with some arguing against these techno-fallacies based on a large body of research demonstrating a lack of efficacy and even harm to wild fish genetics and ecosystems, and others finding new promise in how they might address rapidly changing ecologies and social needs for fisheries or conservation. Scientific advances and guiding principles such as the Responsible Approach provide a means for addressing such issues in a systematic and science-based manner but have not been widely and effectively implemented. Continuing a series of interactive ‘roundtable’ activities started at the 2024 World Fisheries Congress, this session aims to break the deadlock and advance the dialogue through innovative engagement and community-building with a focus on Canada. We will be discussing key challenges, promising policies and practices, and opportunities to foster a vibrant and constructive community of practice.

How is AI Reshaping the Publishing and Peer Review Experience?

• The use of generative AI in aquatic science research prompts questions about the disclosure and evaluation of responsible use in manuscripts submitted to journals for peer review. While scholarly publishing works to establish a global standard on the disclosure of AI use, what challenges and strategies are researchers identifying as they work to uphold the integrity of science and its peer review? AI tools promise greater efficiency when it comes to writing up and assessing research. These tools also raise concerns about confidentiality, accountability, and human judgement. AI can strengthen integrity by detecting potential misconduct, and also weaken it with hallucinated references and undetectable text manipulation. In our current landscape, everyone must balance efficiency gains against risks to transparency, accuracy, and trust in science. This Q&A panel brings together perspectives and insights from the SCAS community to lead a conversation on how authors, editors, and peer reviewers are approaching generative AI in publishing, the challenges they're encountering, and the emerging practices they’re using. Proposed format: Moderated discussion of prepared questions followed by audience-led Q&A discussion.

• Molecular genetic tools have become common-place in the characterization of aquatic species and ecosystems. Population-scale ‘omic data has enabled identification of climate-associated variation within species, while environmental DNA techniques have enabled characterization of species and community distribution in relations to climate factors. This session broadly invites contributions that apply ‘omic and/or eDNA approaches to quantify variation in aquatic species and ecosystems. In keeping with the overall conference theme, we particularly encourage submissions that leverage these tools to evaluate ongoing impacts or predict future impacts of a changing climate on the molecular signatures of aquatic species and their ecosystems.

Fishing in the Digital Age: Mining Data, Connecting People, and Transforming Fisheries

• Recreational fisheries are increasingly embedded in a digital world. Internet searches, social media, fishing forums, smartphone applications, electronic logbooks, fish finders, and other connected devices generate volumes of data. These digital traces offer new opportunities to understand recreational fisheries, monitor fishing activity and outcomes, support management, and engage fishers directly in research and stewardship. Despite growing research interest, the use of digital data in fisheries management remains relatively uncommon. This session will bring together researchers, managers, policy-makers, and developers to explore novel data sources and analytical approaches; applications ranging from fishing activity and catch to engagement, stewardship, and conservation; opportunities to use digital platforms for both passive observation and active participation in data collection and outreach; and practical and ethical considerations, including privacy, transparency, and integration with conventional monitoring approaches. By sharing emerging applications, experiences, and perspectives, the session aims to advance discussion of how digital data and technologies can complement traditional approaches and create new opportunities for fisheries research, management, governance, and engagement.

• The Fisheries Act prohibits death of fish by means other than fishing, and the harmful alteration, disruption, and destruction (HADD) of fish habitat. Projects likely to result in death of fish, or HADD of fish habitat, must be authorized by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Authorization often requires habitat offsetting plans to ensure no net loss of fish productivity, with offsetting approaches ranging from habitat restoration and enhancement, habitat creation, chemical or biological manipulations, and complementary measures. Effectiveness monitoring is a critical part of these Fisheries Act Authorizations, which mandate the monitoring of the constructed habitat/or enhancement (i.e., fish productivity) to track success or determine when contingency plans should be initiated if offsetting objectives are not met. Despite existing guidance from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, selection and application of performance metrics to evaluate effectiveness and quantify fish productivity can be challenging. This session invites speakers to share successful approaches, explore challenges, and discuss recommendations for future effectiveness monitoring. We invite consulting representatives to draw on their experiences to discuss research needs that would inform and improve effectiveness monitoring efforts. Contributions addressing non-mandated restoration projects, and the evaluation of their success, are also welcome. By encouraging involvement among industry, government, and researchers, this session aims to share knowledge to advance effectiveness monitoring approaches and improve the success of offsetting projects, thereby improving the protection of fish and fish habitat in Canada.

• Ice and winter conditions define aquatic ecosystems across temperate, boreal, and polar regions, shaping their ecology, biogeochemistry, and physical environment for months or, in some systems, year-round. Yet winter remains understudied as climate warming alters the timing, duration, and properties of ice cover. This special session welcomes winter and cold-region aquatic science, from ecological, biogeochemical, and physical processes occurring during winter to research on ice itself and connections among winter, aquatic ecosystems, and people. Topics may include, but are not limited to: under-ice ecology and primary production, winter biogeochemistry, microbial and planktonic dynamics, food webs, ecotoxicology, ice formation, snow-ice interactions, hydrology, stratification and mixing, gas fluxes, and the transport and effects of solutes, contaminants, and materials associated with winter activities. We encourage studies examining how changing ice and snow regimes interact with multiple environmental stressors and influence aquatic ecosystems across seasons. Human relationships with winter waters are also changing. We welcome research on de-icing salts, contaminant exposure and toxicity, ice roads, winter recreation and sports, artificial ice infrastructure, and other interactions between people and winter waters. Inclusive, community-engaged, and co-designed research is encouraged, including work considering diverse users, exposure contexts, accessibility, and environmental risks and benefits. Indigenous knowledge and community-based perspectives on changing ice conditions, aquatic ecosystems, travel, harvesting, and safety are especially welcome. By bringing together ecological, biogeochemical, physical, and diverse knowledge perspectives, Cold as Ice will foster interdisciplinary discussion about the changing role of winter and ice in aquatic systems in a warming world.

Learning Across Knowledge Systems in Status Assessments of Aquatic Resources: A Path Forward

• Mainstream status assessments of fish stocks or their habitat typically focus on standardized methods, reproducible results, and consistency across species and regions (e.g., IUCN, COSEWIC, Canada's Wild Salmon Policy). While there is growing interest in more inclusive status assessments that consider Indigenous and western knowledge systems, Indigenous contributions are typically channeled into existing frameworks to maintain overall consistency (e.g., standardized criteria) and tend to focus on inputs (e.g., defining units of assessment, compiling and interpreting the available data). Separately, First Nations are actively developing more comprehensive, customized evaluations of the aquatic ecosystems in their territories to communicate their perspectives and priorities. Status assessments that pair western scientific methods and Indigenous Knowledge can strengthen science advice and ultimately improve decisions. In this context, pairing means the complementary strengths of each knowledge systems are recognized - in asking questions, collecting information, and interpreting patterns - without one being subsumed by the other. This session invites presentations that use multiple knowledge systems to inform status assessments, providing examples of how this can be done ‘in a good way’, informed by Indigenous values and priorities, and federal and/or provincial goals. We invite case study descriptions, conceptual perspectives, practical guidance, lessons learned from completed processes, and updates from on-going processes. Note that this session focuses specifically on how knowledge systems can be paired in the context of status assessments. We encourage participants to also attend a complementary session on pairing quantitative ecology and knowledge co-production to support Indigenous priorities and goals.

• Canada’s federal and provincial governments have in force a number of regulations designed to protect and restore aquatic habitats and species from human impacts. Arguably the most powerful of these is the federal Fisheries Act, as it is the primary national legislation responsible for avoiding, minimizing or offsetting the potential harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction to fish and their habitat resulting from development projects. Past reviews of the effectiveness of Canadian legislation in protecting aquatic habitats have yielded mixed results, including cases identifying that the evidence base is not adequate to draw firm conclusions and others determining that the implementation of existing regulations are failing to achieve their intended protections. Recently, the Canadian government has been undergoing a regulatory red tape review aimed at eliminating red tape, identified as “outdated and overly complicated regulations that raise costs, reduce productivity and stifle economic growth.” Results of these efforts are still emerging, but so far have garnered concerns about weakened protections for the environment, human health, and Indigenous rights. The objective of this session is to create space for realistic and humble discussions around improving the efficacy of aquatic habitat protections, encourage knowledge co-production, and contribute to closing the knowledge-action gap. Presentations intended to examine restoration successes and challenges, outline current efforts to improve outcomes for aquatic habitats and Canadians (e.g., standardized monitoring), and/or reflect on the potential consequences of ongoing legislative changes are welcome. Perspectives from academia, government, Indigenous communities, project proponents, and consultants are all encouraged.

“The Times They Are a-Changin”: Detecting, Accounting, and Managing for Non-stationarity in Aquatic Ecosystems

• We often assume the more we observe a system the better we can understand it. However, as climate change, shifting species interactions, evolving human pressures, and novel disturbance regimes reshape aquatic environments, historical relationships and assumptions are increasingly unreliable guides to the future. This session brings together a diverse set of presentations examining one of the central challenges in aquatic ecosystem science and assessment: non-stationarity. Speakers will draw from empirical and in-silica examples to showcase emerging approaches for detecting and diagnosing non-stationary dynamics, accounting for changing ecosystem dynamics in assessment and forecasting frameworks, and developing management strategies that are robust to what we know (and don’t know) about shifting ecological baselines. The session will conclude with a panel discussion on lessons learned, implications for resource management, and outline key areas of future research.

Environmental Flows in Canada: Diverse Approaches, Shared Challenges

• Environmental flow needs (EFNs) are important for sustaining aquatic ecosystems as water use and climate change intensify drought, water scarcity, warming, and competition for water. Yet approaches to defining, assessing, and implementing EFNs vary widely across Canada and jurisdictions worldwide. This special session seeks contributions examining how environmental flows are understood and applied across jurisdictions, ecosystems, and sectors. A central objective is to compare provincial, territorial, Indigenous, and federal approaches to EFN policy, technical assessment, decision-making, and governance. Contributions may describe legislative foundations, technical assessment methods, evidentiary standards, implementation tools, monitoring programs, governance models, and approaches to uncertainty. Together, these perspectives can reveal common principles, important differences, challenges, and opportunities for greater coordination and learning across Canada. The session also welcomes the full range of EFN-related science and practice. Contributions may document instream flow needs or flow-ecology relationships for species, ecological communities, or aquatic ecosystems; examine EFN-groundwater relationships; present new or adapted EFN assessment methods; report findings from ongoing research and assessment projects; or share applied case studies in implementation, monitoring, and adaptive management. Studies addressing data-limited systems, cumulative effects, groundwater abstraction, or changing hydrologic conditions are especially encouraged. Presentations may also explore how EFNs support drought response, water allocation, watershed and aquifer planning, aquatic habitat restoration, and the conservation and recovery of wild fish. By bringing together diverse perspectives and examples, the session aims to strengthen connections among science, policy, governance, and practice, while advancing a national community of practice for environmental flows in Canada.

Stewardship of Salmon and their Habitats in a Changing Climate

• Climate change and human land use are altering watersheds leading to unstable salmon populations in Canada and beyond. Many salmon populations are depleted or in decline, while other populations appear resilient to the effects of coupled climate and land use change. Other salmon populations may expand into previously unavailable habitats. Future-looking habitat restoration techniques and land use planning approaches aim to anticipate climate impacts to support resilient salmon populations. This session brings together speakers to share applied science of how salmon and salmon habitats are responding to climate change and how this information is informing and inspiring forward-looking stewardship actions. We highlight talks that showcase collaborations with local experts across diverse salmon systems in Canada and beyond.

• The transboundary Salish Sea ecosystem is economically, ecologically, and culturally vital to both Canada and the United States. Currently home to approximately 9 million people, the Salish Sea region is projected to grow in population to over 12 million residents by the year 2045, increasing pressures on aquatic ecosystem health and intensifying cumulative environmental effects. This session will focus on transboundary collaboration and monitoring to address both current and emerging challenges in the Salish Sea ecosystem, including results of the latest edition of the Health of the Salish Sea Ecosystem Report published jointly by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, environmental change, cumulative effects assessment, adaptive management, and Indigenous stewardship approaches.

• The persistent problem of understanding and managing harvested species includes challenges posed by complex life histories, climate variability, multiscale social-ecological systems, and data limitations. Expanding marine invertebrate fisheries face each of these complexities across the world, including in Canada where they now represent the economic mainstay of Canadian fisheries on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Stewarding these often understudied fisheries into the future requires assessment of stock status, population drivers, predicted stressors (including climate change impacts), and developing management frameworks underpinned by robust scientific information. This session will convene scientists across Canadian and international jurisdictions to present research on marine invertebrate population biology that aims to inform long-term sustainable fisheries harvest. The focus will be on curating speakers across a diverse range of fisheries contexts (species, jurisdiction, etc) and methods (population modelling, oceanographic studies, telemetry, aging, etc). The session will conclude with a panel discussion exploring shared (and contrasting) trends, challenges, and priorities for future research.

Applied River Science, Fish Habitat Restoration and Aquatic Ecosystem Resilience

• Aquatic ecosystems are increasingly shaped by interacting stressors, including climate change, altered hydrology and sediment supply, land-use change, infrastructure, habitat fragmentation, and cumulative watershed disturbance. Understanding and responding to these changes within evolving regulatory and management contexts benefits from the deliberate integration of biological, ecological, hydrological, and geomorphic perspectives. Drawing on fluvial geomorphology as an integrating theme, this session invites contributions exploring how river processes influence fish habitat, fish passage, restoration outcomes, monitoring design, and aquatic ecosystem resilience. It aims to connect academic, government, Indigenous, and practitioner perspectives, with an emphasis on applied case studies, lessons learned, and cross-disciplinary approaches that improve decision-making in rivers and connected aquatic systems. Potential topics include: physical and biological interactions in rivers and streams; fish passage, restoration, and offsetting projects; sediment dynamics, channel adjustment, and habitat change; monitoring frameworks for river restoration and habitat performance; climate-change effects on river processes and aquatic resilience; Indigenous, agency, academic, and practitioner approaches to river stewardship; and lessons learned from applied Fisheries Act, restoration, and watershed-management projects.

Science as a Service: Reimagining Quantitative Ecology to Support Indigenous Governance

• Knowledge co-production is increasingly used as a framework to bring multiple knowledge systems together in achieving goals related to resilience, conservation, and Indigenous sovereignty. Through these processes, allied scientists are often faced with the task of diversifying methodologies to meet the needs, goals, and knowledge systems of Indigenous partners. In doing so, novel insights and recommendations can be drawn to sustain relationships to fish, people, and place, while bolstering resilience in both ecosystems and management systems. Yet, approaches to bridging quantitative Western scientific knowledge and Indigenous knowledges are nascent and/or underutilized. In applying statistical tools to quantitative data sets practitioners are poised to shape methods applied in fisheries and water management, and how they might align with Indigenous knowledge systems and community goals. This session will tell the story of Western science in service of Indigenous priorities, through the unique lens of quantitative ecology. Speakers will span regions and disciplines, and will showcase both methods and case studies of the ways in which statistics, math, and modelling are used as tools to support Indigenous sovereignty, management goals, and restoration initiatives. Finally, the session will culminate in a panel discussion to share lessons from process, outcomes, and next steps in order to inform strong collective, ethical actions supporting Indigenous knowledges and stewardship through quantitative ecology.

• Inland waters receive, transform, store, and transport substantial quantities of terrestrial carbon and nutrients, making them active components of regional and global greenhouse gases (GHG) budgets. Lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams, and wetlands can act as sources and/or sinks of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), depending on hydrological, biogeochemical, and sedimentary processes. These transformations also impart distinct isotopic signatures that can reveal GHG sources, constrain production and consumption pathways, and improve estimates of their atmospheric contributions.This session will bring together recent advances in understanding GHG source and sink dynamics and isotopic footprints across diverse inland aquatic systems. We invite studies of the physical, chemical, and biological processes controlling GHG production, consumption, transport, exchange, and long-term burial in water columns and sediments. Relevant topics include ecosystem metabolism; organic and inorganic carbon transformations; methanogenesis and methane oxidation; nitrification, denitrification, and other nitrogen transformations; terrestrial and aquatic linkages; and hydrologic connectivity.We particularly encourage contributions that integrate observations across spatial and temporal scales or employ novel approaches, including isotope analyses, laboratory incubations, automated techniques, mesocosm experiments, remote sensing, data synthesis, and process-based or machine-learning models. Studies that refine regional to global estimates of GHG emissions and carbon storage, quantify uncertainty, or distinguish natural variability from human influence are especially welcome. Finally, the session will also examine how interacting environmental and anthropogenic drivers, including climate change, hydrologic change, eutrophication, land use, and water-resource management, all of which can alter carbon and nitrogen cycling and the future role of inland waters.

Science to Restoration: Advancing Recovery of the Fraser River Estuary

• The Fraser River Estuary is one of Canada’s most ecologically important and heavily modified estuarine ecosystems, providing critical rearing and migration habitat for juvenile Pacific salmon as they transition from freshwater to the marine environment. Historical habitat loss, altered connectivity, invasive species, contaminants, and climate change continue to affect the ecological processes and species that depend on the estuary. A growing body of research is advancing our understanding of how juvenile salmon move through and use the estuary, how multiple stressors influence their condition and survival, and what makes estuarine habitats productive for salmon. This includes research examining tidal marsh vegetation, food webs, habitat connectivity, and the physical and ecological processes that create and maintain productive rearing habitat. Alongside this research, restoration initiatives are testing approaches to reconnect fragmented habitats, restore tidal marshes, manage invasive species, and recover ecosystem processes. This special session will bring together researchers, and organizations, restoration practitioners, and resource managers working throughout the Fraser River Estuary. Presentations will highlight emerging research on juvenile salmon ecology, movement and habitat use, cumulative stressors, tidal marsh ecology, habitat connectivity, restoration design, and restoration effectiveness. By connecting research across biological and ecosystem scales with on-the-ground restoration, the session will examine what recent efforts are teaching us about salmon habitat and estuary recovery, identify key knowledge gaps, and explore how science, stewardship, and restoration can collectively advance recovery of the Fraser River Estuary.

Eulachon in Recovery: Coast-wide Collaborative Research

• Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) are a small, oil-rich forage fish central to First Nations food, social, and ceremonial harvests along the northern Pacific coast. They have experienced significant declines since the 1990s across all three populations recognized by COSEWIC: the Fraser River, Nass/Skeena River, and Central Pacific Coast populations. This session brings together researchers and community partners working on Eulachon recovery along the Pacific coast to share current science on monitoring methods, population status, threats, and recovery options. Presentations will draw on monitoring and restoration efforts in multiple systems, such as the Fraser River, Skeena River, Nass River, Columbia River, and along the Central Coast, including a summary of work in rivers of the Conservation and Recovery Research on Oolichan in Haisla Territory (CAROOHT) Project. A unifying theme across all projects is the essential role of collaboration between First Nations, industry, government, and academic partners in advancing Eulachon conservation, particularly as this culturally vital indicator species continues to navigate multiple, compounding stressors in a warming coastal environment. The session aims to compare approaches across systems, share lessons learned, and identify common research priorities and gaps to help guide the next generation of coast-wide Eulachon monitoring and recovery efforts.

From Isolation to Collective Futures: Pluralism in Aquatic Research and Governance

• Aquatic ecosystems face cumulative stressors, rooted in - and compounded across - complex, intertwined ecological, social, cultural, legal, and political dimensions. Yet, those working within this complexity often experience isolation; we work across disciplinary divides, disparate geographies, and complex systems of power, amongst other challenges, that ultimately leave us disconnected from tools, communities, and potential collaborators engaged in parallel work. In this session, we ask: how do we navigate an irreducibly complex, rapidly changing world - and imagine collective futures - when our ways of knowing, valuing, researching, and governing remain persistently divided? We aim to move beyond naming this challenge towards actively practicing ways through it. This session offers pluralism - holding multiple ways of knowing and being in the world as equally valuable and legitimate - as a practical response to the cumulative stressors aquatic ecosystems and the people working alongside these systems face. We aim to bring together knowledge systems, disciplines, and practitioners across institutions to discuss the barriers to navigating cumulative stress and the opportunities presented by pluralism. Speakers will examine knowledge systems, social-ecological systems, cumulative injustices, just futures, and the social, cultural, ecological, and governance dimensions of paths forward, grounded in lived examples from research, practice, and life. We are especially interested in the practical, actionable dimensions of this multicultural, transdisciplinary, and collaborative work. Grounded in Indigenous-led and partnered research and practice, this session welcomes academics, practitioners, students, and diverse community members interested or engaged in interdisciplinary, multi-knowledge, collaborative, and/or action-oriented aquatic research and management.

Recent Advances in River Thermal Regime Monitoring and Science and their Impacts on Lotic Ecosystems

• The last two decades have been rich with new developments on river temperature monitoring and modelling that led to improved understanding of thermal processes, impacts of climate change, and ecosystem responses. Monitoring has rapidly increased in Canada, with relatively dense networks of monitoring stations being established in eastern and western regions of the country. In addition, Thermal Infrared Imagery monitoring using airborne platforms is increasingly being used to acquire spatially distributed information. At the same time, model development has rapidly expanded, with statistical, machine learning, and deterministic approached being implemented to generate different management scenarios on several drainage basins. The impact of river temperature warming on aquatic organisms and other components of river ecosystems has also been investigated, with a special emphasis on salmonids. These data streams are starting to feed directly into predictive decision-support tools, moving thermal science from descriptive mapping toward operational conservation planning. This session will give researchers across the country an opportunity to update the SCAS community on this key area of research and on translating thermal science into informed restoration and conservation actions.

Salmon Health

• Canadian wild Pacific salmon populations have experienced significant declines in recent decades, prompting growing concern among scientists, managers, and coastal communities about salmon health and its population-level impacts. Factors impacting salmon health are numerous, including disease, pollution, capture fisheries, climate change, and habitat degradation. Likewise, an array of tools and disciplines are needed to understand these factors, including physiology, toxicology, bacteriology, virology, environmental chemistry, population ecology, fisheries biology, climate science, and many others. Identifying and addressing the key challenges to salmon health therefore requires interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration. To meet this need, we encourage contributions from scientists across diverse fields in order to synthesise knowledge on the factors influencing salmon health. We invite presentations addressing any stage of the salmon life cycle and any combination of stressors, with particular emphasis on work that integrates multiple disciplines or highlights cumulative effects. By convening this session, we aim to identify emerging patterns, innovative methodologies, and knowledge gaps relevant to salmon health, and ultimately, salmon conservation. We hope this work will inform research directions and promote coordinated and effective management strategies for wild salmon populations.

• Creating holistic management plans for fish conservation requires purpose-built, integrative frameworks that combine physiological insights with movement ecology. This session will focus on applying biologging, telemetry, molecular tools, and physiological sampling in concert to understand how fish respond to environmental stressors, and how these responses shape movement, habitat use, migration, and survival. Talks will highlight approaches that link individual-level physiological performance to population-scale movement patterns, demonstrating how this integration can guide adaptive conservation strategies. We will bring together physiologists, ecologists, and resource managers to advance the pairing of movement ecology with molecular and physiological-based tools for conserving fish populations in a changing world.

Paleo-archives and Long-term Monitoring to Examine Ecosystems in Transition

• Multiple and co-occurring environmental stressors are impacting freshwater and marine systems worldwide leading to ecosystem transitions. Since many environmental challenges are decades in the making, long-term perspectives with appropriate temporal windows are necessary for the development of effective management strategies. This session invites studies utilizing paleolimnological & paleoceanographical approaches and long-term datasets to track and understand environmental changes or ecosystem transitions in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Research utilizing biological, chemical, or physical information spanning decades to millennia can be presented during this session. We welcome presentations where paleo-archives and long-term datasets are used to assess aquatic transitions by identifying timing, magnitude, and/or impacts of diverse stressors (e.g. nutrient pollution, climate-mediated changes, urban development, emerging and legacy contaminants). This session also welcomes submissions that focus on the development and application of hindcast and forecast models using paleo or long-term monitoring data.

Structural Biases in Environmental and Ecological Assessments

• This session focuses on the potential for structural biases in environmental science or governance to systematically underestimate (or overestimate) the ecological impacts of human development.  Abundance of aquatic taxa like salmonids continues to decline in developed nations like Canada, despite apparently robust environmental regulation.  Although it is well understood that poor environmental policy and regulation can undermine ecological outcomes, it is generally assumed that science processes are largely without bias (i.e., equally likely to over- or under-estimate stressor/development impacts).  However, standard methods for ecological and environmental assessment can over- or underestimate true stressor impacts, with systematic underestimation being of greater concern for environmental protection.  Potential sources of bias include low statistical power to detect impacts, failure to account for cumulative effects of development, or biases in sector-specific assessment methodologies. Such biases need not be intentional, but may emerge from otherwise reasonable analytical or decision-making practices. We invite a wide diversity of presentations that inform the potential for positive or negative biases in ecological and environmental assessments or governance, as well as approaches for reducing these biases. Contributions may include case studies, broader analyses of statistical bias, cumulative effect assessments, assessments of governance or monitoring frameworks, or consideration of methods that improve transparency, accuracy, and treatment of uncertainty.  Accurate science advice remains the foundation for informed tradeoff decisions between ecological and economic values; our broader goal is to understand whether standard science methods and governance structures can contribute to current declines of aquatic diversity by systematically underestimating human development impacts.

• Eutrophication remains one of the most pervasive and costly challenges facing lake and reservoir management worldwide. While the causes of eutrophication are well established, effective and durable mitigation remains elusive, and the challenges are compounded by a changing climate. This session invites contributions addressing the full spectrum of eutrophication mitigation, from watershed-scale nutrient management and source control to in-lake interventions such as dredging, aeration, biomanipulation, and chemical treatments. We welcome studies evaluating the effectiveness and unanticipated consequences of these approaches, as well as work exploring novel or underused mitigation strategies. Contributions examining mitigation in understudied or underrepresented systems, including small reservoirs, constructed waterbodies, and waterbodies subject to multiple interacting stressors, are especially encouraged, as are talks that bridge research and practice for water managers and policymakers. By bringing together perspectives spanning large lakes to small ponds, and from fundamental research to applied management, this session aims to explore which mitigation approaches are working, where knowledge gaps remain, and how emerging tools and frameworks can inform more effective, context-sensitive eutrophication management in the future.

• This theme session will explore the ecology, assessment, and management of harvested marine species across Canada’s ocean ecosystems. It will bring together researchers and practitioners from Canada’s three oceans, with participation from academia, government agencies, the fishing industry, Indigenous communities, and non-governmental organizations. Marine fisheries are deeply embedded in the history and culture of Canada’s coastal communities and have significant socio-economic impacts both nationally and globally. Canadian fisheries are highly diverse, ranging from small-scale subsistence operations to large-scale industrial enterprises. Some fisheries have thrived for centuries in highly productive ecosystems, while others are emerging or have experienced collapse. Marine fisheries in Canada are now navigating a complex suite of challenges—including climate change, resource development, and the expansion of protected areas— that are reshaping traditional practices and calling for innovative solutions. Canada’s marine fisheries science community has played a foundational role in the development of aquatic sciences, including the establishment of the Canadian Conference for Fisheries Research in 1948. The Society of Canadian Aquatic Sciences (SCAS) annual conference continues this legacy, serving as a central venue for knowledge exchange within the Canadian aquatic sciences community. This session aims to honor these historical roots while fostering continued collaboration between marine fisheries and aquatic sciences researchers. As the third annual Marine Fisheries session at SCAS, we believe its establishment provides a vital platform for Canadian marine scientists to reconnect, build new collaborations, and contribute to the SCAS conference’s role as a central hub—or “clearing house”—for marine fisheries science in Canada

• Canada is home to five species of sturgeon whose populations are subject to varying levels of conservation or management concern. Environmental and anthropogenic stressors such as a changing climate, river regulation by dams, and fisheries management directly and indirectly affect sturgeon populations in Canada. Conservation in the face of continued ecosystem change requires a thorough interdisciplinary understanding of these species, including their ecology, physiology, and habitat use in order to examine causes of decline and pathways to recovery. This symposium will bring together sturgeon expertise to discuss interdisciplinary and novel approaches at the interface of scientific research and the challenges these species face due to environmental and habitat changes. Presentations will explore sturgeon ecology, physiology, restoration, and management, to support a more unified understanding of these ancient species and their diverse life-histories. Specifically, to improve outcomes for these iconic species we aim to share research that combines basic science with the unique applied questions presented by sturgeon conservation including: life history-habitat interactions; ecological-social trade-offs in whole ecosystem restoration; physiological limits to environmental change, and recovery strategies.

Climate Change and Canadian Lakes: Emerging Patterns, Ecological Impacts, and Future Directions

• Canada contains an extraordinary diversity and abundance of lakes, from small boreal and prairie systems to large northern and Great Lakes ecosystems. These lakes are increasingly being altered by climate change through rising air and water temperatures, changing ice-cover duration, shifts in precipitation and hydrology, and more frequent extreme events such as storms, wild fires, and flooding. This session will bring together researchers working across Canadian lake systems to examine how climate-driven changes in physical and chemical conditions are reshaping freshwater ecosystems. Potential topics include lake warming, changes in thermal stratification and mixing, declining ice cover, altered oxygen dynamics, browning and water clarity, nutrient cycling, harmful algal blooms, food-web responses, fish habitat, greenhouse gas dynamics, and interactions between climate change and other anthropogenic stressors. A central goal of the session is to connect observations across spatial and temporal scales. Contributions using long-term monitoring, experimental studies, remote sensing, paleolimnology, modelling, and cross-lake or regional syntheses are particularly encouraged. Together, these perspectives can help identify where Canadian lakes are changing most rapidly, which ecosystems are particularly vulnerable or resilient, and what these changes mean for future research, monitoring, conservation, and freshwater management.

• Cumulative effects are the grand challenge of the Anthropocene. In aquatic systems, human activities can overlap or interact to impact species, habitats, and ecosystem structure and functioning. Global stressors may exacerbate these impacts resulting in a pressing need to understand how cumulative effects impact species, habitats, and ecosystems, to aid effective management and conservation of aquatic resources. We invite presentations that examine cumulative effects, multiple stressors, and/or interactions among natural and anthropogenic drivers of change in marine, freshwater, and estuarine systems. Contributions may include manipulative field or laboratory experiments, innovative approaches to mapping and modelling cumulative effects, cumulative risk or impact assessments, and studies that apply Traditional Knowledge and/or integrate multiple knowledge systems. We welcome empirical, theoretical, and applied research that advances the assessment and management of cumulative effects across aquatic ecosystems. The session will provide an opportunity to share emerging research, foster knowledge transfer among scientists and practitioners, and build new collaborations and networks to advance cumulative effects research in aquatic systems.

• Canadian researchers from coast to coast, including the freshwater systems in between, produce world-leading acoustic telemetry research. Programs across the country support Indigenous knowledge sovereignty, national fisheries management, conservation efforts, and aquatic animal climate modelling. This session hosted by the Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) welcomes presenters from across Canada to highlight their acoustic telemetry research in an effort to connect geographically separated researchers and inspire nation-wide ideas, contributing to a Canadian knowledge network supported by our aquatic research, data management and partnership platform.

General sessions:

Applications and technologies in aquatic sciences

Aquatic food webs

Behavioural ecology

Community-based monitoring and community science

Ecotoxicology

Estuaries, coasts, and oceans

Fisheries management and stock assessment

Limnological advances

Species at risk

Translating science to policy

Urban water management

Wetlands and biogeochemistry 

If you have any questions about the sessions, please contact us at SocCanAquatSci@gmail.com.

From the Programme Committee Co-chairs:

Jordan Rosenfeld, UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and Kyle Wilson, Simon Fraser University