Biologist, PSF, M.Sc. (U Vic)

Katie is a biologist who has been studying Pacific salmon, with a focus on Chinook salmon, for six years. She began as a research assistant on the Adult Salmon Diet Program at the University of Victoria and supported graduate student salmon research projects, including a juvenile Chinook Salmon marine ecology field study and an adult Chinook Salmon acoustic tagging project. Katie’s keen interest in conducting her own salmon research was sparked in 2018 when she worked as a biologist for the Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government at a remote field camp in northern British Columbia where she was responsible for sampling adult Pacific salmon during their return spawning migration.

Katie’s MSc research contributed to the Winter Ecology component of the Bottlenecks to Survival Program led by the Pacific Salmon Foundation and BC Conservation Foundation. Specifically, she studied juvenile Chinook Salmon overwinter feeding and bioenergetics in the Strait of Georgia. In 2024, she joined PSF as a biologist on two BCSRIF-funded research programs, the Bottlenecks to Survival and Salmon – Herring Interactions Programs.

Brahm is a data professional with experience in forensic analytics, business intelligence, data engineering, and system design. His background has included working with financial data systems, but his passion for nature and the environment has led him to join the Strait of Georgia Data Centre where he will support the Bottlenecks to Survival project’s data needs. He was previously a faculty member of Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business in the Department of Supply Chain & Business Technology Management, where he taught courses on Database Management, Project Management & System Design and Implementation. He has a bachelor’s in Data Intelligence & Technology Management, and a master’s in Software Engineering.

Sam is a biologist who has spent the last eight years conducting research on Pacific salmon. Her love for salmon began on BC’s Central Coast working as a research assistant studying viral dynamics in local salmon and trout populations in Rivers Inlet. She then partnered with the Hakai Institute’s Juvenile Salmon Program to conduct her master’s research at the University of British Columbia on the foraging ecology of juvenile sockeye salmon during their early marine migration.

Sam joined the Pacific Salmon Foundation in 2019 and participated in a large-scale BCSRIF-funded review of hatchery practices in BC, working closely with federal government’s Salmonid Enhancement Program to better understand how hatchery practices influence survival. In 2023, she joined the Bottlenecks to Survival Program as a co-manager alongside BCCF’s Jamieson Atkinson.

Solutions-focused, Sam is dedicated to collaborations and novel approaches to answering the big questions surrounding salmon.

Will Duguid has been a postdoctoral researcher working under Francis Juanes at the University of Victoria and is now PSF senior biologist leading the Chinook Salmon winter ecology component of the PSF and BC Conservation Foundation-led Bottlenecks to Survival Study. He also initiated, and continues to oversee, the PSF-funded UVic Adult Salmon Diet Program. Will is a lifelong salmon enthusiast having worked as a recreational fishing guide and as a salmon stock assessment biologist with LGL limited, primarily in support of BC First Nations' stock assessment programs. He completed an M.Sc. in crustacean reproduction and development and a PhD in juvenile Chinook Salmon marine ecology under the umbrella of PSF's Salish Sea Marine Survival Program.  

Jamieson is a Fisheries Biologist/Ecologist with a decade of experience working on fisheries conservation, restoration, and research projects on Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. Jamieson started working with the British Columbia Conservation Foundation in 2011 as a practicum student and has since developed a multifaceted portfolio, ranging from riverine and estuarine habitat restoration, stock assessment and fisheries and ecology-based research projects. Jamieson is passionate about incorporating new technologies into holistic stock assessment programs. He has expertise in research and stock assessment projects that utilize Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) and acoustic tag technologies. Jamieson has implemented tag-based stock assessment programs in Comox and Meziadin lakes and is currently assessing the impacts of log booms on Chinook survival in Cowichan Bay; conducted life history investigations by combining PIT tag technology and otolith microchemistry. He has completed multiple projects utilizing these methods on cutthroat trout, steelhead, and Chinook salmon.  

Jamieson is a co-manager of the multi-year BCSRIF funded Bottlenecks to Marine Survival Program; he was one of the primary project developers and writers for the proposal, a BCCF, PSF and University of Victoria collaboration.

Jamieson has worked extensively with First Nations, federal and provincial agencies, and non-profit foundations and has authored and co-authored numerous technical and published reports.

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Twitter: @Jamiesonatkins

Isobel Pearsall has a First Class degree in Pure and Applied Biology from Oxford University, a M.Sc. in Ecology from the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University, and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Department of Plant Science, UBC. After her Ph.D. studies, she was a post-doctoral fellow in Ecosystem Management at the Pacific Biological Station, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Nanaimo.

Dr. Pearsall was the Project Coordinator (Canada) for the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP), a transboundary $20M program set to address declines in Chinook, Coho and Steelhead in the Salish Sea (2014-2019). Over 60 organizations, representing diverse philosophies and encompassing most of the region’s fisheries and marine research and management complex, worked together on this massive transboundary effort. The Pacific Salmon Foundation and Long Live the Kings continue to work together to coordinate efforts in the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound, respectively.

Isobel is currently the Director, Marine Science Programs, for the Pacific Salmon Foundation. Many of the programs in her portfolio were developed in response to the findings of the SSMSP; she currently oversees a major program on Nearshore and Estuarine Habitat Restoration, a number of large-scale Citizen Science programs for oceanographic, forage fish and salmon data collation; a major research program to assess bottlenecks to survival of Coho, Chinook and Steelhead in the Strait of Georgia, and development of PSF Educational Initiatives. Isobel is also Project Lead for the Strait of Georgia Data Centre, an online hub established in collaboration with the Institute of the Ocean and Fisheries, UBC. The Strait of Georgia Data Centre holds data for ecological, environmental and human use data for the Strait of Georgia.