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Decolonizing Conservation: A Reading List
The goal of the reading list is to help well-meaning non-Indigenous folks like myself educate ourselves on the colonial, white supremacist, and imperialist roots of biodiversity conservation around the world. Many of us work in places with long histories of occupation and colonialism, where the impacts of colonialism are still ongoing, and no matter how…
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Hidden Indicators of Reef Health: New study suggests that common survey metrics may miss subtler signs of stress (cross-posted from Reefbites)
Some corals in the Gulf of Aqaba (also known as the Gulf of Eilat) in the Red Sea are spawning out of sync, says a new paper published in Science by scientists Tom Shlesinger and Yossi Loya from Tel-Aviv University.
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New publication: The relationship between macroalgae taxa and human disturbance on central Pacific coral reefs
I am delighted to share my first first-authored peer reviewed journal article, The relationship between macroalgae taxa and human disturbance on central Pacific coral reefs, now out in Marine Pollution Bulletin!
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How corals can help us make predictions about our future under climate change (cross-posted from ReefBites)
This blog post originally appeared on ReefBites, the student blog of the International Society for Reef Studies. Every two to seven years, the eastern equatorial Pacific climate oscillates between anomalously warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) conditions in a process known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This process influences sea surface temperatures…
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“We are not drowning, we are fighting”: Pacific Islanders want you to know that they still have hope for their islands
This blog post originally appeared on the Ocean Leaders blog, which highlights the work of Ocean Leaders fellows. Please consider giving them a follow on social media at @oceanleaders on Twitter or OceanLeadersUBC on Facebook! This past weekend, I was on a discussion panel for the documentary film Anote’s Ark, which follows the former present of…
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Tiabo for now, Kiribati
I’m currently sitting in the departure terminal in Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati. It is a small room made of mismatched wood paneling, with one wall open to the tarmac, and a concrete floor. There are no lights, and a huge fan in the corner keeps the air moving, although it’s still sweltering. My back…
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Corals are smelly and other anecdotes from the field
There are so many things to love about fieldwork. As scientists, it’s an opportunity to finally get our hands dirty (so to speak) and interact with the systems we’re studying. It’s also invaluable to get to know the communities and people who live in the places we work (scientists commonly treat people as separate from…
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Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the scientific division of labour at a Canadian geoscience conference
I’m taking a quick break from posting updates about fieldwork in Kiribati to announce that a study I co-authored has been published! Some colleagues and I attended the 2017 Canadian Geophysicists Union meeting in Vancouver with the goal of examining diversity through observations of participation, presentation content, and behaviour in conference sessions. We found that women…
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Getting to know Tarawa
It was exciting to finally step foot in Tarawa, the capital of the Republic of Kiribati, after hearing about it for so long — my advisor has worked here for a decade or so, and I’ve spent my last three years as his student hearing about his work and its accompanying adventures. I’ve also spoken…
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Counting down to fieldwork in the Gilbert Islands
In just over a month, I’ll be boarding a plane and heading to Tarawa, an atoll in the Gilbert Islands of Kiribati. I’ll be staying in Tarawa and the nearby Abaiang Atoll for about a month to conduct the first stage of my Ph.D. fieldwork. It’s been a long, dark, rainy winter in Vancouver and…
Sara E. Cannon, PhD
Aquatic Conservation Scientist
Sara E. Cannon, PhD 