The university’s location and position on Reconciliation show opportunity for more field study, says professor
Photo courtesy of Ben Neal.
According to Dr. Ben Neal, a biology professor at UVic, the university’s undergraduate marine biology program could expand to include more locally applied marine conservation aspects.
“We have a great crop of graduate students who work in applied conservation,” he said. “But with undergraduates, I want to create more of those opportunities,” added Neal.
Neal told the Martlet that while the biology program’s marine concentrated courses are strong, he would still like to see more support provided to the program.
“There’s lots of students [and] I think we have a great opportunity to continue to build this into a bigger program.”
Marine biology has the highest enrollment of the three concentrations — forest biology, marine biology, and neuroscience — that UVic’s Department of Biology offers.
For Neal, applied conservation education in undergraduate level courses is an important step to helping address some of the province’s marine ecological deficiencies.
Factors like demand for courses in the marine concentration, UVic’s geographical situation along the Salish Sea, and the university’s self-identified position within Reconciliation play into this opportunity for growth.
“Wild fish populations are down between 90 and 100 per cent. Depending on how you define it, that’s the level of functional extinction . . .. It’s astounding how bad it is,” said Neal. “We should be putting a lot more effort into this, both from a First Nation standpoint, and an ecological standpoint.”
However, UVic biology professor and marine concentration advisor, Dr. Diana Varela, who was the chair of the committee that created the Department of Biology’s marine concentration twelve years ago, said expanding the program to include more applied field study courses isn’t something that will happen immediately.
“For now, nothing is happening, to be honest,” Varela told the Martlet. “We [the biology faculty] have to all get together and discuss those issues. There will be some changes [in the future].”
One of the main obstacles for offering field-based and applied conservation courses for upper-level undergraduates, said Valera, is that first year biology courses are so large they end up taking a majority of the support the department has available to it.
“Because they’re so huge, there’s only so much effort to go around . . . [and] then there’s not enough support for the upper-level courses,” said Valera, who added that the marine biology concentration is still pushing for more support, based on the success of its high student enrollment and popularity.
“We had some discussions at the departmental level for more support, but we [currently] have very little in the biology department in terms of lab support and field trip support.”
While many of the upper-level marine biology courses include lab and field components, Ben Neal currently teaches the only on-campus course through UVic Biology that is a full field-study class.
Biology 470: Advanced Topics in Biology: An introduction to marine science field methods, is a two-week field course offered in the summer that uses local ecosystems to illustrate applied biological principles.
“We travel up and down the island for two weeks meeting with people who are directly involved,” said Neal of his course. “Listening to first-person testimonies from First Nations chiefs, commercial fishermen, people who run hatcheries, and people who run salmon farms. They’re all engaged in this [question of], ‘What are we going to do about this biological situation to address salmon?’”
According to Neal, the course includes aspects of learning such as how to put together a data set, snorkel, take pictures, and use biology tools in the field.
Another UVic biology professor, Dr. Francis Juanes, who teaches a popular upper-level biology fisheries course that doesn’t include a field component, pointed out that field courses are complicated for a variety of reasons.
“As you might imagine, field-based courses are logistically complicated to run,” said Jaunes. “They require extra funds and a lot of additional paperwork [like] animal care, field safety protocols, etcetera.”
Other field study opportunities within the biology department for undergrads are offered through directed studies and the honors program, however, these options are not always feasible for all students, said Neal.
“If the student has the time, ability, support, and inclination, take those. [But] I see mine as a more available option.”
Neal’s eagerness to further advance the department’s repertoire of field courses comes in part from the ecological opportunity UVic has at its fingertips.
“There are really important marine biological applied conservation questions right on our doorstep. Literally right here on the peninsula and on the island,” said Neal. “That’s what I’m personally interested in is trying to provide undergraduates with: examples that are from right here on the island to experience our local systems and how we can apply conservation locally to make a real change.”
