Hi!

I’m a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia in the Global Ocean Modelling Lab . I am also a scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

As an ecosystem scientist and modeller, I am broadly interested in understanding the structure and function of marine and aquatic ecosystems and in approaches to wisely manage them. In the Canadian DFO Ecosystem Management Branch, I was a scientist advising and coordinating scientific and technical aspects of marine spatial planning and conservation planning. For example, the Northern Shelf Bioregion MPA network for which the team received the DFO Canada Prix D’Excellence in 2023 and the BC Premier’s Award in 2024.

While pursuing a PhD at UBC’s Institute for Oceans and Fisheries (2018 -), I have been working on simulation models that aim to understand long-term ecosystem trends using an end-to-end modelling approach (i.e., from physics to fisheries). Focusing on the Salish Sea, I am using a custom framework (NEMO->Ecospace) to investigate factors affecting early marine survival of juvenile salmon. I have also been investigating ecological interactions between pinnipeds, killer whales, forage fish, and salmon in the Salish Sea. Finally, I hope to apply approaches at the regional or sub-regional scale that have mainly been applied to date at the global scale (e.g., ensemble modelling) to help improve ecosystem model predictions. During my masters work and subsequently, I have developed custom tools and models for freshwater ecosystems and ecological restoration of rivers.

You can also find me @greig_oldford