Research Unit

• Quantitative Modeling Group

Biography

Research area: population dynamics, ecology, fisheries assessment and sustainable management
Lab Members: M. Hawkshaw, S. McAdam, E. Rechisky, B. van Poorten, R. Imo

Dr Walters is a Professor at the Fisheries Centre whose areas of research include the development of rapid techniques for teaching systems analysis and mathematical modeling to biologists and resource managers. "I mainly work on fish population dynamics, fisheries assessment and sustainable management". He believes the heart of fisheries is how to manage harvest: "The main thrust of my research is to figure out how to design management systems that are robust in an area of really high uncertainty".

A member of several of NSERC's grant committees since 1970, he has done extensive fisheries advisory work for public agencies and industrial groups. He has also conducted over two dozen three to ten day workshops in the past decade, for the International Canadian Fisheries Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. In 1992, he gave the keynote address to the American Fisheries Society, entitled: Where have all the Coho Gone?

He is the editor of The Open Fish Journal and has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation, the Northwest Environmental Journal, the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, and Marine and Coastal Fisheries.

Dr. Walters is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada.

Awards

2009

Killam Teaching Prize for Graduate Instruction

2007

Timothy R. Parsons Medal

2006

American Fisheries Society Award of Excellence 

The Volvo Environment Prize
(shared with Daniel Pauly and Ray Hilborn)