By Jeffery Young

My week of rushing between concurrent sessions at the World Fisheries Congress in Yokohama, Japan has come to a close. An amazing diversity of fisheries science was presented from all around the world - and it was fantastic to meet so many wonderful people. One highlight was a special ceremony held in the middle of the conference. The Emperor and Empress of Japan made an appearance, and similar to the opening keynote presentations, the Emperor spoke of the dire situation of the world's oceans and very humbly admitted to all the mistakes Japan has made. It turns out that the Emperor is a biologist himself, and the author of  a decent number of papers on the speciation of gobi fish. The love of fish runs very deep in the Japanese culture.

By far, the very last session I attended at the conference was the most interesting. It dealt with use and management rights of fishers and the role these rights play in sustainable fisheries management. I presented during this session on Canada's Pacific salmon fisheries. Establishing effective user rights, such as allocating specific areas for exclusive use of a community of fisheries (i.e., Territorial User Rights Fisheries, or TURFs), can create incentives where the fishing communities become the most ardent protectors of fish stocks and their habitat. One of the key conclusions of this session was that no one method of establishing user rights is the best way to manage the issue, and local conditions are critical to finding a system that works. With all of this new knowledge I look forward to working with our Pacific salmon stakeholder community in Canada to find new ways to approach the fishery to conserve salmon and our fisheries.