Fisheries involve complex problems not easily addressed by a single discipline, methodology, or set of stakeholders. In 2010, the Canadian Fisheries Research Network (CFRN) was initiated to increase fisheries research capacity in Canada through interdisciplinary and inclusive research collaborations. As post-graduate students in the network, we reflected on the type of training necessary to tackle fisheries problems and reviewed opportunities available at Canadian universities to receive such training. This paper presents an overview of fisheries education currently available in Canada, reflects on our training within the CFRN, and proposes improvements to fisheries education and research. Our review of the subject revealed few dedicated fisheries programs, limited interdisciplinary programs, few specialized fisheries training programs, and a heavy reliance on academic supervisors to secure research opportunities in fisheries. In contrast, the CFRN enhanced our training by deliberately focusing on tools and techniques to address fisheries issues, providing venues to foster interdisciplinary and inclusive research collaborations, and exposing the realities of stakeholder collaborations. We call for post-graduate-level fisheries education and research that is interdisciplinary, collaborative, and inclusive to produce well-rounded scientists and managers, and we suggest ways that universities, researchers, and funding agencies can incorporate these themes into fisheries education and research.

Indicator-based frameworks for assessing the sustainability of commercial fisheries have become well-established in the consumer sector. Within fisheries management, there are only a few jurisdictions, notably Australia, where sustainability frameworks are regularly used across the full spectrum of management functions, including planning, decision making, and evaluation. In Canada, a "sustainable fisheries framework" has been proposed but implementation has been limited to date. The Canadian Fisheries Research Network (CFRN), a six-year collaboration between Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the commercial fishing industry, and academic institutions, included as one of its major outputs the development of a comprehensive framework-based approach to evaluate the sustainability of commercial fisheries in Canada. Although most fisheries sustainability frameworks focus on the ecological domain, the CFRN explicitly recognized the social, economic, and institutional domains as having equal importance in a holistic treatment of sustainability. Following an iterative research and development process, a subgroup within the CFRN produced a novel sustainability indicator framework that combines a hierarchical subject matter structure consisting of domains, dimensions, and elements with a formula approach to developing indicators that utilizes a system of variables, or attributes. These two aspects of the sustainability indicator framework are linked in a way that helps to enforce comprehensive and routine methods for identifying objectives and relating those to specific indicators. The careful balancing of scope and depth makes for a powerful tool that can be used across a range of fisheries management contexts within Canada and in other jurisdictions that have a similar governance structure and high degree of institutional capacity. We present a detailed account of how the sustainability indicator framework was developed, the logic of its construction, and its potential application in fisheries management.

Flooding river valleys following construction of dams restrict fluvial environments to reaches that were formerly headwaters. Whether remaining habitat is suitable for all life stages of fluvial species is poorly understood. A fluvial species, Arctic grayling Thymallus arcticus, showed a dramatic decline following flooding of the Upper Peace River and the formation of the Williston Reservoir. We related landscape and field site-specific features with occurrence of juvenile Arctic grayling using an information theoretic approach. For the landscape model, an association was identified between stream order and Arctic grayling occurrence although stream order alone was a poor predictor. A positive association between juvenile Arctic grayling occurrence and distance from the Williston reservoir and stream order, as well as a negative association with water temperature and temperature variance, was deemed important for the field site model. Both modelling approaches indicated size of stream system to be an important influence on occurrence of juvenile grayling in the Williston watershed. River length required for suitable river habitat for salmonids has not previously been identified, but should be factored into future management plans when evaluating the impact of proposed hydroelectric dams and subsequent flooding of river systems.

A deep reading of Hardin (1968) reveals that he had a lot more to say about the use and regulation of resources such as fisheries than he is given credit for in the literature. It appears that he is typically cited just so that authors can use the phrase "tragedy of the commons" to invoke the specter of looming catastrophe and then tie that to whatever solution they have proposed. We argue in this contribution that there is a lot more in Hardin's essay that either contradicts or greatly complicates the arguments he is cited as an authority for.

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