Circadian Shock?
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Blogger: Abigail Lynch, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and a CSIS member, blogs from Down Under -- she's in Australia to build a framework for her dissertation research. She's interested in developing a decision-support tool to regulate harvest management strategies for lake whitefish in a changing climate.
Circadian Shock?
Thursday, June 23, 2011
As I mentioned before, really, the only shock to my system has been circadian. Because it is beautiful and sunny here during the day, I sometimes forget that it’s winter…until about 5 p.m., when it’s pitch black. It is winter here and it gets dark unbearably early. I think I mostly have trouble with it because I have, for my whole life, associated this type of weather and this time of year with certain light expectations. In one depressing impulse, I looked up the length of day difference between here and Lansing…because we’re right at the solstice; it’s quite a big difference…a 4 hour and 55 minutes difference:
| For June 23 | Sunrise | Sunset | Length of Day |
| Brisbane | 6:38 a.m. | 5:02 p.m. | 10 hours, 24 minutes |
| Lansing | 6:01 a.m. | 9:20 p.m. | 15 hours, 19 minutes |
Well, I guess that just means I need to make those 10 hours count for all they’re worth! This afternoon, I ventured to the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. It’s a small oasis right in the middle of the city. As I went around lunchtime, everyone was out -- soaking up the sunlight because it’d be gone before the end of the workday!
Friday, June 24, 2011
Today, I had the opportunity to e-meet Hedley Grantham. Hedley is a post-doctoral research fellow with the Spatial Ecology Lab and has similar research interests to me on in the broader context of decision support and fisheries management and on a more particular note of inland fisheries management in South East Asia. While my dissertation research isn’t on this particular topic, I recently attended an ecosystem-based management workshop in Laos and one of the most strikingly complex issues that arises from inland fisheries management in the region is the delicate balance of the ecosystem and 
livelihoods. People there are fishing for their next meal but if fisheries aren’t managed sustainably, these subsistence fishers will have no access to protein. It’s evident in this region, arguably more so than in others, that fisheries are vitally important renewable resource -- if fisheries are governed sustainably, responsible harvest from healthy populations will allow for future use. According the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, over 40% of the world’s population is dependent upon fish for at least 15% of their animal protein and almost 10% is considered economically dependent upon fisheries industries. In developing countries, that statistic jumps up to 18.5%, which is probably still an underestimate because of the rampant underreporting of landings from small-scale and subsistence fisheries.
In his new position with Conservation International
