Oceans and Public Health

How are the health and wellbeing of individuals and populations affected by ocean conditions? Applying systems-based approaches, we focus on nutrition, food-security, toxicity and health risk assessments.

Nereus PI Laurie Chan and Senior Fellow Tiff-Annie Kenny attended the International Society of Exposure Science and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology conference (ISES-ISEE 2018) in Ottawa, Canada on August 26th-30th. The conference’s focus was on environmental health concerns, and included how scientific and local knowledge combine to assess the impact of contaminated fish consumption on First Nations’ health and well-being in Canada.

September 13, 2018 | FisheriesIndigenous

Nereus Fellow Tiff-Annie Kenny recently published an article in The Conversation, ‘Time and money – the biggest hurdles to healthy eating’. In the article, Tiff-Annie discusses how diet quality and health are socially stratified in developed countries.

October 13, 2018 | Social Responsibility

Nereus fellow Colin Thackray (Harvard University) discusses how toxic methylmercury (MeHg) bioaccumulates within marine food webs, beginning with phytoplankton and zooplankton. This ultimately leads to some larger marine predators, such as fish, having much higher MeHg concentrations than the surrounding seawater.

October 2, 2018 | FisheriesEcology

Publications

Kenny, T.A., Wesche, S.D., Fillion, M., MacLean, J., Chan, H.M. 2018. Supporting Inuit food security: A synthesis of initiatives in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Northwest Territories. Canadian Food Studies 5(2): Focus on Indigenous Food, link

Cisneros-Montemayor, A. M., Pauly, D., Weatherdon, L. V., Ota, Y., 2016, A Global Estimate of Seafood Consumption by Coastal Indigenous Peoples, Fisheries, Governance, Policy, Indigenous issues, PLoS ONE, 11(12):e0166681, link