Area of Expertise:
Marvin is an instructor in the Fish Wildlife and Recreation Program (FWR) at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). At BCIT he teaches Fish Ecology and Management as well as Environmental Monitoring at the second year level. In addition, he supervises fisheries-related studies as part of the year-long Projects course in FWR.
Marvin has had a 35-year history of working in freshwater fisheries in the province of British Columbia. This includes stints as a consultant, in academia, with the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission and with the provincial Ministry of Environment. Much of his work within and outside of government has focused on stream and lake habitat-protection and restoration, including issues relating to gravel-removal from streams, lake fertilization and flow-augmentation for fluvial fishes. Marvin worked extensively on lower Fraser River white sturgeon during the 1990s as a BC fisheries program biologist and as a Director and member of the Science Committee with the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society. At Griffith University in Brisbane, in 2010, Marvin worked with Dr. Angela Arthington and they are comparing domestic water-use issues between the metropolitan communities of Vancouver and Brisbane with an eye to better managing community-watershed stream flows. In the 1990’s he also worked on Water Use Planning flow agreements, which modified stream discharges in a number of hydro-electric projects in south-western British Columbia to great success in increasing fish numbers. Species that he hasworked on over the years include sturgeon, kokanee, Salish suckers, coho and Chinook salmon.
He has a BSc (Honours) and an MSc from the Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, and a DPhil from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. In addition, he has won a number of aquatic conservation awards including the: Murray A. Newman Award for Significant Achievement in Aquatic Conservation (1999), the B.C. Wildlife Federation Ted Barsby Trophy Conservationist of the Year (2008), the Canadian Wildlife Federation Roland Michener Conservation Award (2010), and the Totem Fly Fishers Roderick Haig-Brown Conservation Award (2012).
Select Presentation(s) / Publication(s):
Nelson, Troy & Gazey, William & English, Karl & Rosenau, Marvin. (2013). Status of White Sturgeon in the Lower Fraser River, British Columbia. Fisheries. 38. 10.1080/03632415.2013.777664.
