Sara Cannon

Postdoctoral Fellow | she/her/hers

Hello! My name is Sara, and I’m a post-doctoral researcher at the CIF. I am a settler of Irish and Croatian descent, and I live and work on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil Waututh) Nations. I am an interdisciplinary marine and aquatic scientist and I aim to use ecology and social science to support communities who are working to address threats to the ecosystems they steward.

I received my PhD from UBC in 2022, and my MSc from UBC in 2017 (both in the Department of Geography). Before moving to Vancouver, I lived for five years in Santa Cruz, California (the traditional lands of the Amah Mutsun Peoples), where I earned a B.Sc. in Marine Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2014. I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay in rural Maryland, United States (on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock Peoples), where there is a vibrant maritime culture, and as a result, the water has always been an important part of my life. 

My graduate research was based in the Micronesia region of the Pacific, where I partnered with local communities and marine managers to integrate local and traditional ecological knowledge, ecology, and social science to understand how human activities interact with climate change to influence coral reef health. 

I work in partnership with the First Nations Fisheries Council and the First Nations Caucus of the Pacific Salmon Commission to trace where Chinook salmon are caught in mixed-stock marine fisheries, supporting First Nations in asserting their fishing rights under the Pacific Salmon Treaty.

Email: s.cannon[at]oceans.ubc.ca
Twitter: @secanno | Website: saracannon.ca