Celeste Kieran

2021 Weston Family Awards in Northern Research recipient

Master’s student
Simon Fraser University

Celeste is a master’s student at Simon Fraser University researching marine ecosystem dynamics in the North Pacific Ocean. She is determining how competition, anthropogenic pressures and changes in the environment affect the feeding and distribution patterns of Pacific salmon and how these patterns may have changed over time.

As a fish grows, it incorporates chemical tracers from its food and environment within its scales. For more than 100 years Northern fisheries have collected the scales of Pacific salmon returning to freshwater; scales which can now provide important information about how salmon behaviour and the ocean environment have changed throughout history. Using a century-old archive of sockeye salmon scales, Celeste is exploring connections between Pacific salmon, the North Pacific Ocean ecosystem and a changing environment.

Learn more about the Weston Family Awards in Northern Research.