Dr. Steven Rossi is a quantitative scientist with expertise in fisheries stock assessment. Steven has over a decade of consulting experience developing population models that combine survey, exploitation, and demographic data to provide actionable advice for decision-makers. He constructed run reconstruction analyses for Pacific salmon that accounted for environmental effects on salmon survival and developed closed-loop simulations to evaluate harvest strategies for B.C.’s spot prawn fishery. Steven also spent several years working for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, where he developed the population model currently used to assess grey seal abundance and density-dependence in Canadian waters.

Steven received his Ph.D. in Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University for his thesis on evaluating ecosystem responses to grey seal abundance changes in the southern Gulf of Lawrence. He developed a multispecies model of grey seal, Atlantic cod, and Atlantic herring dynamics to characterize the effect of grey seal predation on Atlantic cod while accounting for indirect ecosystem effects via herring. He has developed similar evaluations of grey seal predation effects on depleted cod stocks in other Northwest Atlantic ecosystems, such as Georges Bank, the western Scotian Shelf, and the Bay of Fundy.