What do hot tub safety rules have to do with the survival of rainbow trout in the Stellako River?
For Master of Science student Kirsten Mathison a visit to the Canfor Leisure Pool was the aha moment that made the connection and helped her develop a winning script for the UNBC Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition.
Three Minute Thesis winner Kirsten Mathison will represent UNBC at the western regional championship in Regina in May.
Kirsten's research examines how water temperature and exposure time affect the survival of rainbow trout.
"The Canfor Leisure Pool hot tub actually has rainbow trout decals swimming down the ramp into the pool, and once I saw the rainbow trout, I realized that I had to use the hot tub analogy in my 3MT script and slide," she explains. "It's actually amazing how the messaging about hot tub use perfectly matches my thesis, in a way that's relatable to pretty much anyone who has ever used a hot tub."
Kirsten won the UNBC 3MT competition with her presentation titled, "Too Hot to Handle: Thermal Stress & Recovery." As a result, she will represent the University at the western regional competition at the University of Regina on May 4.
While humans can step out of a hot tub when it gets too warm, fish don't have that option, making rising river temperatures a serious threat to their survival.
"One or two degrees of warming doesn't seem extreme to us," she says. "But conditions can quickly become lethal for fish, especially during extreme events like droughts and heat waves that are becoming more common with climate change."
Her research brings together physiology, ecology and hydrology to better understand how warming waters affect fish and what that means for conservation.
The 3MT competition challenges graduate students to explain their research in just three minutes using one slide and no notes. This year, eight UNBC students took part.
Kirsten enjoys public speaking and saw the competition as an opportunity to make her research more accessible, particularly given its connection to biodiversity loss and climate change.
"The ability to conduct science is a great privilege and a profoundly cool thing to do," she says. "However, if research is only accessible to experts in your field and not the general public then it really diminishes the research's overall impact. " With such tight time constraints, preparation was key.
"With only three minutes, every sentence had to be thoughtfully chosen to move the narrative forward and provide more information," she says. "There isn't as much room to improvise because if you accidentally go over three minutes you are automatically disqualified."
Kirsten is part of the Freshwater Fish Ecology Laboratory led by Rio Tinto Research Chair in Climate Change and Freshwater Fish Ecology Dr. Eduardo Martins. In addition to looking at the impact of water temperature changes on rainbow trout, the first-year graduate student is examining the fish's capacity to recover from thermal stress caused by heat waves.
"Does escaping the heat and finding a cooler environment actually help repair damage that was caused by the heat?" she asks. "This lets me look at the impacts of variable thermal conditions and predict how rainbow trout populations may be affected by realistic heat wave scenarios."
Kirsten graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Victoria in 2017 and a post-degree diploma from Vancouver Island University in 2025. In the intervening years she worked as a wildlife tech in a variety of fields, but the time was right to return to school to advance her education.
She was excited for the opportunity to join Dr. Martins' lab because it allows her to do applied research.
"For starters, fish are just the coolest," she says. "They lie at the intersection of human culture and food systems while also being very critical ecologically. Not to mention, they are kind of alien in that they are so different from us terrestrial animals."
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