SEA AROUND US PROJECT AND OCEANA - Key Persons
Anna Luna grew up between the lakes of Quebec and the Mediterranean Coast of France, where she developed a close relationship with the water. Seeing whales for the first time on Quebec's northern coast when she was a kid kickstarted her passion for the ocean.
She completed her BSc in Biological Sciences at the University of Montreal, specializing in Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution. Following that, she set off on a year-and-a-half travel and eco-volunteering journey across Southeast Asia with the goal of deepening her grasp of the world's marine ecosystems. Now, she's excited about pursuing her MSc at the University of British Columbia, under the supervision of Daniel Pauly.
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair
- Professor of Fish and Fisheries Biology at the School of Biology
Athanassios (Thanasis) is a professor of Fish and Fisheries Biology at the School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied Environmental Biology (BSc), Oceanography (MSc) and Fisheries (Ph.D.) and has worked for 25 years in research and academic institutions. His research focuses on fish biology, monitoring marine populations, ecosystem modelling, stock assessment, ecocentric fisheries management and developing the digital twin of the ocean, with particular interest in the data-deficient Mediterranean fisheries. Professional and recreational fishing were family traditions, rebuilding fish stocks and marine ecosystems are his lifetime obligations.
Brittany completed her B.Sc. in Biology at UBC and joined the Sea Around Us as a Research Assistant in 2015. She works on the carry forward and update of catch reconstructions. She developed her interest in food security and environmental sustainability during her Science Co-op placements at Agriculture Canada and UBC Okanagan. She is happy to be back near the ocean again and working for the Sea Around Us. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, hiking, painting, and Ultimate Frisbee.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Professor
Callum Roberts is a professor of marine conservation at the University of Exeter in the UK. His research focuses on threats to marine life and on finding the means to protect them. For the last three decades, he has used his scientific background to make the case for stronger protection for marine life. His team provided the scientific underpinning for a new ocean protection target - 30% by 2030 - which is gaining widespread support. He leads the Convex Seascape Survey research programme into ocean carbon sequestration. He is the author of three books: The Unnatural History of the Sea (Island Press 2007), Ocean of life: how our seas are changing (Penguin 2013), and Reef Life: An Underwater Memoir (Profile Books 2019). He is chief scientific advisor to BLUE Marine Foundation and the Maldives Coral Institute, a WWF UK Fellow, board member of the Nekton Deep Ocean Research Institute, and advisor to the Pew Bertarelli Global Ocean Legacy Program.
Chloe Ruiz graduated from the University of Calgary with degrees in Geography and Sociology. From a young age, she has been fascinated by the ocean and animals, always knowing she wanted to pursue a career that involved working with nature. It was during an elective course on climate change that she decided to focus on environmental and wildlife conservation.
Throughout her studies, she conducted extensive fieldwork with two of her most significant research projects being her field study in Blue Lake, British Columbia, where she investigated the characteristics and formation processes of lakes and streams, and a research project in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she collected and analyzed data on the distribution of greenspace.
After graduation, she travelled to multiple countries in North and South America, as well as Europe. Now that she is back in Vancouver, she is happy to be part of the Sea Around Us team to apply her research skills and advance her passion for conservation.
During her free time, Chloe enjoys travelling, working out, playing soccer, and hiking with her dog, which she rescued from Mexico.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow in Marine Historical Ecology at the University of Exeter
- Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow
Ciaran is a postdoctoral research fellow in marine historical ecology at the University of Exeter, UK. He is currently visiting the Sea Around Us to collaborate on the Convex Seascape Project, a wide-ranging project aiming to better understand the earth's blue carbon stores and their vulnerability. Specifically, he will describe and map the spread of human pressures on the global seabed over the past 200 years.
Prior to this, Ciaran was a postdoc/PhD student at the Danish National Institute of Aquatic Resources (DTU Aqua), where he researched the effects of bottom trawling on seabed habitats, and the use of ecological indicators in fisheries management and conservation.
Ciaran has a BSc in marine biology from Bangor University, and a MSc in marine resource development and protection from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. In the past, he has worked as a scuba diving instructor in the Red Sea, and as a consultant marine ecologist in the UK. He is originally from Cork, Ireland, and likes nothing more than being by/in the sea.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Founder of the Nonprofit Conservation Organization BLOOM
Claire is the founder of the nonprofit conservation organization BLOOM, based in Paris and Hong Kong. Her research and activities focus on deep-sea fisheries and shark consumption habits. In Asia, Nouvian and BLOOM's co-workers aim to improve the degraded conservation status of shark populations by making shark fin soup a socially unacceptable dish. In Europe, Nouvian is dedicated to studying the nature of deep-sea fishing. Before starting BLOOM, Claire, who has a B.A. in History from the University of Paris IV Sorbonne, worked in television production and journalism, specializing in wildlife and scientific documentaries. She is the author of the 2006 book and museum exhibit The Deep, winner of the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize and is involved in education through art and science projects at the University of Geneva, AgroParisTech/ENGREF, University of Hong Kong, among others.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Professor in Marine Ecology and Data Analysis at the University of Montpellier
David is a professor in marine ecology and data analysis at the University of Montpellier. He has a background in theoretical ecology and statistics. He developed the field of marine macroecology, i.e., the exploration and explanation of large-scale biodiversity patterns across the oceans. He particularly focuses his research, carried out at the MARBEC lab, on coral and temperate reefs to better understand the interlaced effects of climate change and human pressures on fish biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. More recently, he leads the development of a new generation of tools based on environmental DNA to monitor marine biodiversity across spatial and depth gradients. He is one of the associate editors of Ecology Letters and a senior fellow at the Institut Universitaire de France. David has been recognized as a highly cited researcher since 2016 in Ecology and Environment.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Senior Scientist
- Senior Staff Member
Maria (Deng) is the Sea Around Us Project Manager. She joined the lab in 2001 to supervise the integration of fish-related data generated by the Sea Around Us and UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries into FishBase. From research associate she moved up to senior scientist and, as of June 2017, she became Project Manager, a position that has led her to coordinate improvements to the project's infrastructure and website, lead fundraising efforts and apply a computer-intensive method of ‘stock assessment' to the catch statistics of all maritime countries. Prior to the Sea Around Us, Deng worked for almost 20 years at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management in the Philippines. During that time, she completed her MSc in Environmental Science and a PhD at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse.
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator
- Senior Staff Member
- Daniel Pauly
Dr. Daniel Pauly was born in Paris, France; he is both French and Canadian and studied fisheries science in Germany, but he spent much of his career in the tropics, notably in the Philippines. Since 1994, he is a Professor of Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada, where in 1999, he founded the Sea Around Us research initiative, funded by a variety of philanthropic foundations and devoted to documenting and mitigating the impact of fisheries on the world's marine ecosystems. The concepts, methods and software he (co-)developed are documented in over 1000 widely-cited contributions and have led to his receiving multiple scientific awards.
The Sea Around Us PI, Dr. Daniel Pauly, together with our advisory board member and founder of BLOOM, Claire Nouvian, advisory board member, Dr. Rashid Sumaila, and long-time collaborators, Dr. Didier Gascuel and Dr. Frédéric Le Manach, are among the scientists, activists, public servants, and students whose portraits are on display along the streets of Paris as part of the Biennale Photoclimat.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Marine Conservation
Dr. Dirk Zeller is Professor of Marine Conservation and leader of the Sea Around Us- Indian Ocean in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Western Australia (UWA). He can be reached at dirk.zeller@uwa.edu.au.
Prior to joining the University of Western Australia, Dirk was Senior Scientist and Executive Director of the Sea Around Us (Sea Around Us - Global) at the University of British Columbia (UBC, www.seaaroundus.org), and has been part of the Sea Around Us since its inception in 1999.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Professor
Dr. Enric Sala is a former university professor who saw himself writing the obituary of ocean life and quit academia to become a full-time conservationist as a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He founded and leads Pristine Seas, a project that combines exploration, research, media, economics and policy work to inspire country leaders to protect vital places in the ocean. To date, Pristine Seas has helped to create 25 of the largest marine reserves on the planet, covering an area of over 6.5 million square km. Enric has received numerous awards, including 2008 World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader, 2013 Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award, 2016 Russian Geographical Society Award, 2018 Heinz Award in Public Policy, National Geographic Hubbard Medal, Albert I Grand Medal. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Director of the Institute for the Oceans
Dr. William Cheung is the director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. His main research areas include understanding the responses and vulnerabilities of marine ecosystems and fisheries to global change and examining trade-offs in managing and conserving living marine resources. William obtained his BSc in Biology and M.Phil. from the University of Hong Kong. He worked for WWF Hong Kong for two years, after which he completed his Ph.D. in Resource Management and Environmental Studies at UBC. From 2009 to 2011, he was Lecturer in marine ecosystem services at the University of East Anglia. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed publications. William is also actively involved in international and regional initiatives that bridge science and policy.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Executive Director of TMT
Duncan Copeland is the Executive Director of TMT, an international not-for-profit providing fisheries intelligence, analysis, and capacity assistance to developing maritime States. Over the past 20 years he has held a variety of fisheries management and monitoring, control and surveillance advisory roles to governments and inter-governmental organizations, and on oceans programmes for international NGOs. With a career focus on the ‘pointy-end' of IUU fishing and associated crime, he works closely with all relevant stakeholders, from community to ministerial-level groups, and across fisheries enforcement agencies. One of the four founders, he has been with TMT since the organization's establishment in 2014.
Job Titles:
- President
- French President
During an interview with French national television, President Emmanuel Macron was confronted with images from David Attenborough's Ocean documentary, which shows the gigantic nets of bottom trawlers operating in the Mediterranean dropping hundreds of tonnes of all kinds of fishes on a boat after razing the seafloor and everything in their way.
Job Titles:
- Visiting International Research Student
In her free time, Itsaso enjoys writing, painting, reading, and spending time by or in the water.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Professor of Environmental Science and Policy
Jennifer Jacquet is a Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami. She is also Associate Research Director of the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) at Brown University. She completed her Ph.D. at UBC in 2009 working with Daniel Pauly and the Sea Around Us. She is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship and a Pew fellowship in marine conservation. She is the author of Is Shame Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool (2015) and The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World (2022).
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Western Australia
Jessica is a professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Western Australia and co-founder of Blue Abacus. She grew up in Saudi Arabia and obtained her SCUBA diving ticket at 15. This allowed her to get a closeup view of marine life at an early age. Her lab focuses on conservation-driven research, with particular attention to the contribution of highly protected MPAs to the rebuilding of resilient oceans. She pioneered the development of mid-water Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems to further our understanding of open ocean wildlife such as tunas, sharks and marine mammals. She is a big fan of big data.
Katia holds a BSc in Oceanology and a master's degree in Biological Oceanography from the Fundação Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (1990 and 1995), as well as a Ph.D. in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia (2005). She is currently an associate professor III at the Federal University of Sergipe. She has experience in ichthyology, ecology and fisheries, with a special focus on the following topics: northeastern Brazil, commercial and recreational fisheries, albacore, fish growth, ecological modelling using Ecopath, shrimp and common fish names. Katia has mentored students in the Scientific and Technological Initiation Scholarship Program at the Federal University of Sergipe and is currently a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Institutional Scientific Initiation Scholarship Program. She is also the representative of the Federal University of Sergipe in the FishBase Consortium.
Originally from St. Andrews, Manitoba, Leah Isfeld moved to Vancouver to attend The University of British Columbia in 2018. Her interest in fisheries science and conservation stems from spending much of her time near Lake Winnipeg and the Red River, and witnessing the stressors impacting these aquatic ecosystems.
While obtaining her BSc at UBC, she worked as a research assistant in the Faculty of Forestry, and later as a collections assistant in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum's Fish Collection. Later on, she worked in the Schluter Lab, assisting in ecological and evolutionary biology research utilizing threespine sticklebacks.
Prior to joining the Sea Around Us, Leah worked as a field technician at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation's Wild Salmon Program, where she was tasked with collecting data on juvenile Pacific salmon presence in Fraser Estuary marshes.
Leah is excited to be joining the Sea Around Us and having the opportunity to work with and learn from the team's talented researchers.
In her spare time, she enjoys spending time outside biking and hiking, taking advantage of Vancouver's accessibility to the North Shore Mountains. She also likes listening to podcasts and knitting.
Martin started his career as a Database Administrator for the International Rice Research Institute prior to joining Quantitative Aquatics, Inc. as a software engineer.
Driven by his dedication to computer programming, he takes part in the development of the FishBase and SeaLifeBase websites and is also responsible for migrating the FishBase and SeaLifeBase database to PostgreSQL.
On top of this, he also manages the
Sea Around Us database. He is directly involved in updating the Sea Around Us website by performing allocation runs, completing data requests for other organizations, institutions and individuals interested in the Sea Around Us data and is also responsible for extracting catch data for CMSY.
During his free time, Martin loves riding his bicycle, exploring different places and enjoying the beautiful sceneries of his home country, the Philippines.
Job Titles:
- Miel Ortiz - Website Manager
Job Titles:
- Miel Ortiz - Website Manager
Patricia was born in the Philippines and moved to Canada when she was almost two years old.
As of 2022, she is finishing a degree in Biology with a concentration in Marine Biology at the University of Victoria. For as long as she can remember, she has wanted to become a marine biologist.
Patricia has always loved the ocean and she calls it her ‘happy place,' where she feels most at peace. In her free time, she is often outside either on a hike or tide-pooling. She lives for the outdoors and she believes that's where her passion comes from. This passion has grown after obtaining her scuba certifications, which have allowed her to see the ocean from a whole new perspective. This new vision has also increased Patricia's motivation to do whatever she can to help conserve marine ecosystems.
She is excited to be joining the Sea Around Us team and learning from our researchers.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Professor
- Professor and Director, Fisheries Economics Research Unit
Rashid Sumaila is Professor and Director, Fisheries Economics Research Unit and the OceanCanada Partnership at the University of British Columbia. He has also been an active and key member of the Sea Around Us Project since its inception in 1999. He specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, illegal fishing, climate change and oil spills.
Rashid has experience working in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atlantic region, Namibia and the Southern African region, Ghana and the West African region and Hong Kong and the South China Sea. He has published articles in several journals including Nature, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Bioeconomics, Land Economics, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Environmental and Resource Economics and Ecological Economics.
He is the winner of the 2017 Volvo Environmental Prize, 2017 Benchley Oceans Award in Science; 2016 UBC Killam Research Prize; 2013 American Fisheries Society Excellence in Public Outreach Award; 2009 Stanford Leopold Leadership Fellowship and 2008 Pew Marine Fellowship. Sumaila was named a Hokkaido University Ambassador in 2016. He has given talks at the UN Rio+20, the WTO, the White House, the Canadian Parliament, the African Union and the British House of Lords.
Rashid's work has generated a great deal of interest and has been cited by, among others, the Economist, the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and the Vancouver Sun. For more about his list of publications, click here.
Rashid Sumaila is a professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. His research focuses on bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, marine protected areas, illegal fishing, climate change, marine plastic pollution, and oil spills. Sumaila has experience working in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atlantic region, Namibia and the Southern African region, Ghana and the West African region and Hong Kong and the South China Sea. Dr. Sumaila received his Ph.D. (Economics) from the University of Bergen and his B.Sc. from the Ahmadu Bello University. Sumaila is widely published and cited. He won the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019.
Roshni was born in Mauritius and grew up between Mauritius and India. Surrounded by the ocean from a young age, she was inspired to pursue a career in marine science. She earned her BA in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Maine, USA. In 2019, she moved to Vancouver to complete her MSc in Oceans and Fisheries at The University of British Columbia.
Her research experience spans diverse areas of marine science, including marine mammal research, oceanography, coral reef restoration, and marine education, with projects in Mauritius, Seychelles, the US (Florida, California, Maine) and New Zealand. Before joining the Sea Around Us, she focused on the bottom trawling industry in Asia-specifically in India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia-examining the human dimensions of fishing, including the motivations behind starting, staying in, and leaving bottom trawling.
Roshni is deeply passionate about social justice and human rights. From a young age, she has volunteered with organizations supporting communities facing injustice. She firmly believes that strong community bonds are essential for driving meaningful change and strives to make a positive impact both through her research and in everyday life.
In her free time, she enjoys pet sitting, walking by the water or through the forest, and spending time with friends and family.
Job Titles:
- Visiting International Research Student
Born in France, with family roots in Royan on the Atlantic coast, Sabine Moreau spent many holidays by the sea, nurturing an interest in the ocean and navigation. Inspired by her grandfather's research on fish, she developed a curiosity about the impact of human activities on fish populations and ecosystems.
She went on to study environmental science at AgroParisTech in France, deepening her interest in how ecosystems respond to climate change and in the actions to limit these impacts.
Now, at the Sea Around Us, Sabine works on the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT), investigating how global warming affects fish growth.
In her free time, she enjoys hiking, drawing and playing video games.
Valentina Ruiz Leotaud is a Venezuelan-Canadian multimedia and multi-platform journalist. She has +20 years of work experience covering local and international news for different media outlets and platforms. She holds a Master's Degree in Journalism from the University of British Columbia and was a fellow of the International Reporting Program. She joined the Sea Around Us in 2016 and, since then, has been in charge of the media outreach aimed at bringing public attention to the project's research. She's also proficient in all things social media.
Dr. Vicky Wing Yee Lam is a fisheries economist and Research Associate at the Sea Around Us, based at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Ph.D. in Fisheries Economics from UBC, where her research focused on global fisheries economics in the context of climate change. With extensive experience in interdisciplinary research and project management, she bridges economic analysis and marine science to advance sustainable fisheries and marine conservation.
Dr. Lam's expertise spans fisheries data reconstruction, economic impact analysis, spatial analysis, and policy development. She has contributed to global projects exploring the effects of climate change on fisheries and coastal communities, economic vulnerabilities in fisheries-dependent regions, and the sustainability of marine ecosystems. Her work addresses policy-relevant questions at local, regional, and global scales.
Dr. Lam has numerous publications in high-impact journals addressing climate change, marine conservation, and fisheries management. She has been involved in international initiatives, including collaborations with the World Bank and the Packard Foundation. Additionally, she served as an Editorial Board member for the journal Sustainability and has guest-edited a special issue on the Effects of Climate Change on the Economics and the Sustainability of Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture.
She has presented her work at several international conferences and workshops, contributing to global discussions on sustainable fisheries and marine governance. Dr. Lam is committed to developing innovative approaches to marine conservation, integrating economic analysis with ecological insights to support informed decision-making for sustainable ocean futures.