Hometown: Akron, NY

Chairperson: Richard Appeldoorn

Degree: MS

Previous Education: BS at Roger Williams University in Bristol RI, studied abroad at Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences in St Georges Bermuda, some MS at University of Virgin Islands in St Thomas USVI

Research Interests: My research interests stemmed from two very different experiences.  I have worked over the past 2 years as a fisheries observer in Alaska, collecting data aboard commercial fishing boats to help manage many different types of fisheries.  Through this work, I became very interested in natural resource management and fisheries, seeing it from a different side than the academics and scientists.  I was also recently living in Exuma, Bahamas managing a hotel and restaurant, where I noticed the extraordinary consumption of conch, with seemingly no regulations.  Here in Puerto Rico, I am marrying the ideas of fisheries and conch. I will be conducting an island wide survey (primarily on the east, south and west coasts, including the islands of Mona, Cuelebra and Vieques) to determine the abundance and density of the conch resource around the island and seeing how that abundance varies with habitat type and depth.  In addition to abundance and density, length and age of individual conch will be determined in order to construct an idea of the age structure of the Puerto Rican population.  This work will be done in conjunction with the Department of Natural Resources and is the 4th in a series of recent surveys that have been done approximately every 5 years.  I am very excited for this project, as I have not worked with conch before, and anticipate learning a lot working with a new type of fishery.  It will also be interesting to see how the fishery has changed over the years, and if we are moving towards or away from maintaining a sustainable fishery here on the island.