LAB MEMBERS

I am interested in using statistics to help solve real world problems. Lately this has been focused on methods and tools related to fisheries stock assessment models and getting estimates of demographic parameters. Working on fisheries related problems has taught me a lot about things I never expected to learn about and I have enjoyed that aspect. I am also deeply interested in the computational techniques that help enable us to solve these problems, as each improvement enables us to do more with the data at hand. I completed my PhD in Statistics at Dalhousie University focusing mainly on close-kin mark recapture (CKMR). For example, showing that the number of within-cohort sibling comparisons is related to the variance in number of offspring produced by adults and how this can be used to derive an estimate of effective population size. My MSc was also completed at Dalhousie, was about trying to use machine learning techniques to diagnose lung cancer patients from breath samples. In my spare time I enjoy running, baking and drawing.

I have always been fascinated with the ocean, especially having grown up right next to it. This fascination has led me down the path of marine biology research. My PhD project is focusing on capelin (Mallotus villosus) population dynamics in Newfoundland. This involves developing a state-space model for the capelin population, which will include factors that may affect their population. In terms of academic interests, I have a strong interest in marine ecology, ecosystems, and the impacts of anthropogenic activities. I did my MSc in Marine Biology in University College Cork in Ireland. My thesis focused on using baited remote underwater video systems to investigate the different macro-fauna benthic communities occurring off the Arklow Bank in the Irish Sea. Arklow Bank is currently a site for offshore windfarm development in Ireland. So, this work gives preliminary data on the communities present in the area before major construction occurs. I also did work investigating the impacts that the construction of an offshore breakwater, which artificially sheltered shores, had on local intertidal communities in Millport, Scotland. My BSc (Hons) in Ecology and Environmental Biology was also done in University College Cork. As part of my BSc, I conducted a final year thesis that looked at the spatial pattern of chthamalid barnacles (Chthamalus spp.) in Ireland using image analysis. I was also a bursar of the Irish Marine Institute (Foras na Mara). My work in the Marine Institute was helping to validate qPCR assays for fish pathogens and working with historical crayfish material. I love being able to learn anything I can about the ocean. So, I hope that my research will expand my knowledge but have real-world impacts. I also think that understanding capelin dynamics is important to understanding the local ecosystem, and the population of its predators. I am very excited to dive deeper into this topic and collaborate with people!

I’ve been entranced with the ocean since I was a little kid – one of the ones that after going to aquariums religiously, swore to be a marine biologist. I grew up with an appreciation of recreational fishing (and seafood, in general…). As I learned more about the workings of the sea, I knew I wanted to delve more into how climate change & environmental stress affected fisheries species in oceans worldwide. While pursuing my undergraduate degree in Carleton College in Minnesota, I was lucky enough to connect with one of the two marine biologists on campus, Mike Nishizaki, in exploring the effects of abiotic factors such as flow, temperature, and pH on respiration rates in the intertidal mussel, Mytilus trossolus. This work led me to Friday Harbor Labs at the University of Washington for an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) investigating the same topic. That work flowed well into the pursuit of my MS at Washington State University with Wes Dowd, where I investigated the effects of sequential sublethal stress on metabolic & antioxidant capacity in the intertidal mussel, Mytilus californianus. These projects made great stepping stones for my confidence as a scientist, but also in the knowledge I needed to understand how environmental stress could affect populations. For my undergraduate thesis, I focused on ontogenetic niche shifts in kelp forest species, which sparked my love for trophic ecology & complex ecosystem interactions. So while I’ve been an ecological physiologist by training, my heart yearned for something broader towards the ecosystem level, which led me to the FESA lab. Here, I hope to better understand trends in population dynamics under an ecophys lens to elucidate potentially unexpected trophic effects of environmental stress to equip policymakers with the knowledge they need to promote sustainable commercial fishing. I’m excited to understand the workings of the Atlantic after having focused on the Pacific Ocean for over 5 years. In my spare time, you may find me trying to find a place to practice the organ, playing my shamisen, practicing my Japanese, or simply enjoying a delicious pastry with a chai latte. I also enjoy spending time in the gym or in the great outdoors camping or hiking!

My doctoral thesis will focus on investigating the trophic drivers of habitat use of highly mobile marine predators, such as sharks and groundfish, in the Northwest Atlantic and how to use interspecies relationships to predict when and where they will be. Not only is this a topic of great personal interest (“What motivates a fish?” is such a good question), but my hope is that my research can contribute to our ability to manage these species through an enhanced understanding of how they may respond to anthropogenic changes to their environment such as climate change and overfishing. The Northwest Atlantic is an endlessly complex and dynamic ecosystem, and my passion lies in harnessing the biological signals within it to make useful predictions about how it works. My first introduction to using models to understand the natural world came with my honour’s and master’s research at UNB where I tested the ability of temperature-dependent embryo development functions to make predictions about timing of larval release in nature. After that, I was fortunate enough to find employment with Fisheries and Oceans Canada as a research technician, where I have worked on a wide range of topics such as the effect of climate change on lobster reproduction, scallop larval development, and most recently basking shark habitat suitability. Outside of thinking about fish, I enjoy travelling, learning coding languages, and have a deep love of the night sky which I do my best to capture through astrophotography.

I have been a stock assessment biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Gulf Region, since 2017. I have led or contributed to the assessment and rebuilding plans of numerous fish stocks, including herring, Atlantic cod, white hake, and yellowtail flounder. I have also led research projects on Atlantic bluefin tuna in eastern Canada, focusing on its distribution, predator–prey relationships, and the impact of predation on its prey. I completed a B.Sc. in Marine Biology at Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) and an M.Sc. in Oceanography at the Institut des Sciences de la Mer (ISMER-UQAR). Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my young family, cycling, and cooking.

I have always been interested in movement and nature. I could sit for hours outside (while doing thousands of other irrelevant things) and ask myself questions. Where does a species go? When does it move? When does it move where? Or even, where does a species move when? Similarly, this constant movement kind of mirrors who I am. I was born in Montreal, but I did my bachelor’s in ecology and biology in Trois-Rivières at the UQTR, where I spent my summers studying the St. Lawrence floodplain at Lac Saint-Pierre. I then moved completely randomly to Norway to study in a little town south of Oslo named Ås. I did my master’s in ecology there at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, where I looked at red deer diel activity patterns on an island off the coast of Norway called Svanøya. As I said, I loved movement, so after a quick two-year stint in Norway, I moved to Newfoundland to complete my PhD at Memorial University. Some may say I follow the cold and bad weather… contrary to most of the marine species who seem to follow warmer waters. This is exactly the kind of questions I will try to answer for my PhD, but contrary to me, I will only focus on the Northwest Atlantic, with the goal, however, of my research being useful all around the world. With the help of powerful modelling tools, I will investigate which species are changing their distributions in the Northwest Atlantic, whatever the direction (e.g., expand, shift, contract, merge, split), but will also project their distributions into the future to identify where they will be found as climate and oceanographic conditions change. I also want to answer what is driving these changes. Is it water temperature? Salinity? Currents? The North Atlantic Oscillation? Could it just be cyclical? As a case study, I will investigate the swordfish situation in more depth, with the help of pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs). Outside of school, I also need to keep moving, so I always have to go somewhere. It could be for a soccer training session late night or early morning, a quick night out with friends, a jog at sunrise, a small shift at a restaurant, a nice long hike, a break reading a book, another journey somewhere…

One of my fondest memories as a kid was spending hours playing a video game called Endless Ocean: Blue World. There was a portion of the game where you could dive in the Canadian Arctic and to say I was obsessed would be an understatement. I had the chance to visit Churchill Manitoba during a field course in Arctic ecology and that really cemented my love for Northern environments so I’m excited to have a chance to officially work in this ecosystem for my research! I completed my BSc (Hons) from the University of Toronto with a double major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Earth and Environmental Systems. During my time there, I completed my undergraduate thesis with Don Jackson and published a paper on bird usage of stormwater ponds and the temporal and environmental characteristics that influenced their community composition. This project really sparked my interest in larger scale ecological processes at the community and ecosystem level so I’m excited to apply that to ecosystems in the Canadian Arctic. I worked as a hedgerow technician for the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust where I completed vegetation, bat and bird surveys and removed invasive plant species. I really enjoyed working with the local farmers and creating outreach resources for my local community because I could directly see the impact of my work. In this regard I hope the research I’m working on will provide valuable insight into maintaining food security for Northern communities. In my free time I enjoy hiking, snorkeling/scuba diving, underwater hockey, playing videogames, reading, drawing, and catching insects!

I didn't grow up in a very aquatic family, and my fascination with fish and aquatic ecosystems is relatively new (I'm a terrible fisherman and a terrible swimmer). In high school, I read "The Unnatural History of the Sea" by Callum Roberts for a class, which impressed upon me the magnitude of fish our oceans used to have, and how much we still stand to lose. I took a SCUBA diving course on a whim in my undergrad, at the University of Vermont, and it changed my world by letting me see that a body of water is its own place, with as much complexity as anywhere on land. Since then, I've loved diving, watching ROV footage, looking at bathymetry, or anything that lets us see the hidden processes and dynamics that go on underwater. This experience also led me to spend a semester in Sitka, Alaska, at the University of Alaska Southeast's Scientific Dive Semester program. In my time there, I fell in love with coldwater ecology. Watching the magnitude of the Herring spawn, which turned the 70 foot visibility into "barely see your hand in front of your face", got me interested in forage fish as well.     I got my bachelor's degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology with a concentration in Fisheries Biology at the University of Vermont, and I was fortunate enough to join Dr. Jason Stockwell's lab as a lab technician. Through my time in the lab, and a fisheries management class I attended with Dr. Stockwell, I gained a greater appreciation for the human cultural and economic impacts of fisheries science and management. I am excited to have the opportunity of doing research with such real world applicability and importance.     In my free time I enjoy scuba diving, playing the guitar, reading, hiking, running, and very amateur luthiery.

I grew up in Newfoundland, wandering down to piers and sticking my hands in the cool water to find starfish and other funky critters clinging to rocks. After moving to Nova Scotia, my love for the ocean only grew. From sandy beaches to playing “dolphin” in the salty Atlantic, I realized that my life would forever be changed by the ocean. I completed my BSc double major in Biology and Psychology at Dalhousie University, where I developed a passion for animal behaviour. At the same time, the idea of the ocean continued to linger in the back of my mind. Receiving my first student aquatic technician position with DFO reignited that curiosity, and I haven’t looked back since! Through my participation in marine ecosystem surveys, I began to understand how fisheries data are collected in the field, but I wondered what happens to that data afterwards. How does it actually inform fisheries management? That was when I started to think about stock assessments. I became fascinated by the connection between field data, population dynamics, and the management decisions that ultimately determine how fisheries are monitored and managed. Completing my Master of Marine Management at Dalhousie University, gave me an interdisciplinary understanding of how fisheries are managed. My research project introduced me to ecosystem-based management approaches, which opened my eyes to the importance of taking a holistic approach to fisheries management. One that considers not only the target species, but also the broader ecosystem and the ways in which humans interact with the ocean. Although this program taught me a great deal about fisheries management, I still found myself wanting to better understand the science behind those management decisions. This led me to the FESA Lab. I wanted to bring together my interest in ecosystem approaches with my growing passion for stock assessment and explore how these two areas could intersect. My project will examine how changes in Atlantic Cod spawning phenology align with the timing of the spring bloom. I will then further look into disentangling environmental and fisheries-induced drivers by developing a model that accounts for the interconnected nature of marine ecosystems, incorporating not only annual estimates of spawning phenology, but also fishery removals, population demographics, and environmental indicators. I hope this work can contribute to a better understanding of cod population dynamics, supporting broader ecosystem-based fisheries science and management. When I’m not in school, I love to cook, go on hikes with my two black labs, workout, and fantasize about reading things other than journal articles.