Catalina Burch

Catalina has had a biphasic life history. During her larval stage, she moved from Florida to Washington, where she earned a B.A. in Biology and Fine Art from Whitman College in 2018. She conducted her thesis research on marine protected area effectiveness for commercial fin-fish species in the Turks and Caicos Islands. After graduating, she worked as a scuba guide in Australia and outdoor instructor in New Zealand. She has since settled in the Pacific Northwest. Initially, she worked two seasons at Trout Unlimited in northeastern Oregon, leading stream restoration and land stewardship projects. She then decided to continue her education and pursue an interdisciplinary career in fisheries management. Catalina is currently working towards a M.M.A. at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. Her thesis work focuses on the impacts of changing thermal conditions on groundfish food web structure in the Gulf of Alaska. This project aims to help inform fisheries managers within the context of a rapidly changing climate.

Gabi Dunn

Gabi earned a B.A. in Biological Sciences from University of California, Santa Barbara and started her career with the National Park Service in Yosemite, where she monitored amphibian populations and restored remote alpine aquatic habitats. Gabi’s passion for coastal conservation and community engagement led her to Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where she worked on western pond turtle reintroduction and coho salmon jumpstart programs, marine and freshwater species monitoring, and interpretive education for the public. Gabi is now pursuing a M.M.A. degree at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs through the courses-only track. She is dedicated to making the conservation field more equitable, diverse, and inclusive and has worked collaboratively to develop and lead discussions surrounding this issue. Currently, Gabi is part of a network of aquatic scientists participating in the American Fisheries Society’s Climate Ambassador Program, which focuses on effective climate change communication.

Ellie Mason

Ellie has been a lifelong lover of all things coastal, having spent most of her life turning over rocks in the intertidal zone and climbing the mountains of Acadia in Maine where she grew up.  She holds a B.A. in Environmental Science and Policy from Smith College where she specialized in marine and fisheries studies. During undergrad, she spent summers doing marine mammal research from Mount Desert Island, ME, to Cape May, NJ, and fisheries research with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Prior to graduate school, Ellie worked as an Island Fellow for the Island Institute in Tenants Harbor, ME, where she built an after school program from the ground up that focuses on outdoor learning. At the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, Ellie is pursuing research centered around small scale fisheries networks from Alaska to Maine and how fishing communities are adapting to environmental and social change.

Alana Santana

Growing up in Puget Sound, Alana discovered her love for marine systems and organisms through tide-pooling and reading Sylvia Earle’s books. This inspired Alana to pursue and complete a B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Washington in 2020. Alana worked primarily with invertebrates and fish at Friday Harbor Laboratories as an undergraduate. There, Alana researched marine hatchetfish and described the jaw morphology and feeding mode of species within the Sternoptychidae family. After graduating, Alana volunteered for the Endangered Species Coalition, where she worked to advocate for the Southern Resident Killer Whales through social media awareness and boater safety. In 2021, Alana started the Master’s program in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, where she is completing a capstone project with team member Rory Spurr to develop an app using NOAA fisheries permitting data to assist in data visualization and science communication. The purpose of this project is to make permitting data on ESA-listed species more accessible to the public so that researchers, stakeholders, and agencies can visualize active permits and to provide more transparency in the permitting process.

Emma Scalisi

Emma grew up in Massachusetts and earned a B.A. in Biological Sciences and Anthropology from Wellesley College. After graduating she spent time working at a NOAA research salmon hatchery in Southeast Alaska, assisting with spawning and caring for Chinook salmon, as well as with research on their population ecology. Since then, she has worked as a marine science instructor for an outdoor education program on Santa Catalina Island, teaching kids about the wonders of the ocean. She feels passionately that the ocean is a place everyone should be able to access and enjoy. She is excited to be pursing her Master’s in Marine Affairs, where her thesis examines the relationships between small-scale commercial fishers and management agencies in Alaska. She is happiest when in a kelp forest, eating Thai food, or looking in tide pools.

Rory Spurr

Rory earned his B.S. in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from the University of Washington in 2020, after which he began working in the private sector researching sustainable and effective fish passage solutions. After working for a year, he began his time at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs in pursuit of an M.M.A. degree in the fall of 2021. In January 2022, he joined the Coastal Fisheries Ecology Lab and began work on a capstone project with team member Alana Santana that seeks to summarize ESA-listed fish species research and permitting on the West Coast using a public facing app developed in the R package Shiny. In general, Rory is interested in working in a fisheries management role, specifically in the intersection between science and policy.

♦ FORMER STUDENTS AND TECHNICIANS

Graduate Student Advisees – University of Alaska Fairbanks

Veronica Padula, PhD Fisheries

Veronica is a born and raised Jersey girl. She earned her undergraduate degree in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology from Columbia University in New York. She discovered her passion for wildlife research during the summer between her junior and senior years, when she was a research intern for Wildlife Trust, investigating the overall health of black-crowned night herons living in the New York Harbor. Her undergrad mentor offered her a position on a project in Alaska the following year, and although she had never really considered Alaska before, she was ready for adventure and accepted the offer. It was perhaps the best decision she could have made, because she has not left Alaska since. In her 10 years since moving to Alaska she has earned her Master’s degree in fisheries and is currently pursuing her PhD. Her Master’s research investigated the genetic relationships of least cisco, a whitefish species that is broadly distributed across Alaska. Her PhD research investigates the impacts of plastic marine debris on food webs in the Bering Sea. She is also currently the Science Education and Communication Specialist for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Ecosystem Conservation Office, where she helps coordinate science programs for students. She believes anyone can be a scientist, and she hopes that by spreading her love and passion for all things science, she can make the field more accessible to everyone.

Nina Lundstrom, MS Fisheries

Nina grew up in Colorado and earned a B.A. in Organismal Biology and Ecology from Colorado College in 2017. She spent a summer in the San Juan Islands, Washington, studying the diet of juvenile Chinook salmon, and this work inspired a love of coastal ecosystems. Nina then worked as a research assistant for the Coastal Fisheries Ecology Lab from June through December of 2017, beach seining in the summer and analyzing the gut contents of staghorn sculpin in the fall and winter. After indulging her love of books and bookstores by working in a Juneau bookshop for several months, Nina decided to return to the sea, and joined the CFE Lab as a Master’s student in January 2019. She is investigating estuarine fish community composition and its variations along a spectrum of watersheds, from glacial to clearwater.

Jesse Gordon, MS Fisheries

Jesse completed a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Vermont in 2017. As an undergraduate, Jesse spent a summer in Southcentral Alaska, where he supported a variety of ecological monitoring projects around the Kenai Peninsula and the Prince William Sound. Jesse continued onward from Alaska to Yellowstone National Park. He worked on gillnet vessels and conducted mobile acoustic telemetry surveys to identify lake trout spawning grounds in Yellowstone Lake. Jesse then headed to the Pacific Northwest to help connect youth in Western Washington to the outdoors. There, he witnessed the positive impact of engaging individuals and communities with the environment. Through his diverse experiences in fisheries biology and community outreach, he became inspired to seek out interdisciplinary research in the human dimensions of fisheries.

Jesse started his M.S. through the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2018. Jesse’s research aims to address information gaps in the management of rockfishes in Alaska through the use of local ecological knowledge (LEK) in combination with scientific data from Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G). Additionally, Jesse hopes that his research will improve trust between local stakeholders and scientists, and will support a holistic and community-based approach to fisheries management in Alaska.

Matt Callahan, MS Fisheries

Matt grew up in Juneau and developed an interest in natural systems, which he pursued at the University of Montana, earning a B.A. in Ecological and Organismal Biology in 2009. After graduating, Matt worked at the Spatial Ecosystem Analysis Lab at University of Alaska Southeast, studying climate effects on tree growth, glacier-estuary dynamics, and goat behavior. He then worked at NOAA’s Auke Bay Lab in Juneau, studying fish energetics and other condition indices with a focus on Arctic forage fish and invertebrates. In 2017, Matt started the M.S. program in fisheries at UAF, where his research investigates the effects of temperature and prey quality on condition and growth of juvenile sablefish. This project aims to inform fisheries management on factors that influence juvenile survival for a commercially valuable species that has experienced low recruitment to the fishery in recent years.

Cheryl Barnes, PhD Fisheries 2019

Cheryl earned a B.S. in Marine Biology from San Diego State University in 2006. After traveling and working in the nonprofit sector for a few years, she began working on her M.S. in Fisheries and Conservation Biology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML). Her Master’s thesis evaluated growth, reproductive potential, and mortality of California halibut. In addition to developing estimates for the central California stock, she investigated biogeographic effects on California halibut life history and worked with agency scientists to incorporate her results into an upcoming stock assessment for this species. During her time at MLML, Cheryl also served as a program representative for California Sea Grant and lead scientist for the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program.

In 2015, Cheryl began working on her PhD through the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at University of Alaska Fairbanks. For her doctoral work, she developed an index of predation for walleye pollock and investigated resource partitioning between Pacific halibut and arrowtooth flounder to better inform the management of these economically important species. Cheryl began a postdoc at University of Washington and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in 2019. Website: https://cheryl-barnes.github.io/