Meet the 2024 FSG Man Harvey Basis Fellowship Recipients
Zeke Tuszynski is a graduate scholar from Wenatchee, Washington, pursuing a grasp’s diploma in organic sciences at Florida Atlantic College. His analysis focuses on learning the migration patterns of Blacktip sharks alongside the east coast of the U.S. Benefiting from the big gatherings of Blacktip sharks in Southeast Florida throughout winter, the analysis goals to analyze the extent of their northward migration alongside the U.S. japanese seaboard utilizing satellite tv for pc transmitters and the environmental elements influencing their motion.
Given the Close to Threatened Species standing of Blacktip sharks, understanding their habitat use and migratory patterns turns into essential for administration and conservation efforts.
Sarah F. Webb is a Ph.D. candidate from Milltown, New Jersey, learning integrative biology at Florida Atlantic College. Her analysis focuses on evaluating estuary circumstances, corresponding to salinity, and its impacts on fish actions and behaviors. She examines the potential resurgence of nursery habitat within the St. Lucie Estuary for the endangered smalltooth sawfish, a species traditionally discovered within the space. Webb’s dissertation makes use of intensive fish and water high quality monitoring to offer important insights into the results of those stressors, corresponding to extreme freshwater influx, on varied fish species, together with varied estuarine-dependent sportfish, juvenile goliath grouper and juvenile smalltooth sawfish.
Webb’s work is essential for useful resource managers looking for to raised perceive the dynamics of this distinctive ecosystem, which is a part of the northern Everglades part of the RECOVER program. Understanding how these animals reply spatially to those inputs is significant for species conservation and predicting the impacts of water administration choices on marine populations.
Susannah Cogburn is a grasp’s scholar from Winter Backyard, Florida, learning environmental science at Florida Gulf Coast College. Her analysis focuses on the bioaccumulation of contaminants, corresponding to heavy metals, polycyclic fragrant hydrocarbons (PAHs), Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in bull sharks, Carcharhinus leucas. Sharks are apex predators, so contaminant ranges are possible excessive of their tissues, particularly in species, corresponding to C. leucas, which spend a portion of their life in estuaries with excessive contaminant hundreds.
The outcomes of this analysis could have direct fisheries impacts by serving to to quantify pollution and their persistence inside our native fisheries inventory. The bull sharks will even act as a proxy for different marine fishes to determine if the pollution are current and the direct impact on their osmoregulation – the method of sustaining salt and water steadiness throughout the physique.
William Pattern is a Ph.D. candidate from Jacksonville, Florida, learning biology at Florida Worldwide College. His analysis focuses on how environmental elements affect juvenile bull shark habitat use and foraging ecology within the coastal Everglades. Pattern’s examine goals to concentrate on the vitality landscapes sharks encounter, how they modify over time and house and the way sharks adapt to them.
Given the challenges sharks are prone to face from local weather change and sea stage rise, Pattern’s work shall be vital for the conservation of juvenile sharks and their habitats and in informing restoration and administration efforts. Through the use of historic information from greater than 150 tagged bull sharks and new strategies corresponding to high-resolution accelerometry, he goals to offer insights relevant past his examine space.
Annais Muschett-Bonilla is a Ph.D. scholar from Houston, Texas, learning organic sciences, with a concentrate on ecology and evolution at Florida State College. Her analysis focuses on the maternal replica of elasmobranch fish, which incorporates sharks, rays, skates and sawfish. These fish have varied methods of nourishing their embryos, and every methodology has totally different physiological and energetic calls for of the mom. Annais’s analysis seeks to quantify the results of reproductive energetic calls for on the efficiency of pregnant elasmobranchs, significantly in mature feminine Hypanus sabinus – a kind of stingray – and doable influences on maternal survival.
Given their gradual repopulation charges and various embryo nourishment methods, understanding and prioritizing species with related reproductive methods are essential for effectively managing and conserving elasmobranch species and safeguarding their variety.
Eric Bovee is a graduate scholar from Queens, New York, pursuing a grasp’s diploma in fisheries and aquatic sciences on the College of Florida. His analysis focuses on tagging and monitoring the Grey Snapper (Mangrove Snapper), a species present in spawning aggregations positioned 80 to 100 miles offshore within the Florida Center Grounds. Participating in intensive fieldwork, he tags the fish throughout their offshore presence and subsequently collaborates with fishers to get better invaluable details about the fish, together with their restoration areas. Bovee’s analysis is all about utilizing dispersal modeling to foretell the place Grey Snapper eggs and larvae go after they’re spawned within the ocean.
That is vital as a result of an excessive amount of fishing in these spawning areas might be dangerous. By determining the place the larvae find yourself, Bovee may help scientists perceive the connectivity between the offshore spawning areas and the coastal areas the place they stay and develop up.
John Francis Hlavin is a Ph.D. scholar from Vienna, Virginia, learning environmental science and coverage on the College of Miami. His analysis focuses on the significance of varied ecological dynamics to the administration of nursery areas for coastal predatory fish. He’s significantly fascinated with utilizing minimally invasive methods to review the ecology of juvenile nice hammerhead sharks inside Biscayne Bay – an recognized nice hammerhead nursery – to raised perceive how patterns of useful resource and habitat-use can inform the conservation of this critically endangered species at a extremely susceptible life-stage.
Moreover, Hlavin has tasks wanting on the trophic ecology of the understudied Atlantic guitarfish and the potential influence of invasive lionfish on nursery habitat use in Nice Barracuda. By learning these high-priority species and their interactions, his work helps scientists to raised handle native ecosystems for the conservation of South Florida’s predatory fish.
Alexis Mitchem is a Ph.D. scholar from Pensacola, Florida, learning marine science on the College of South Florida. Her analysis focuses on DNA barcoding to determine fish eggs and efforts to make molecular analysis instruments extra accessible and reasonably priced. Correct identification of the adolescence phases of fish is important for conservation biology. Nonetheless, eggs are difficult to determine on account of a scarcity of distinguishing morphological options. Her analysis undertaking entails utilizing DNA barcoding – a device used for species identification primarily based on particular genes – to determine fish eggs all the way down to the species stage.
Constructing on 10 years of fish spawning information throughout the summer season season on the West Florida Shelf, Mitchem plans to increase pattern assortment to cowl all seasons over a number of years to find out when different vital fish species are spawning and can staff up with a bodily oceanographer to mannequin egg motion by floor currents.
About Man Harvey:
Man Harvey is a singular mix of artist, scientist, diver, angler, conservationist, and explorer, fiercely dedicated to his household and his love of the ocean. His childhood ardour for the ocean and its residing creatures not solely impressed him to attract however fueled a burning curiosity that prompted a proper schooling in marine science. Having graduated with honors in Marine Biology from Aberdeen College in Scotland in 1977, Man returned dwelling to Jamaica to renew his schooling, incomes his Ph.D. from the College of the West Indies in 1984. Although he gave up a budding profession as a marine biologist for that of a extremely acclaimed artist, Man has continued his relentless pursuit to unravel the mysteries of the ocean, touring the world to raised perceive the habits and habitats of the marine wildlife he paints. For extra info, please go to www.GuyHarvey.com. Comply with Man on Fb, on Twitter, join on Instagram, and tune in to see Man’s newest expeditions on YouTube.
In regards to the Man Harvey Basis:
With a centered mission to raised perceive and preserve the ocean setting, the Man Harvey Basis (GHF) collaborates with native, nationwide and worldwide organizations to conduct scientific analysis and gives funding to affiliated researchers who share this goal. The GHF additionally develops and hosts cutting-edge instructional packages that assist educators to foster the following period of marine conservationists, making certain that future generations can get pleasure from and profit from a correctly balanced ocean ecosystem www.GuyHarveyFoundation.org.
About Florida Sea Grant:
Hosted on the College of Florida (UF), the Florida Sea Grant School Program helps analysis, schooling and Extension to reinforce coastal sources and financial alternatives by means of a partnership with the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the State College System of Florida, and UF/IFAS Extension in counties statewide. flseagrant.org | @FloridaSeaGrant.