Hello!

I am a coastal marine scientist and regulatory biologist. My research uses an ecosystem-based approach to understand the effects of environmental change on aquatic organisms through food web and physiological interactions. I like to think of myself as an ecological journalist - my investigations integrate oceanography, physiology, and community ecology to describe ecological phenomena and provide the essential context to encourage public discourse of environmental challenges. This approach has evolved through a diversity of research collaborations in freshwater, marine, urban, polar, pelagic, nearshore and subtidal ecosystems. Spanning scales from atoms to ecosystems, my research transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. From these projects I have gained an appreciation for environmental variability and the lessons we can learn from observing it.

This ecosystem-based approach requires a range of techniques to test alternate hypotheses in complex systems - techniques that span oceanography, biology and social science. I use a variety of tools in my research that have been developed in collaboration with researchers at universities, government agencies, and consulting firms as well as shellfish growers and fishing folks. I am currently working at the FDA on National Environmental Policy Act issues. Recently, I was conducting field work investigating the strength of ecological influence on local pH variability across polar, temperate and tropical macrophyte and reef-building animal habitats. Ongoing research projects include effects of food and environmental variability on aquaculture bivalve health and studies on the role of red urchins in mediating the flow of kelp carbon through benthic ecosystems. See these pages for more info!

PUBLICATIONS | CURRENT RESEARCH | COLLABORATIONS