Back to school! Fall 2021

The semester has started at URI and the Humphries lab is back at it! First off, conGRADulations to our very own Nicky Roberts, for successfully defending her MS thesis in July - we are going to miss you in the lab but are lucky that you’ll still be in Boston for the year and are excited to see what’s next!

It was a productive summer for many other lab members, too. Donna and Austin authored a paper exploring the Indonesian deep demersal fishery with lab PhD alum Elle Wibisono as a co-author, published in Fisheries Research (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2021.106089).

Austin also published a paper with PhD alum Paul Carvalho in Fish and Fisheries that explored a length-based coral reef fisheries model under varying gear restrictions (https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12607).

Lab members were also able to get out into the world (both virtually and in person) to share and work on research. As new members of the FishBase consortium, Austin and Donna presented at the 30th Anniversary Symposium in France.

Rachel made it all the way to Kenya for two weeks to help with baseline data collection on the Samaki Salama nutrition security project. She met with co-PIs Andrew Wamukota, Elizabeth Kamau, Lora Iannotti, and the local research assistants Catherine, Chris, Joaquim, and Francis to conduct home visits with study participants and to pass out the gated fish traps that will be part of the fisheries intervention. Stay tuned for updates as the year-long intervention is currently underway…

The Samaki Salama team sits outside in plastic chairs at a homestead in Uyombo

Fish traps with escape gaps sit outside the BMU

Fish traps with escape gaps sit outside the BMU

Freshly caught parrotfish sit on a counter in the beach management unit office

Freshly caught parrotfish sit on a counter in the beach management unit office

Dive boats float on a shallow reef in Watamu MPA, Kenya

Dive boats float on a shallow reef in Watamu MPA, Kenya

Four freshly caught rabbitfish sit on the counter of the beach management unit office.

Four freshly caught rabbitfish sit on the counter of the beach management unit office.

A five gallon bucket with various reef fish.

A five gallon bucket with various reef fish.

A Kenyan fisher sits in front of a modified fish trap

A Kenyan fisher sits in front of a modified fish trap

The Samaki Salama team poses for a group photo.

The Samaki Salama team poses for a group photo.

There is a lot to look forward to this semester: Austin is back on campus, teaching his Food From the Sea course, and folks are back in the office again as all classes start off in-person. With conferences, research, and other opportunities on the horizon, it’s going to be a busy few months!

Summer 2021 Updates

It’s been a quite the year with a lot of research milestones, life changes, and transitions in (and out of) our little sustainable fisheries collaborative! We will be missing Elle Wibisono and Paul Carvalho dearly as they fledge with PhD in hand to bright careers! In the midst of fighting a global pandemic, we may have forgone our media duties (we miss you, Lauren!), so there’s quite a bit to catch up on:

Firstly, some transitions: Annie Innes-Gold graduated in December 2020 after defending her thesis titled “How modified trophic interactions create socio-ecological tradeoffs: a case study of Narragansett Bay fisheries”. She had two manuscripts published from here thesis, one in Marine Ecology Progress Series and one in Ecology and Society. She moved to Honolulu to begin her PhD at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, where she is working in Dr. Elizabeth Madin’s lab at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology. Her current research involves building artificial reefs in Kaneohe Bay to study how herbivorous fish grazing patterns vary as temperature and nutrient levels change. She’s been enjoying diving in tropical waters again, and has been spending her free time learning to surf!

Annie has already adapted to her new environment.

We miss you, Annie!

Elle Wibisono also graduated in December 2020 after successfully defending her thesis: “Characteristics and Potential Management of an Indonesian Deep-slope Demersal Fishery.” One manuscript from her dissertation is already published in Conservation Science and Practice, and the others are submitted! In February, she started her current job as a Knauss Marine Policy Fellow at the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee; Oceans, Fisheries, Climate Change, and Manufacturing Subcommittee.

As the 'subject matter expert’ for her office, she works mainly in salmon fisheries (and claims she had to Google what riparian habitats and anadromous fish are, on day one). In addition to the subject matter, she says that the biggest changes from being a PhD student were the pace of work and level of responsibility. “A lot of the work that Team Oceans does is very fast-paced (e.g., writing one-page vote recommendations on bill amendments), time-sensitive (e.g., the amendment is being debated right now), and highly visible (the quality of work concerns the Senator's reputation and the future of American fisheries).”

Elle’s dissertation defense over Zoom.

Her work has consisted so far of drafting letters on behalf of the Senator, drafting bill reports—which are reports on specific bills that went through the markup process­—, and writing memos for the Chair of the committee (Sen. Maria Cantwell, D- WA). She has taken meetings with her team with countless different groups (e.g., NGOs, other Congressional offices, lobbyists, etc.) and was honored to virtually meet with Dr. Spinrad ahead of his confirmation hearing as the next NOAA administrator. She says it has been a highly energizing and collaborative environment (rich with GIFs and memes), and a humbling, enriching, and fun experience so far.

It seems like ages ago at this point, but Paul successfully defended his dissertation last summer entitled, “Potential value of gear-based management for coral reef fisheries and conservation.” One of his chapters is already published in Ecological Applications, and the other two are in various stages of peer-review. After finishing his dissertation, Paul headed back to his home state of CA and got a job with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service and U.C. Santa Cruz where he is constructing ecosystem models for Pacific salmon. Paul also just finished building himself a teardrop camping trailer!

Lauren and Paul after a dive in Narragansett Bay counting kelp and fish

Some of the best/worst news to report is that Lauren left the lab — in person but not spirit! Her legacy is imprinted in the history books of the lab as the first graduate student as well as the most talented all-around research associate / lab manager / vibe coordinator. Lauren was a part of the lab for 5 years. I think we need a whole post of appreciation for all the work she did, much of which was behind the scenes across all aspects of our research group. We miss her everyday! She is now a research associate at URI’s Coastal Resources Center.

Lauren and Austin celebrating her MS thesis defense in 2017

We had a fun lab alumni Zoom call around the December holiday season — it was so great to see everyone’s face and hear about all the happenings!

In yet another transition, Donna finally made it to the US (from Greece) last August, excited to meet everybody in person and work on the Indonesian deep demersal fisheries (only to have the work-from-home order extended through the fall)! With the WFH situation, she have been analyzing snapper-grouper fisheries-dependent data and running stock assessment models from Woodward Hall room 19 at URI, but also from her mobile office in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and this summer from Thessaloniki, Greece. So far, she has contributed a manuscript on length-based Bayesian assessments of Indonesian fishes and has just submitted another manuscript on the signature of ocean warming in fisheries catches of Indonesia, Japan, and Australia. She has also initiated a collaboration connecting the Humphries Lab with FishBase to become the U.S.A. representative in the FishBase Consortium. Donna is also getting training on how to contribute data collected by the lab to FishBase, and in particular, diet data from a wide variety of fishes as well as life-history variables. Looking forward to more in-person meetings, collaborations, and work travels soon.

Rachel also finally made it to Rhode Island in January, to complete her first snowy semester at URI. So far, she has supported the upstart of the Samaki Salama project and gotten well acquainted with the world of REDCap data collection, Kenyan Beach Management Units, and cross-continent (and time-zone) collaboration. She has enjoyed her marine affairs courses so far, and in addition to being a teaching assistant in the spring, has had the chance to get involved as a facilitator for the Diversity and Inclusion Badge Program. Rachel plans to travel to Kenya to pilot her concept definitions for her research and support data collection with the local team in August.

Rachel survived her first snowy winter AND environmental economics class!

Elaine has been holding down the fort in her home office, coding her first chapter examining the differences between visual-based dive surveys and environmental DNA samples. You can read more about her journey through research in this URI Today article published earlier this year. She also passed her comprehensive exams in November over Zoom and was promoted to PhD candidate status (woo!). In addition, Elaine finished up a year of serving as the graduate assistant for Seeds of Success, an undergraduate-led organization for underrepresented students in the College of Environment and Life Sciences. This year at the nomination-based Diversity and Inclusive Excellence awards, Seeds of Success won the Student Organization award and Elaine won the Graduate Student Excellence award! Now, she is continuing her service as a planning committee member of this year’s InclusiveSciComm conference. She is looking forward to scuba diving around Rhode Island this summer and grilling in her backyard.

Elaine received the Graduate Student Excellence award this spring for her work with Seeds of Success and VOICES. We are so proud of you, Elaine!

Ivy has been doing it all on the Kenya food security project: project administration, intellectual leadership for qualitative data collection and gender issues, communication with the field teams, publication of papers from the formative SecureFish project, etc. She remains at home in St. Louis also awaiting travel approvals for getting to the field in Kenya. Fingers crossed we can be back there soon!

Nicky is spending most of her time in thesis prep- writing, editing, and practicing her defense presentation for July 23rd! She was not able to return to her field site in Indonesia on the small island of Bontosua due to COVID restrictions, however, she has been busy analyzing previously collected data. Her thesis is entitled, “From catch to composition: food security dynamics in an Indonesian fishing community.” To keep her stress levels low, she’s been rollerblading and spending time at the beach with family near her home in Maine. Alums and current members of the Humphries Lab have all of their support behind her!

Nicky hard at work in August 2019 at the beginning of her graduate studies organizing the stratified random sampling experimental design on Bontosua island in Indonesia.

Austin has been busy and my-oh-my have things changed for him — his daughter came Earthside on the first of December! Rita is growing fast and learning about dogs and all the other things. Austin did not teach in the spring semester and was able to be a stay-at-home dad. On the scholarly front, Austin has a few new collaborations started. One is with The Nature Conservancy to apply FishPath, a decision-support tool for data-limited fisheries, to develop management plans for coral reef fisheries across the Hawaiian archipelago. Another is a US Agency for International Development project with URI’s Coastal Resources Center and the University of South Pacific to work on data-limited fisheries assessment and community-based management of coral reef fisheries in the Pacific Islands region. Ongoing projects in Kenya have been moving forward despite COVID restrictions on travel — the field team has been doing an incredible job at implementing the project. See below for a few pictures.

We hope that everyone has stayed safe and sane over the last year! Get vaccinated, enjoy your summer, and wishing you well,

The Humphries Lab

Summer 2020 Update

A quick update from this Sustainable Fisheries Collaborative at the midway mark in a historic summer. As waves of economic openings and closures occur across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Humphries Lab remains a completely remote entity as we chug our way through research deadlines, graduate program milestones, and new opportunities.

Our group received a serious morale boost earlier this summer in the form of a sweep of research and fellowship awards secured by our lab members. Paul was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in the Philippines, Elle is officially a member of the next cohort of NOAA Knauss Policy Fellows, Nicky received the Boren Fellowship to do research and language immersion in Indonesia, Elaine scored both an NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program award and a URI TNC Global Marine Initiative research award, and Annie was accepted into a PhD program at the University of Hawaii! Phew, I never get tired of listing those. It is wonderful to see the hard work of our lab members transforming into money and opportunity to do even more great work. And while many of these programs and their timelines face uncertainties in the coming year, this in no way diminishes the achievements of our crew in securing placement in them.

We call this look ‘the new normal’.

 In other milestone news, Celeste published her MS thesis work constructing a dynamic energy budget model for kelp in the journal Ecological Modeling, and Elaine passed her qualifying exams and got the stamp of approval from her advisory committee on her dissertation proposal! Catie is hard at work sending off multiple manuscripts covering her first and second dissertation research chapters to scientific journals for publication. Humphries Lab alumni Dr. Evans Arizi has just begun a new position as a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast in his home country of Ghana – lucky students! Congratulations Evans!

Dr. Arizi on the new job.

 Austin is back in Rhode Island after a few months based in California, and handling project coordination and grant reporting for the SecureFish and Fish Innovation Lab teams in Kenya remotely, among about a dozen other project timelines. The divers in the Humphries Lab group are now optimistically and cautiously planning our annual kelp habitat monitoring surveys with the RI Dept. of Environmental Management in Narragansett Bay.

Suki the dog, honorary lab mascot, diggin’ (probably literally) the beaches of California.

We also have some transitions slated for the end of the summer. Paul is set to remotely defend his dissertation in early August and has already departed back to his home state of California to finish up writing and prep.

And we’ve got some hello’s in addition to the goodbye’s! New PhD student Rachel Cohn will be joining us for whatever the Spring 2021 semester ends up looking like. Rachel will be affiliated with our nutrition security work in coastal Kenya and plans to craft her dissertation to look at the impact of fisheries management and nutrition access interventions on equity and livelihoods in these communities. Welcome Rachel! We’re lucky to have you aboard!

Rachel catching yellowfin in the Gulf of California.

Scuba selfie on a fieldwork excursion in Palau.

On an important and serious note, last month the Humphries Lab group released a statement on our commitment to anti-racism in response to the highly visible events of anti-Black violence and corresponding movement for racial justice occurring in our country. We stand firm in this commitment to do our part, from a place of privilege in an academic institution, to dismantle systemic oppression and discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in our scientific and larger communities. We acknowledge our past failures to do this work with the urgency and consistently it warrants, and we acknowledge that these very words will be hollow until we pair them with action and progress. Wide sharing and re-use of the language in our statement is welcomed.

 Until the next update, stay healthy, wear a face mask, elevate Black voices, and be well.

Holding onto our sanity (and/or exercising the lack of it) through game night.

Humphries Lab: Lockdown Edition

This academic semester news update is looking different from the others, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain why. With classes transitioned online and visits to the URI campus limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Humphries Lab has embraced our already fairly remote working style and joined much of the country in lockdown in our homes. We are lucky to have ample practice in work-from-home and virtual correspondence given our dispersed and sometimes remote fieldwork locations and work habits. Many of us also normally split time between Providence and URI’s campus.

Not being able to see each other’s faces off-screen is wearing on us though. Like the rest of the world, we’re trying to learn how to foster our same group collaborative vibrations through tech rather than touch. But, more than anything, we are grateful for our health at this moment and for the privilege that we enjoy that allows us to be able to continue to work relatively unimpeded and be paid during this crisis. Our hearts are with those on the frontlines of this crisis, and those suffering from all the interruptions that come along with it. We send you all our most heartfelt virtual group hug.

Read on to hear what everyone has been doing during this uncertain time and see how we’ve each fashioned our work-from-home hubs!

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Annie is working on drafting a couple different manuscripts, one that aims to publish the Ecopath model of the Narragansett Bay social-ecological system that she’s helped build, and one that she is working on with fellow URI grad student Maggie Heinichen on a sea robin diet study completed this past summer. Annie is currently repping a no-nonsense double-laptop setup in isolation in Boston, MA: one PC for Ecopath and one Mac for NetLogo. Doesn’t seem very streamlined, but the work output that she has produced while under quarantine would suggest otherwise!

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Austin has been spending up to 7 hours per day on Zoom and Skype calls, acting as the glue that’s holding our whole lab ship together. As per usual, the list of what Austin is working on is too long to include in a blog post, but the biggest chunk of his time recently has been dedicated to finishing and sending off a small mountain of manuscript drafts and project reports. Below is Austin’s minimalist home office at his temporary California base in Marin County. He feels lucky to not have been stranded while traveling on some far away island and is looking forward to when he can return to Rhode Island.

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Catie is working on getting a manuscript draft on reef change in Belize out to her co-authors. She’s also generating results figures from before (2014) and after (2019) perceptions from Belizean fishers of reef management policies, and holding lots of virtual meetings with coworkers and various research organizations. Below is Catie’s photo representation of work-from-home expectations vs. reality, which speaks to all of us at the moment.

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Celeste has been spending lots of time in MATLAB working on generating figures from a hydrodynamic biogeochemical model of Narragansett Bay aquaculture sites for a NOAA report. Celeste is in quarantine mode with boyfriend Carl and with fellow labmate and roommate Lauren who all together have formed a single germ unit and group cooking commune. Celeste is thankful for an apartment with ample natural light.

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Elaine is busy absolutely crushing the research award game, having received both The Nature Conservancy’s Global Marine Initiative Student Research Award and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in the past two weeks. This means planning an additional field season in Indonesia to explore biogeography with environmental DNA (eDNA). She is also taking a course on fish population dynamics, TA-ing for a large Conservation Biology class, and wrapping up requirements for qualifying exams after addressing proposal edits from her advisors and committee members.

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Elle is transitioning to teaching online, which involves numerous TA meetings as they change the syllabus and grading rubric (from centering on in-person lab activities over to worksheets) and also assigning undergraduate TAs new responsibilities within the online-based system. Elle is also working on writing up the Discussion of the 2nd manuscript from her dissertation characterizing the Indonesian deepwater snapper-grouper fishery and where would be the most optimal places to have a Marine Protected Area for this fishery. Below is Elle, trying her best.

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Lauren is working with collaborators to analyze fisheries and economic data for a funding agency report on the initial monitoring period of the SecureFish project in Kenya. This is focused on fisheries management and nutrition security along the Kenyan coast. The data illustrates the value chain of Kenyan coral reef and octopus fisheries. Below is Lauren’s current work-from-home space, equipped with its usual (at least one) cat companion.

Nicky recently submitted materials for a research permit that we are holding out hope to be executed late this summer during a trip to Pulau Bontosua in Indonesia. She is now in the final stages of drafting her MS thesis proposal (entitled “Determinants of subjective well-being for women in Indonesian small-scale fishing (SSF) communities”), and working on data cleaning and analysis for the coral reef fisheries value chain project conducted on Bontosua last year. Below is a totally unstaged photo of Nicky in her new home office featuring a standing desk constructed from a wine crate and what Nicky refers to as her quarantine fleece.

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Since the quarantine took hold, Paul has submitted the first chapter of his dissertation for peer-review, which focused on size spectra of coral reef fishes in Indonesia. Please be kind reviewers! Paul is currently working on doing the same for his second chapter focused on fishing gear selectivity and developing an index using both catch data and underwater visual census data. This manuscript should actually be submitted for peer-review in the coming week. Silver linings, he certainly has all the quiet he needs to focus on writing. Below is a picture of Paul’s home battle station which we believe to be the nicest Executive Suite office of anyone in the group!

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Yash is working on his capstone project for his MBA, which involves working with a client to analyze the internal and external communication processes for their business, and suggesting ways to improve it and develop philanthropic campaigns. On the Humphries Lab side of things, Yash is finishing up gathering economic data from literature review for the integrated kelp aquaculture project. He’s transitioning next to aiding Nicky in cleaning and organizing Indonesian fisheries value chain data. Below is Yash’s at-home setup, which he recently moved to be closer to the window for obvious reasons.

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Lastly, we’re excited to “officially” announce the addition of Ivy Blackmore to the lab! Ivy is based in St. Louis, MO and is a joint postdoc between URI and Washington University in St. Louis working on the intervention component of a new project in Kenya on the effectiveness of fishing co-operatives and social messaging for healthy nutrition and ecosystems — this is an extension to the Kenya SecureFish project and will have it’s own project page soon! We are thrilled to have Ivy onboard and look forward to the first safe opportunity to get her out to Rhode Island to meet everyone. Below is a picture of Ivy during her PhD where she was conducting a formative assessment of the vulnerability context of three indigenous subsistence farming communities in Guangaje, Ecuador.

Indonesia Value Chain Update

With this post we’re gonna throw it back to a simpler time when international fieldwork was still going strong, something hard to picture at the moment. In late January, MS student Nicky Roberts arrived back in the states after a successful field excursion to wrap up data collection on Bontosua Island in Indonesia. Nicky’s project is centered on the fisheries value-chain on the island, and if and how these fisheries products move beyond this small community. Most residents of Bontosua depend heavily on livelihoods provided by fishing, and a value-chain assessment can help illuminate how these valuable resources contribute to incomes and food security of individuals who operate at different points within the chain, such as the point of extraction (fishers), through processing, trading and markets channels, and ultimately the consumers. In collaboration with a local university partners and a team of enumerators who make this collection possible, Nicky is managing an influx of large amounts of interview data. Now that she’s back stateside, Nicky is beginning to piece together the story told by the flow of fish from the waters off of Bontosua. For now, we’ll soothe our quarantine brains and nerves by parsing through these pictures of this incredible group of young fisheries researchers in action.