Biography

Laura is currently doing her PhD in Zoology under the supervision of Dr Steve Martell. Her thesis investigates fishing-induced changes in the geographic distribution of large pelagic fish of the Pacific and their implications for fisheries management. Her work is done in collaboration with the Secretariat for the Pacific Communities (www.spc.int), based in New Caledonia.

More generally, Laura is interested in the interaction between marine ecology and fisheries science, and the science of providing sound management advice in light of human and environment uncertainty. During her Master’s she applied an ecosystem model to the world’s oceans to estimate change in global fish biomass due to fishing since the 1950s.

Laura is one of those (pick one: "lame"/"cool") biologists who likes math, statistics and programming. She organizes a bi-monthly meeting of R users: you can contact her for more information or to join the R-help group.