I am quantitative marine ecologist and fisheries scientist, motivated to understand the main factors and mechanisms affecting the sustainability of fisheries in tuna and tuna-like species and their ecosystems, and answer questions relevant to their management and conservation. I address these questions through the synthesis of large scale data sets, while using a wide range of quantitative tools such as meta-analysis and comparative methods. My aspiration is to bring classic ecological and conservation principles into the field of fisheries science and management in order to improve predictive tools and to ultimately inform management decisions.
My current OceanTuneIn postdoctoral project focuses on developing new indicators for measuring biodiversity change in oceanic marine ecosystems using oceanic tunas, sharks and billfishes as sentinels of ocean health. I am also working on a review to evaluate the performance of tuna regional fisheries management organizations in applying ecosystem-based fisheries management. Find out more about the OceanTuneIn project here.
In 2013 I completed my PhD at the Universidade da Coruña, Spain, with Iago Mosqueira (European Commission Joint Research Center, Italy), Nick Dulvy (Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Juan Freire (Universidade da Coruña, Spain).
In my thesis I worked with tuna species and their relatives, the bonitos, Spanish mackerels and mackerels, as a case study, in order to provide new insights about the global impacts of fishing on fish species and advance our ability to diagnose those species that are most likely to decline and be overfished using meta-analysis techniques and comparative methods. Specifically, I first quantified the impacts of fishing on tuna species and their relatives within the last century and summarized their current exploitation status. Second I prioritized life history research needs, and characterized the diversity of life history strategies in scombrid species, which is fundamental to our understanding of how species respond to human exploitation. Third, I examined what aspects of their life histories makes scombrid species to be most vulnerable to fishing with the aim of advancing our abilities to diagnose what species might be most threatened in data-poor situations. Find out more about my PhD thesis here.