Current research:
I am currently working on a National
Marine Fisheries Service(NMFS) funded
project involving dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific(ETP).
Since the 1950s, tuna fishermen have used purse-seine technology to catch
tuna. While incidental dolphin mortality has been reduced significantly,
dolphin populations do not appear to be recovering as expected.
Two data sets exist for estimating abundance: research vessel survey data collected exclusively by NMFS, and tuna vessel observer data, collected aboard tuna vessels. Biases associated with the non-random distribution of search effort are present in the tuna vessel data, however this data is a continuous time series and represents many more data points(NMFS surveys are not conducted in every year, and search effort is low compared to the effort of the entire fishery). My work involves comparing the two data sets, and quantifying the biases associated with tuna vessel data.
Other Interests:
In addition to ecology and evolution,
I am interested in statistics, and using interactive computer programs
as teaching tools for quantitative concepts in biology. I've found
Sun's Java
programming language(Sun)
to be the most effective at accomplishing this(it is extremely stable,
it runs on the web, it's free, it is platform independent, and is taught
at every major university in the country). To see some examples of
what I've done, click here. To learn Java, check out Sun's
tutorial, or go to the Cafe
au Lait tutorial.
Aside from all the school stuff,
I like snowboarding, backpacking, baseball, pretty much anything outdoors.
Personal Info:
Born San Jose, CA 1977
Graduated from high school in Chico,
CA 1995
B.S. in Ecology/Evolution from
the University of California, San Diego
1999
M.S. in Ecology from Montana
State University, Bozeman 2003
Selected Publications: