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Research
Interests:
In
2000, after 25 years of operations, the Hawaii-based commercial
fishery for spiny lobster (Panulirus marginatus) and slipper lobster
(Scyllarides squammosus) in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was
closed because of increasing uncertainty about the status of the
lobster stocks and the mathematical population models used to assess
the stocks and their abundance. The NWHI lobster fishery had been
one of Hawaii's largest commercial fisheries and information on
the lobster populations represented one of the longest time-series
in the region, providing potentially key information on the status
of the NWHI ecosystem. I have been working at the National Marine
Fisheries Service, Fisheries Biology and Stock Assessment Division
to provide the necessary key biological information missing from
our understanding of lobster life history strategies. Current research,
aboard federal research vessels and chartered fishing vessels, include
a large-scale tagging program for information on lobster growth
rates, movements, and natural mortality, a trap camera system that
records lobster behavior in-and-around traps, and various attempts
at understanding recruitment processes. I am also interested in
how large environmental shifts effect lobster populations and biology.
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