Indo-Pacific Fish Conference and the Australian Society for Fish Biology

Dr Emily Lester is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Hawai’i. She received her B.Sc. in Biology from the University of York and her M.Sc. and PhD from the University of Western Australia.  Dr Lester’s research seeks to understand how humans are inadvertently changing marine animal behaviour and fundamentally re-structuring marine systems. To do this, much of her work uses small-scale field-based experimental approaches to manipulate and explore ecological mechanisms, which are otherwise difficult to observe in the wild. She then tests predictions that emerge from this work over larger spatial scales (100s – 1000s km) in complex systems using natural experiments. Recently, her work has focused on how we can leverage the ecological insights from this work to develop conservation tools that can assess coral reef ecosystem function after disturbances events and subsequent recovery. She has been a member of the Australian Society for Fish Biology for ~5 years and is the recipient of the Australian Society for Fish Biology Early Career Travel Award.

Dr. Jenn Caselle is a Research Professor with the Marine Science Institute at University of California Santa Barbara.  She received her B.S. in Zoology from U.C. Berkeley and her PhD in Marine Ecology from U.C. Santa Barbara. Dr. Caselle’s research is broadly focused on the ecology of coastal marine organisms, their role in nearshore ecosystems, and the response of these ecosystems to environmental change and human impacts..  She currently splits her time in both coral reef and kelp forest ecosystems studying community dynamics, recruitment and larval dispersal and movement patterns of fishes, including top predators.  Through these research themes, she has been closely involved in design and monitoring of Marine Protected Areas, in California and globally. Dr. Caselle designed and implemented a large-scale, field-based monitoring program of kelp forests in the California current ecosystem with goals of assessing long-term changes due to climate and anthropogenic impacts. This program has become the basis of Marine Protected Area monitoring throughout California and the US West coast.

Tony completed a PhD in fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1979. He had a long career in CSIRO Fisheries in Hobart, Tasmania. His research focus included population dynamics of exploited species, harvest strategies, ecological risk assessment, ecosystem-based fisheries management, and management strategy evaluation. He has provided advice on fisheries management, not only in Australia but also internationally, including through the FAO, the Marine Stewardship Council, and to governments in the US, Canada, the EU, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Ecuador and Chile. Career highlights include a Centenary of Federation Medal in 2003, appointment as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2011, winner of the Swedish Seafood Award in 2012, and recipient of the K Radway Allen Award in 2022. He was an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington from 2013-2017 and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania from 2016-2021. He has published well over 100 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals, including in Nature and Science. He has over 17,000 lifetime citations and a current h-index of 64. Tony retired from CSIRO in 2016 but continues to provide advice on fisheries science and management within Australia.