I recently participated in a panel discussion entitled A Journey in Fisheries and Ecosystem Thinking: A Conversation About the Past, Present, and Future.* This was an excellent opportunity to reflect on my experiences related to ecosystem-based management. I share some of those below. * Click on the link above to view the recording of the […]
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Last week, I participated in a symposium at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. This is an impressive scientific society, including more than 120,000 members from the US and 90 other countries around the world. I am particularly appreciative of AAAS as they hosted one of the […]
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Earlier this spring, I traveled to La Paz, on the gulf coast of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur (BCS). It had been four years since I had last visited, in March 2020, as the pandemic was spreading across the globe. I was grateful to be able to travel with a close colleague and […]
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Read on to learn about the progress of marine ecosystem-based management, in light of a recent publication in Ocean Sustainability that Heather contributed to. The team shared their findings in an article published in the academic journal Ocean Sustainability, published by Nature. “Even in the face of the challenges to coastal communities and ecosystems created by the […]
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This spring, as part of an ongoing community science project in collaboration with the Damariscotta-Newcastle Joint Shellfish Committee, we are hosting a series of focus group discussions to discuss values and visions for the future of the Damariscotta River. We will dig into questions like, “What do you value about the river?” or “How do […]
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Tim Frawley, Heather Leslie and other members of the MAREA+ team just published a new paper in Global Environmental Change. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation (Award BCS-2009821) and based on more than 10 years of fisheries data collected by fishermen and curated by the Mexican government. Learn more about the study here.
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Since 2019, researchers at UMaine’s Darling Marine Center and members of the joint shellfish committee of Damariscotta and Newcastle have collaborated on a community science project focused on the ecology and shellfish resources of the upper Damariscotta River estuary. We have gathered information on both the ecological and human dimensions of the wild shellfish fisheries […]
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I am pleased to share information about a new National Research Traineeship program at the University of Maine for graduate students interested in interdisciplinary marine ecosystem science. Our program, funded by the National Science Foundation, will support more than 20 graduate students over the next five years. We are now accepting applications for Fall 2024. To learn more […]
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Together with students at Lincoln Academy and the University of Maine, shellfish harvesters, and other citizens, we are engaged in data collection, interpretation and application that contributes to municipal shellfish management as well as a broader vision for sustaining the social-ecological system of the upper Damariscotta River estuary. View the poster that PhD candidate Sarah Risley presented at the Ecological Society […]
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Emma Polhemus worked as a summer research intern at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center in 2023. Mentored by Drs. Jessica Reilly-Moman and Heather Leslie, Emma focused on participatory social science to support ocean renewable energy development. She is about to begin her junior year at the University of Vermont. I wrote a picture […]
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