UMaine Graduate Students Selected for Sea Grant Fellowships

Contact: Catherine Schmitt (207) 581-1434 or catherine.schmitt@umit.maine.edu

ORONO, Maine – Two University of Maine Ph.D. candidates have been selected to join the group of Sea Grant/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service Fellows earning doctoral degrees in either fisheries population dynamics or marine resource economics, according to the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program.

Sam Truesdell, whose research focuses on the spatial dynamics of fishing fleets, and Peter Hayes, who studies interactions between natural processes and cycles of human behavior and decisions in three Gulf of Maine fisheries, were among seven graduate students chosen for the fellowship from across the country. UMaine hosts Maine Sea Grant, which is a federal-state partnership between NOAA and the State of Maine in support of marine and coastal scientific research and education.

Each fellowship award is in the form of a multiyear cooperative agreement between NOAA’s Fisheries Service and the Sea Grant university or college in the amount of $38,500 per year.

UMaine was the only educational institution to have more than one student selected. Other universities include University of California Davis, University of California Santa Cruz, University of Miami, University of Maryland, and University of Massachusetts. California Sea Grant had two fellows named.

The NOAA Fisheries/Sea Grant graduate fellowship program has awarded 61 fellowships since its inception 11 years ago.

“NOAA established this unique graduate fellowship program in 1999, focusing on population dynamics and marine resource economics, two areas of fisheries science that are highly specialized,” says Leon Cammen, director of NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program. “Education and recruitment of new doctoral candidates in these disciplines is important to NOAA’s Fisheries Service and to the National Sea Grant Program.”