“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath”  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

I like books. I love stories. I guess you can say that I am looking to divulge the “sweet mystery” of the sea, and that’s why I became an oceanographer.

Currently, I am starting a new position as the Research Coordinator of the He‘eia National Estuarine Research Reserve (HeNERR). There are 28 other NERR sites around the nation, and I will be working with the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), Paepae o He‘eia, and Kāko‘o Ō‘iwi to coordinate research and monitoring with the overall goal of sustainably managing and restoring the He‘eia ahupua‘a. The vision of HeNERR is to create a resilient estuary and coastal watershed where human and natural communities thrive, through traditional and contemporary management practices.

I am interested in the linkage between biodiversity, productivity, and environmental factors, specifically in how populations of phytoplankton fluctuate with seasonal or event-scale changes. For my Ph.D. research at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, I conducted biodiversity and productivity surveys in the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres. As a postdoc at HIMB, I examined phytoplankton dynamics with marine bacteria SAR11 in a subtropical embayment.

I am also passionate about increasing science literacy of the general public through effective science communication and increasing diversity in STEM fields through hands-on environmental education.  

Have similar passions? Contact me so we can connect and share ideas.

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