Finding means to conserve fish populations and to achieve sustainable fisheries requires understanding the effects of fishing on behavior, life history and population biology of exploited fishes. The work at CSTAR focuses on using mathematical, statistical and computer models to solve important environmental and ecological problems. The work is grounded in data, and also seeks to expand the base of basic knowledge that supports rigorous application of science to real-world problems. Furthermore, research on marine fisheries conducted in CSTAR allows testing theoretical predictions via natural and human experiments on a scale that is appropriate for understanding the dynamics of ecosystems. Such large scale experiments are rarely available to the scientific community.

The foci of research at CSTAR are

Spatially explicit population dynamics

This area of research includes studies of variation in population processes in space and time, including variability in demographic processes, movement of individuals and populations, and the genetic structure and dynamics of spatially structured populations, with applications to marine protected areas and understanding the causes and consequences of spatial pattern of fishing effort.

Environmental variability and population processes

This area of research includes studies of the relationship between environment, population dynamics, and life history parameters such as growth rates, asymptotic size and age at first reproduction, with application to understanding the relationship between climate variability and sustainable fisheries.

Risk analysis

This area of research includes studies of decision-making and investment under uncertainty, particularly within a Bayesian framework, and ecological detection, with application to adaptive management.

Fish population and community ecology

This area of research includes studies of the population dynamics of fish, particularly when population size is depressed and multispecies interactions, with application towards recovery of overfished stocks and development of ecosystem-based approaches to understanding natural and human impacts on marine systems.

Scientists at CSTAR are also involved in ecoinformatics, that sub-field of bioinformatics involving the application of mathematics, statistics and information technologies to the analysis of the large ecological data sets which arise naturally in the study of fisheries.

To achieve its goals, CSTAR supports graduate student research and undergraduate internships and senior theses when those students work in partnership with NMFS scientists and UCSC faculty advisors. Graduate students can participate as members of a stock assessment team in their second or third years of graduate school.

The research and training of first class fishery scientists at CSTAR is science done in the national interest and moves in the direction outlined by the National Research Council in its report Recruiting Fihsery Scientists: Workshop on Stock Assessment and Social Science Careers.

Current Members of CSTAR

Eric Anderson (Staff Member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Mariah Boyle (Staff Member, FishWise)

Valerie Brown (Assistant Specialist, UCSC)

Edward (EJ) Dick (Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Chris Edwards (Faculty, UCSC)

John Field (Staff Member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory

Xi He (Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Meisha Key (Staff member, California Department of Fish and Game)

Thanassis Kottas (Faculty, UCSC)

Taal Levi (PhD student, Environmental Studies)

Alec MacCall (Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Marc Mangel (Faculty UCSC, Co-director)

Steve Munch (Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Roxanna Pourzand (Administrative and Scientific Assistant)

Steve Ralston (Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Kate Richerson (PhD student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)

Bruno Sanso (Faculty, UCSC)

Jarrod Santora (Long-term contractor, US AMLR Program)

Will Satterthwaite (Assistant Researcher, UCSC and Assistant Director, CSTAR)

Ole Shelton (Post-doctoral scholar)

Simone Vincenzi (Research scientist, MRAG Americas)

Brian Wells (Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory)

Long-term Visitors to CSTAR

Michael Bonsall (Royal Society Research Fellow, Imperial College, January-May 2003; currently Lecturer at the University of Oxford)

Nadiezhda Cantu (Graduate Student, CiBNor, La Paz, Mexico; Spring 2008)

Sigrun Elliasen (Graduate Student, University of Bergen, March-July 2003) Return visit academic year 2011-12 as a Researcher at the University of Bergen

Katja Engberg (Post-doctoral resesearcher, University of Bergen, Fall 2008, 2011)

Jarl Giske (Professor, University of Bergen, Summer and Fall 2010; Summer 2011)

Hiroshi Hakoyama (Research Visitor from the Stock Assessment Division, National Research Institute of Fisheries Science, Japan, February-March 2005)

Christian Jorgensen (Post-doctoral resesearcher, University of Bergen, Fall 2008, 2011)

Kai Lorenzen (Sabbatical Visitor from Imperial College of Science and Technology; Fall 2003). While at CSTAR, Lorenzen began work on a software package for fish stock enhancement. This can be found at http://www.aquaticresources.org/enhancefish.htm

Who Seung Lee (Graduate Student, University of Glasgow, Winter 2009)

Ricardo Lemos (Graduate Student, University of Lisbon, Fall 2004, Winter 2009)

Simone Vincenzi (Post-doctoral researcher, University of Parma, Spring 2009; Summer and Fall 2010)

Former members of CSTAR (their CSTAR position) and current positions

Suzanne Alonzo (Post-doc), Associate Professor, Yale University

Jacqueline Campos (Assistant to Marc Mangel), Biotech industry

Stephane Carlson (NSF Bioinformatics post-doc), Assistant Professor UC Berkeley

Kate Cresswell (Post-doctoral scholar)

Katy Doctor (Assistant to Marc Mangel), Staff Member, Washington Department of Fisheries

Daniel Hively (MS, Statistics and Applied Mathematics), Research Staff, School of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, University of Washington

Kristen Honey (MA, Enviornmental Studies), PhD student, Stanford University

Leah Johnson (PhD Physics), Post-doctoral scholar, University of Cambridge

Teresa Ish (MSc, Marine Sciences), Staff Member, Walton Family Foundation

Cynthia Kern (Post-doctoral scholar), Staff Member, NMFS SCL

Holly Kindsvater (Senior Thesis Student), PhD student, Yale University

Yasmin Lucero (PhD student, Ocean Sciences and NMFS/Sea Grant Fellow), NRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwest Fisheries Science Center

Steve Munch (Post-doc), Staff member, NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory

Anand Patil (PhD student, Statistics and Stochastic Modeling), Postdoctoral Scientist, The Malaria Atlas

Kate Siegfried (PhD, Environmental Studies), Research Fishery Biologist NMFS Beaufort, NC Laboratory

Chris Simon (Assistant to Marc Mangel) PhD student, Statistics and Stochastic Modeling UCSC

Melissa Snover (National Research Council Post-doctoral fellow), Chief Ecologist, Denali National Park, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska

David Swank (Post-doctoral scholar), Staff member, NMFS Regional Office, Sacramento

Andi Stephens (PhD, Ocean Sciences), Fishery Biologist, Northwest Fisheries Science Center

Matt Taddy (PhD, Statistics and Stochastic Modeling), Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicag

John Wiedenmann (PhD, Ocean Sciences), Research Scientist, Rutgers University

Chris Wilcox (PhD, Environmental Studies) Staff member at CSIRO, Hobart

Nick Wolf (Doctor Philosoph, University of Bergen, supervised by Marc Mangel), Instructor, Cascadia Community College, Seattle , WA

CSTAR Presentations and Publications  

Presentations by CSTAR students, post-docs and faculty

Publications by CSTAR students, post-docs and faculty 

 Press Releases About CSTAR

General information

Article from the New Scientist (22March 2003) on Bayesian approaches to stock assessment

Article from the Monterey Herald (2June 2003) on CSTAR

 

CSTAR Theses and Technical Reports

T. Ish. 2003. Conceptual Tools for Managing Two Monterey Bay Fisheries. MSc. Thesis, Marine Sciences, UCSC.

S. Alonzo, M. Key, T. Ish and A. MacCall. 2004. Status of California Sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) Stock (2004). This is the first ever stock assessment for California sheephead.. As part of that work, we also examined sources of data for potential assessments of other species in the Nearshore Management plan:

T. Ish, M. Key and Y. Lucero. 2005. Summary of Data Sources for Stock Assessments for the Species in the Nearshore Fisheries Management Plan (NFMP).

N. Wolf, K. Shea and M. Mangel. 2005. A review of the evidence for density dependence or independence in the life history of Coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and other salmonids from the west coast of North America. 

Stephens, A. 2005. Assessment in Salmon and Groundfish Fisheries. PhD dissertation, Ocean Sciences

Siegfried, Kate I.2006 Fishery Management in Data-Limited Situations: Application to stock assessment, marine reserve design, and fish by-catch policy. PhD dissertation, Environmental Studies

Johnson, L. 2006. Mathematical Modeling of Cholera: From Bacterial Life Histories to Human Epidemics. PhD dissertation, Physics

N. Wolf 2006. Understanding the Decline of The Western Alaskan Steller Sea Lion: Assessing the Evidence Concerning Multiple Hypothesis. Dr. Philosoph dissertation University of Bergen

A. Patil. 2007. Bayesian Nonparametrics for Inference of Ecological Dynamics. PhD Dissertation, Statistics and Stochastic Modeling

Y. Lucero. 2007. Population Consequences of Age-Dependent Maternal Effects in Rockfish (Sebastes spp.). PhD dissertation, Ocean Sciences

M. Taddy. 2008 Bayesian Nonparametric Analysis of Conditional Distributions and Inference for Poisson Point Processes PhD dissertation, Statistics and Stochastic Modeling

E.J. Dick 2009 Modeling The Reproductive Potential of Rockfishes (Sebastes spp.) PhD dissertation, Ocean Sciences

J.R. Wiedenmann 2010 Implications of Climate Change for Antarctic Krill and Their Cetecean Predators PhD dissertation, Ocean Sciences

V. Brown 2011 Implementing State-dependent Models to Investigate Complex Life History Stages and Their Influence on Population Dynamics MS Thesis, Statistics and Applied Mathematics

R.Curzon 2011 Estimating Rates of Natural Mortality for Fish Using Bayesian Linear Regression Methods: A Comprehensive Approach MS Thesis, Statistics and Applied Mathematics

D. Hively 2011 Biological Monitoring in Data Poor Scenarios MS Thesis, Statistics and Applied Mathematics