Speaker name : Elizabeth Clarke
Title of talk: Transforming fisheries science using autonomous underwater vehicles
Bio :
Dr. Elizabeth Clarke is a senior scientist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), where she co-chairs the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Offshore Wind Science Team and oversees research related to offshore renewable wind energy development.
Her research leverages advanced underwater technologies, such as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, to assess how environmental and habitat factors affect the survival, growth, distribution, and behavior of fish and invertebrates, with a particular focus on deep-water corals and sponges. Dr. Clarke is also dedicated to developing innovative tools to gather data that traditional methods, like trawls, can no longer provide.
Dr. Clarke joined NWFSC in 2001 as the Division Director for the Fisheries Analysis and Monitoring Division. During her tenure, she launched several key initiatives, including the coastwide groundfish bottom trawl survey, the joint U.S.-Canada Hake Acoustic Survey, and the first groundfish observer program. These initiatives required extensive collaboration with the fishing industry and tribal groups. Prior to her role at NOAA Fisheries, she was a faculty member at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, and served as associate director of the Ocean Studies Board at the National Academy of Sciences from 1996-1997, where she directed multiple congressionally mandated studies. Dr. Clarke holds a Ph.D. from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, an M.S. in fisheries biology from the University of Alaska, and a B.S. in biological science from the University of California, Irvine.
Speaker name : David Caress
Title of talk : The MBARI Low Altitude Survey System for 1-cm-scale seafloor surveys in the deep ocean
Bio:
David Caress received the B.S. degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA, USA in 1984, and the Ph.D. degree in geophysics from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, USA, in 1989. He then joined the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University as an Associate Research Scientist for five years, focusing on marine geophysical research. In 1994 he joined SeaBeam Instruments, then a multibeam sonar manufacturer in Walpole, MA, USA, to develop data processing and visualization software. In 1997 he moved to a marine survey office of Science Applications International Corporation in Newport, RI, USA. He joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in 1998, and has worked there since in a variety of roles. He is currently a Principal Engineer leading the Seafloor Mapping Lab, with a primary focus on seafloor mapping from AUVs and ROVs in the deep ocean, at scales from meters to centimeters. In forty years as an oceanographer, he has participated in over ninety seagoing expeditions.