Jim Franks

Chairman - Board of Directors

Jim Franks is a Senior Fisheries Biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi, Center for Fisheries Research and Development, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. He is adjunct faculty with the University’s Department of Coastal Sciences. His primary research interests are age, growth, reproduction, and habitat requirements of coastal and large pelagic fishes in the northern Gulf of Mexico. His current research includes studies on the biology and life history of cobia, tripletail and wahoo. He is currently co-investigator on a study of pelagic Sargassum and oceanic frontal zones as habitat for larval and juvenile pelagic fishes, particularly billfish, tunas, amberjack and dolphinfish, in the Gulf of Mexico. Current research also includes investigations of pelagic species as potential aquaculture candidates. He has conducted studies on barrier island fish ecology, co-authored a plan of response to protect coastal habitats and fishery resources during oil spills, and worked with colleagues and fishers to establish angler-based cooperative tag-and-release programs in the Gulf and South Atlantic regions. He has authored numerous scientific papers and serves on fisheries advisory committees and boards. He is on the board of directors of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation and several sport fishing tournaments, and is a member of the American Fisheries Society, Billfish Foundation, Coastal Conservation Association, and Gulf Coast Game Fish Restoration Coalition.

Virdin Brown

Vice-Chairman - Board of Directors

LeRoy Creswell

Executive Secretary

R. LeRoy Creswell is a Sea Grant Marine Extension Agent for the University of Florida in Fort Pierce, Florida. His extension responsibilities include education and outreach programs in fields related to marine resource utilization, including tourism, commercial and recreational fishing, aquaculture, coastal zone management.As a Florida Sea Grant agent Mr. Creswell assisted in the establishment of the St. Lucie County Marine Center, a collaborative project with the Smithsonian Institution and several public and private educational organization.

For over 17 years, Mr. Creswell was an associate research scientist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Inc. His research focused on the development of aquaculture technologies for tropical marine invertebrates, including bivalve and gastropod molluscs, and several species of crustaceans, such as the Caribbean spiny lobster. He also conducted studies on the larviculture and nutrition of ornamental marine fish and invertebrates. He holds two patents, a trademarked line of ornamental fish feeds, and has authored a book in the field of aquaculture.

Mr. Creswell served on the Board of Directors and was two-term president of the Caribbean Aquaculture Association, and editor of The Caribbean Aquaculturist for ten years. He was a Director of the World Aquaculture Society for 12 years and its president in 1994. Most recently, he served as the Program Chairman for AQUA2000, a joint meeting of the World Aquaculture Society and the European Aquaculture Society, in Nice, France.

Mr. Creswell has been on the Board of Directors of the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute for over 15 years. In addition to serving as the Executive Secretary of GCFI, he is also the Senior Editor of the GCFI Proceedings.

Mel Goodwin, PhD

Treasurer

Formally trained as a marine biologist, Dr. Goodwin is responsible for operations, program development, and implementation of a nonprofit information services organization devoted to sustainable development. Major activities include development of public information programs to communicate information on sustainable development issues and approaches, developing professional training programs in sustainable development for design and building professionals, incorporating sustainability principles into public school buildings and curricula, anddevelopment of neighborhood-based land use plans for the cities of Charleston and North Charleston. He worked for fifteen years as Projects Director on sustainable development initiatives in the Eastern Caribbean sponsored by public and private organizations including the Canadian International Development Agency, Caribbean Conservation Association, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Inter American Foundation, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, U. S. Agency for International Development, and World Wildlife Fund – U.S. Recent activities include authoring more than 100 outreach lesson plans for middle school and high school classes dealing with NOAA’s Ocean Exploration Program, National Ocean Service, and the Aquarius Project

Bob Glazer

Executive Director

Bob is the Principal Investigator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commissions' Fish and Wildlife Research Institute's queen conch research and restoration program in Marathon.  His research interests are in stock restoration, essential habitat, larval recruitment, endocrine disruption, marine fishery reserves, and stock structure.  He has worked extensively on molluscan aquaculture  for both commercial and restoration projects. In 1994 he received the first Florida Jaycees Outstanding Young Environmentalist award and in 2006 he was the first marine recipient of the Southeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Fishery Biologist of the Year.

Directors

Alejandro Acosta, PhD

Alejandro works for the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in Marathon. His interests include fish biology and community ecology, especially the relationships between habitat structure and the distribution and abundance of fishes. His work has examined tropical reef fisheries,community structure, and stock assessment of reef, mangrove and estuarine fishes. He is actively involved in an annual multi-species visual censuses and trawl surveys covering the ocean and bay waters of the Florida Keys. Previously he was in charge of developing a continuing fishery survey collection program for juvenile fish populations in Florida Bay.Alejendro is a previous Chairman of GCFI.

Dalila Aldana Aranda, PhD

Nancy Brown-Peterson

Nancy Brown-Peterson is a Research Associate in the Department of Coastal Sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.  Her primary research interest centers around the reproductive biology of fishes, and involves investigations of spawning seasons, fecundity and spawning frequency of important recreational species in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean such as spotted seatrout, cobia, tripletail, wahoo, blue marlin and sheepshead. Nancy has been instrumental in organizing several Gonadal Histology Workshops, and is a driving force behind ongoing efforts to standardize reproductive terminology. Recently, Nancy has been involved with projects investigating the effects of hypoxia on gene expression in crustaceans. She has over 45 publications from more than 25 years of research along the Gulf of Mexico. A list of selected publications can be found at here.

Nancy was a co-organizer of the 53^rd GCFI conference in Biloxi, MS and co-chair of the Large Pelagic Fishes Symposium held at the 59^th GCFI.  She has been an active member of the GCFI Student Awards Committee since 2001 and has served as Chair of the committee since 2005.

Georgina Bustamante, PhD

Dr. Georgina Bustamante is an independent consultant for local and international conservation organizations (IUCN, UNEP-Caribbean Environment Programme, UNESCO, MRAG, NOAA, and others). She graduated as a marine biologist from the University of Havana, Cuba in 1973, and received her doctorate degree (Ph.D.) in Biology in 1987 from the Cuban Academy of Sciences with a thesis on coastal fish ecology. She worked for 20 years (1974-1994) in Cuba as a marine scientist and deputy director in the Institute of Oceanology of Cuba, and as a consultant for coastal development, fisheries management and national research programs in Cuba and the Caribbean. In 1994, she moved to the United States and since 1995 worked as a marine conservation scientist and program coordinator for The Nature Conservancy's Latin American and Caribbean Region. She also held a Adjunct Associate Professorship at the University of Miami, Biology Dept. while working at TNC's Florida and Caribbean Marine Conservation Science Center.

During the last 25 years she has participated in numerous marine science and conservation projects in Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Dominican Republic and the Bahamas related to coastal tropical ecology, fisheries management, marine fish culture, coastal planning and biodiversity conservation. She participated as an instructor in all UNEP-Caribbean Environment Programme Train the Trainers course for Caribbean marine protected area managers, and directed the editions of 2000 (Dominican Republic) and 2004 (Florida, U.S.).

Dr. Bustamante has been involved in several international conservation projects and initiatives, i.e. Setting Geographic priorities for Marine Conservation in Latinamerica and Caribbean, the Ecoregional Conservation Assessment of the Bahamian Archipelago and the Caribbean, the selection of potential new World Heritage Marine and Island Sites, the formulation of a Marine Reserves Regional Enhancement Plan for IUCN'WCPA Marine, the development of guidleines for listing MPAs under the -Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife Protocol, etc. She has coordinated or participated in the 6th editions of the UNEP-CEP Training the Trainers Course for MPA Managers of the Caribbean, and the updating of CaMPAM MPA database. She is a member of CaMPAM Steering Committee.

Georgina has published over 30 scientific papers. She is co-author of several books: "Ecologia de los Peces Marinos de Cuba" (1994), "Ecology of the Marine Fishes of Cuba" (2002), "Environmental Assessment of the Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba" (1997), and "Setting geographic priorities for marine conservation in Latin America and the Caribbean" (1999), etc.

Rodolfo Claro

Robert Ditton, PhD

Bob Ditton has been a Professor in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University since 1988 and a faculty member in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences there since 1974. He teaches graduate level course in the Human Dimensions of Wildlife and Fisheries and Coastal Zone Management and directs a research program focused on the human dimensions of recreational fisheries. Bob has published extensively on human dimensions concepts including specialization, diversity, and demographic change. He has completed human dimensions research on state, federal, and international fisheries. Recently, Bob’s interests have recently extended into the human dimensions of SCUBA diving and the recreational use of marine protected areas. For further information on his research program, see http://lutra.tamu.edu

Anderson Kinch

Graciela Garcia-Moliner

Kenyon Lindeman, PhD

Ken Lindeman is Doherty Visiting Professor in the Div. of Marine and Environmental Systems, Florida Institute of Technology. Literature products include 40 journal articles and book chapters, and the books Living with Florida's Atlantic Beaches (Duke University Press) and Ecology of the Marine Fishes of Cuba (Smithsonian Institution Press). He has co-developed dozens of conservation products in the US and northern Caribbean including diverse habitat and fishery regulations at local through federal scales, over ten MPAs, and strategic planning and implementation for local NGOs and agencies in Florida, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua and Brasil. Current or recent advisory positions: Habitat Advisory Panels of the Caribbean and South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, World Bank Targeted Coral Research Connectivity Workgroup, U.S.- Brasil Marine Policy Consortium, and the Society for the Conservation of Reef Fish Aggregations. Formerly employed with NOAA, the University of Miami, and Environmental Defense. Consulting experience includes NGOs, maritime industry, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, and the U. N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Brian Luckhurst, PhD

Brian has been the Senior Fisheries Officer, Ministry of the Environment, Bermuda since 1981. He is actively involved in a number of research projects including studies of the reproduction and age and growth of groupers and snappers. He has focused on the dynamics of reef fish spawning aggregations including conservation and management issues in Bermuda, Belize and the wider Caribbean. He has also been monitoring the recovery of Bermuda’s coral reef fish stocks by diver census since the fish pot ban in 1990. Other studies involve the fishery biology of pelagic species such as wahoo and tunas. He has been a partner in an international program to deploy satellite pop-up tags on blue marlin in the western Atlantic for the past five years. He has also conducted studies on spiny lobster biology and deep water fish biology. Other recent studies include collaboration on the genetic characterization of regionally important fish stocks using DNA techniques. He is the author of a number of scientific papers and is one of three co-authors of a book published in 1999, "Fishes of Bermuda". He is the past-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute and was an Associate Editor for its Proceedings for a number of years. He is a long standing member of the International Society of Reef Studies. He has acted as a fisheries and marine resources consultant to The Nature Conservancy, CFRAMP, the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council and the Department of Environment in the Cayman Islands.

Brian is a keen cyclist who rides every day whenever possible. He also enjoys designing and building – he just recently finished renovations to his house. Over the years he has developed a strong interest in wine and has established his own modest cellar in his home.

Jeanette Mateo

Peter A. Murray

Peter A. Murray has worked with the Department of Fisheries St. Lucia, from April of 1981, before joining the staff of the OECS Fisheries Unit (located in St. Vincent and the Grenadines) as Data Management Officer in October of 1991. Mr. Murray has been a Programme Officer at the St. Lucia-based OECS Environment and Sustainable Development Unit (ESDU: formerly Natural Resources Management Unit – NRMU) since January 1996. He currently serves as the Function Manager for Education, Training and Awareness, while having responsibility for the fisheries and fisheries-related programmes of that Unit and also serving as the OECS Secretariat’s focal point on Maritime Boundary Delimitation. He received training by FAO in Fish Processing and Quality Control in 1981 and in the FAO DANIDA Fisheries Stock Assessment Trainingprogram in 1984. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Biology and minors in Biochemistry and Chemistry, and a Master of Philosophy degree (in Biology). Mr. Murray was a science educator for eight years, and was involved in the development of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) curriculum for Integrated Science. He has also served on the Technical and Program Review Committees of the CARICOM Fisheries Resource Assessment and Management Program (CFRAMP) from 1992 to 2001. Mr. Peter A. Murray has been a member of the Network of Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture Professionals since 1984.He first served on the Board of Directors of the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute in 1989 and now serves as the Chairperson of the Eduction Committee.

Mark Peterson

Mark S. Peterson has been a Professor since 2002 in the Department of Coastal Sciences at The University of Southern Mississippi. Prior to coming to USM he was faculty at Mississippi State University for 6 yrs and a Post-Doctoral fellow at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Florida. He has taught or teaches Coastal Processes II, Ecology of Fishes, Ichthyology, and Topics in Fisheries Ecology and has developed a research program on resource ecology where he and his students study fish-habitat relationships, eco-physiology of living in coastal ecosystems, landscape restoration, invasive species, and life-history of fishes. Mark and his students have published extensively on these topics with almost 70 publications. Mark is an integral member of the USM Coastal Ecology Group (http://www.usm.edu/gcrl/ceg) and is Editor-in-Chief, Gulf and Caribbean Research (link). He is currently on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and has served the Mississippi Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, Gulf and Estuarine Research Society, and the Southeastern Division of American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists as President. He is a member of the Science and Data Team for the National Fish Habitat Initiative. For further information on his research program see link

Ellen Peel

Clive Petrovic

Martha Prada

Norman Quinn, PhD

Norman has 32 years of varied professional marine science experience in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean regions. He has been involved in university level environmental instruction for more than 20 years and is currently Director of the Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, University of the West Indies, Jamaica. His research is focused on the effect of environmental changes upon marine animals and has sought a greater understanding of the process needed to conserve their habitats. These projects have resulted in more than 120 scientific, technical, conference, and popular press publications. He recently edited a book authored by 28 Melanesian nationals documenting traditional knowledge and fishing practices in the South Pacific. The book is being used in the secondary school science curriculum in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. He received his Ph.D. from the Queensland University.

Barbara Reveles