Special congratulations are due to two of UCT’s past Ph.D. students, Dr Jean Harris and Dr Rodrigo Bustamante, who were among a select group of ten people world- wide to receive Pew Fellowships in Marine Conservation. The announcement from the Pew Foundation includes the following biographies:
JEAN M. HARRIS is a regional marine ecologist with the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service where she oversees research supporting intertidal resource management and biodiversity conservation. She holds a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. With her fellowship Dr Harris will address marine species depletions caused by intensive subsistence harvesting along the rocky shores of the east coast of South Africa. She will collaborate with local communities to undertake surveys and mapping of intertidal habitats where they harvest, to implement monitoring programs that compare harvested and non-harvested areas, and to collect data on the physical and biological ocean processes affecting key harvested species of whelks, limpets, and chitons. Working with local stakeholders she will build capacity for co-management of harvested resources including efforts to reseed species in depleted areas and to implement effective coastal zoning schemes.
RODRIGO H. BUSTAMANTE is director of the Marine Research and Coastal Conservation Department at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos, Ecuador, and holds a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
A native of Chile, he specializes in participatory approaches to marine protected areas to develop sound conservation policies. With his fellowship Dr Bustamante will implement a zoning monitoring program to evaluate and assess the rate of recovery of depleted marine species in the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR), the second largest marine protected area in the world. The project will train and build capacity of community stakeholders, including fishers, to collect data that determines the effect of the marine protected area on adjacent fishing grounds and detects changes in the structure and functioning of the benthic environment. Results will inform the final zoning plan for the GMR.
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