From Ions to Ecosystems

Approximately 3 billion people rely on fish as a major source of animal protein, yet many species are in major decline as a result of habitat loss, pollutants and overfishing.

In this seminar, Dr. Sturrock will give an overview of her research integrating natural chemical tracers, biochronologies and applied tags to reveal patterns in fish migration and condition, and the legacy effects of different stressors on fish productivity and resilience.

She will discuss how these data can support integrated ecosystem management and outline a new EU network focused on marine connectivity and associated opportunities to participate, collaborate and be trained in new areas of research.

Speaker

Dr. Anna Sturrock is a new lecturer at the University of Essex, School of Life Sciences. Her current research uses natural and applied tags, field studies and modelling to explore fish migration behaviour, population connectivity, trophic ecology and health. She is passionate about translating science into impact, and generating empirical, policy-relevant data that helps to promote sustainable delivery of ecosystem services in a changing climate.

Previously, she studied coral reefs in Madagascar, humpback whale and gibbon communication in Australia and Indonesia, fish and invertebrate ecology in the New Zealand fjords and fjords and salmon migrations around the California Sierra Nevada mountains. She completed her undergraduate degree in Zoology at the University of Essex, her Masters in Marine Science from the University of Otago in New Zealand as a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellow, and her PhD in Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton and the Centre for the Environmental Fisheries and Aquaculture Science via a Fisheries Society of the British Isles Studentship. From 2012 to 2020 she was a researcher at the University of California (Santa Cruz, Berkeley then Davis), leading a number of projects with NOAA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and CA Department of Fish and Wildlife focused on Pacific salmon life history diversity at the edge of the species range.