Announcing our Third Fellows Cohort

Olivia J. Graham is a marine disease ecologist and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Cornell University. For her dissertation research, she studied seagrass wasting disease dynamics in eelgrass (Zostera marina), specifically looking at biological (herbivores, microbiome, host genetics) and environmental (ocean temperatures, salinity) drivers of disease in eelgrass meadows throughout the Northeast Pacific. 

She is passionate about communicating and leveraging science to help inform the conservation and management of coastal ecosystems, especially in light of rapid climate change, and about mentoring and supporting the next generation of scientists.

Augie Kalytiak-Davis is a PhD student at Oregon State University. He studies sea stars whose population has dropped drastically and in some places functionally extinct due to the sea star wasting disease outbreak in 2013/2014. Since before the outbreak sea stars were extremely abundant, they were taken for granted and were rarely studied. Augie wants to expand on the little that is known, and the small amount of literature that is out there to aid in their recovery efforts.

Audrey is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria who focuses on acoustic attenuation through coastal habitats. She is also one of the co-leads of the FishSounds effort at FishSounds.net and she studies other topics related to ecosystem restoration, fish-habitat interactions, and community ecology. Audrey earned her doctoral and master's degree at the University of Florida, studying the sounds of lining shorelines, passive acoustic monitoring of fishes, and the effects of submerged aquatic vegetation restoration on fish habitat use.

Kelsie is a postdoctoral researcher in the Juanes Lab with a focus on underwater sounds, their contribution to the marine soundscape, and impacts of anthropogenic noise on key marine species. Her current research examines Arctic cod which are a key forage fish in the Arctic that produce a 'grunt' sound during spawning.

Jessica Plumb is an award-winning filmmaker known for her exploration of the relationship between people and the land and waters. She brings her storytelling expertise to the Fellows cohort, contributing to the group’s collaborative efforts.

Jessica Plumb released three films about the Southern Resident Killer Whales in her time as a Fellow with the Salish Sea Institute. Those films are Call of the Orcas, Managed to Extinction, and Shared Waters, Shared Crisis. For more information regarding these films and others of Jessica Plumbs films, visit her website Plumb Productions.

Jessica was an observer Fellow in the second Salish Sea Institute Cohort.

Max has a decade of experience in marine science and natural resource management. His goal is to tackle the complex question of how to balance conservation and recovery of habitat with sustainable use of the resources communities need to survive.

As a polar scientist, Max built a technical background to understand how climate change influences the changing world, and worked with Inuit scholars to learn Indigenous ways of knowing and policy-making. 

At the Department of Natural Resources Max worked to ensure Tribal Nations and residents of Washington will have healthy trees and seas for generations to come.

Jared’s work primarily revolves around studying the movements, behaviour, abundance, and ecology of cetacean populations using direct observations and remote sensing technology. He typically spends over 100 days a year at sea conducting field research on killer whales in both hemispheres, but has also been involved in studies on minke, humpback, fin, sei, blue, grey, right and sperm whales in the North Pacific, South Atlantic, Indian, and Southern Oceans. 

Jared manages several killer whale population datasets, helps advise and direct a number of cetacean research and conservation organizations in North America, has published several scientific articles, and in addition to conducting conservation based field research also responds to cetacean incidents such as entanglements, entrapments, and strandings.

Clare is an emerging ceramic artist with a focus on ecologies, human and non-human, and the major and subtle linkages therein. In her work she utilizes ceramic forms to evoke, narrate, and respond to specific places and ecological issues.

Clare was born and raised as a settler on  xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh territories. To her, that means she has a responsibility to support with her voice, her care, and her labour the sovereignty and self-determination of these Nations.

The impulses and ideas for her work begin with a broad love for the natural world. She relishes the experiences she has had within the world of ecology, and tries to bring forth that spirit of creative intuition, play, and levity in her working processes.