Plenary Sessions
Sunday, 4 June 2023
17:00 to 19:00, Auditorium Illes Balears
Carlos Duarte, PhD
Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology – Thuwal, Saudia Arabia, Executive Director, Global Coral R&D Accelerator Platform, Chief Scientist, Oceans 2050
Presentation: Translating Aquatic Science into Solutions for Humanity’s Pressing Global Problems
Biography: Distinguished Professor Carlos M. Duarte is the Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in Saudi Arabia. Before this he was Research Professor with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Director of the Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia. His research focuses on understanding the effects of global change in marine ecosystems and developing nature-based solutions to global challenges, including climate change, and develop evidence-based strategies to rebuild the abundance of marine life by 2050. Building on his research showing mangroves, seagrasses and salt-marshes to be globally-relevant carbon sinks, he developed, working with different UN agencies, the concept of Blue Carbon, as a nature-based solution to climate change, which has catalyzed their global conservation and restoration.
Professor Duarte served as President of the ASLO between 2008 and 2010. He currently serves in the Expert Group supporting the High-Level Group, including 12 heads of states, proposing a pathway towards a Sustainable Ocean Economy.
![Dave Love](https://www.aslo.org/wp-content/uploads/Dave-Love.jpg")
Dave Love, PhD
Senior Scientist, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health – Baltimore, MD, USA
Presentation: Resilience and Recovery in Aquatic Food Systems following COVID-19
Biography: Dr. Love’s work focuses on fisheries and aquaculture and their interactions with environmental health and public health. He has worked in a wide range of environmental health topics including food security, water quality, antimicrobial resistance, and farm worker and community health. In 2012, he founded a research and teaching farm in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Dr. Love was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His doctoral training in environmental science and microbiology was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering. He holds a BS in Biology from Davidson College. Dr. Love currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina, USA with his wife and two children.
Monday, 5 June 2023
12:00 to 13:30, Auditorium Illes Balears
Katherine McMahon, PhD
Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery - University of Wisconsin-Madison – Madison, WI, USA
Presentation: Multi-scale response of microbial communities to long-term change in Lake Mendota, WI.
Biography: The broad objective of Trina McMahon's research program is to improve our capacity to predict and model microbial behavior, while searching for novel biologically mediated transformations that can be harnessed for engineering applications, including energy production.
McMahon studies the microbial ecology of both natural and engineered systems using molecular tools to investigate microbial community structure and function in lakes and activated sludge. She also uses high-frequency environmental sensor networks to measure important variables that we know influence bacterial communities and is particularly interested in phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon cycling in lakes and how this relates to eutrophication and water quality. McMahon and her team use highly resolved time series sampling of multiple lakes, combined with metagenomics and meta-trascriptomics to explore how different lineages of freshwater bacteria contribute to this cycling.
She is also engaged in metagenomic and post-genomic approaches to dissecting the metabolism of bacteria specialized in the sequestration of phosphorus in activated sludge. This information will ultimately lead to the construction of more predictive mechanistic and ecosystem-scale models to describe such processes as wastewater treatment and freshwater nutrient cycling.
Tuesday, 6 June 2023
12:00 to 13:30, Auditorium Illes Balears
Daniel Pauly, PhD
UBC Killam Professor, University of British Columbia – Victoria, BC, Canada
Presentation: Rebuilding the Abundance of Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems: three challenges to overcome
Biography: After many years at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), in Manila, Philippines, Daniel Pauly became in 1994 Professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, of which he was the Director for 5 years (Nov. ’03-Oct. ’08). Since 1999, he is also Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Project, funded for 15 years by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia (currently by a number of foundations), and devoted to studying, documenting and promoting policies to mitigate the impact of fisheries on the world’s marine ecosystems.
The concepts, methods and software which Daniel Pauly (co-)developed, documented in over 1000 scientific and general-interest publications, are used throughout the world, not least as a result of his teaching a multitude of courses, and supervising students in four languages on five continents. This applies especially to the Ecopath modeling approach and software and FishBase, the online encyclopedia of fishes, the latter recently complemented by SeaLifeBase.
This work is recognized in various profiles, notably Science (Apr. ’02); Nature (Jan. ’03); in developing countries, and by numerous awards, among them honorary doctorates from four universities, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Science; ‘03); and receiving the Award of Excellence of the American Fisheries Society (‘04); the International Cosmos Prize, Japan (‘05), the Volvo Environmental Prize, Sweden (‘06), the Excellence in Ecology Prize, Germany (‘07), the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology, Spain (‘08), the Albert Ier Grand Medal in the Science category (’16) among others. Daniel was also knighted as Chevalier de la Légion D’Honneur (’17) by the French government on Bastille Day.
Wednesday, 7 June 2023
12:00 to 13:30, Auditorium Illes Balears
Jacqueline Uku, PhD
Senior Research Scientist, Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute – Mombasa, Kenya
Presentation: Seagrass Restoration Trials in The Western Indian Ocean Region
The degradation of seagrasses is becoming prevalent in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) due region due to fishing impacts, anchor damage, sea urchin herbivory, extreme events such as cyclones and floods and anthropogenic factors such as pollution and sediment inflows. In response to seagrass habitat degradation, there have been numerous efforts to advance the restoration of degraded seagrass beds in several countries in the region. This presentation will focus on experimental efforts in three countries of the WIO: Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. The challenges and lessons learnt will be elaborated as well as the integration of communities, in particular women, into these efforts.
Biography: Dr. Jacqueline Uku is a Senior Research Scientist and Research Coordinator at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI). She is currently the President of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA). She is also a Co-Opted member of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR). She holds a PhD in Plant Physiology from Stockholm University and a MSc in Biology of Conservation from the University of Nairobi. In the recent past, she has also been the Project Coordinator of the World Bank funded Kenya Coastal Development Project (KCDP). Her work is focused on strengthening the contribution of ocean science to Blue Economic growth, fostering linkages between communities, scientists and policy makers and enhancing ocean literacy in the Western Indian Ocean region. Along with Dr. Jan Mees, Dr. Uku has served as the Co-chair of the GOSR2020 Editorial Board. She is also a member of the C-Grass working group for SCOR.
Thursday, 8 June 2023
12:00 to 13:30, Auditorium Illes Balears
Iestyn Woolway, PhD
Climate Scientist, Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences – Bangor, Gwynedd UK
Presentation: Shifting thermal regimes in lakes: physical drivers and ecological consequences
Biography: Iestyn Woolway is a climate scientist and Reader in the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University (Wales). He graduated from University College London in 2015 with a PhD in Physical Limnology. He was then a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Climatology at the University of Reading (UK) from 2015 to 2018. He has since received several prestigious fellowships including a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2018), a European Space Agency Fellowship (2020), and a UK Natural Environment Research Council Independent Research Fellowship (2021). His research focuses on the physical interactions between climate and water, with a particular interest in the physics and hydrology of lakes worldwide. Using a combination of in-situ, satellite, and modelled data, his research aims to answer key questions that relate to climate-related changes of aquatic systems.
Friday, 9 June 2023
12:00 to 13:30, Auditorium Illes Balears
Terry Hughes, PhD
Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Presentation: Resilience and restoration of coral reefs
Biography: Terry Hughes has made many globally significant contributions to marine science. He pioneered studies of coral demography, regime shifts and reef resilience, leading to a better understanding of the responses of marine ecosystems to overfishing, pollution, and anthropogenic climate change. He recently led a series of projects that documented global patterns of coral bleaching, and the impacts of bleaching episodes in 2016-2020 on the dynamics of the Great Barrier Reef. Terry’s current research has evolved to encompass the interface between biology and the social sciences, enabling a broader evaluation of the linkages between coral reef ecosystems, the goods and services they provide to people, and the welfare of human societies. This evolution has enabled him to translate fundamental and innovative science into practical solutions that improve the management and governance of marine environments. Nature magazine dubbed him “Reef Sentinel”, for the global role he plays in applying multi-disciplinary science to securing reef sustainability. His scientific publications have been cited more than 85,000 times.