Catherine Pham

 

Last Updated December, 2016

acpham028 'at' gmail 'dot' com

 

 
     
  
Bio
 

Catherine was born and raised near Paris, France.  When she was a tender eight years of age, she and her family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan.  She attended the University of Virginia where she focused on terrestrial ecology and conducted research on the invasive vine Japanese honeysuckle while dreaming of Alaska and frozen seas.

After graduating in 2009, she finally fulfilled that dream by working as a fisheries observer onboard fishing boats in the Bering Sea for 3 ½ years.  During that time, she became fascinated by the influence of seabirds on fisheries management and began pursuing bird jobs.  She spent a season blinging out (banding) passerines in Indiana, another stalking (monitoring) tundra-nesting birds on Alaska’s North Slope, and two more mothering (monitoring and managing) a suite of waterbirds on Outer Green Island in the Gulf on Maine.

Despite her love for grubbing guillemot chicks and fending off tern attacks, she found her niche in surveying seabirds at sea.  In 2011, she boarded the Bering-Aleutian Salmon International Survey (BASIS) research cruise as a USFWS seabird observer.  She went on to survey seabirds aboard the 2012 and 2013 Arctic Ecosystem Integrated Survey (Arctic EIS) research cruises, and the data from those cruises are now the basis of her master’s research at HPU.

Catherine will focus on quantifying the spatiotemporal dynamics between seabirds, their prey, and oceanography in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas.  The goal of this research is to inform the development of ecosystem models and management plans for the northern Bering and Chukchi seas.

She is particularly interested in the use of marine spatial planning as a management tool in arctic marine ecosystems, and hopes to continue conducting integrated research that will inform planning decisions.

Catherine participated in an arctic research cruise in summer 2015. You can view her blog postings here:

http://seabirdyouth.org/seabirds-at-sea/

 

Catherine defended her thesis on September 14, 2016:

And will start a short-term position with the

Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council

in Honolulu, in January 2017.

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