OUR TEAM
William J. Sydeman, Ph.D.
President & Farallon Institute Senior Scientist
Bill’s career spans nearly three decades of ecological research.
Starting as an intern marine ornithologist working on the Farallon
Islands in 1981, Bill spent the last 15 years as the Director of
Marine Ecology at
PRBO Conservation Science
before establishing the Farallon Institute. Bill obtained his Ph.D. in Ecology
from the University of California, Davis. Bill has conducted a number of “plankton
to predator” studies in the California Current large marine ecosystem, and has
written about seabirds, marine mammals and various fish species. In a recent paper,
Bill described dramatic and abrupt ecosystem changes to climate variability
(Sydeman et al. 2006)
.
Bill serves on many scientific panels, notably as the Chair of the Advisory Panel
for Marine Birds and Mammals for the North Pacific Marine Science Organization and
Scientific Advisory Committee for implementation of the State of California’s Marine
Life Protection Act. Bill has presented to state and federal policy-makers on the
effects of climate change on marine ecosystems, and how to best design and use the
nation’s new ocean observing systems.
Alec D. MacCall, Ph.D.
Board of Directors
A resident of Santa Cruz, California, Alec is a quantitative fisheries population biologist. Alec has studied fish and fisheries in the California Current for his entire career, first working for the California Department of Fish and Game before moving to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Currently a Senior Scientist at NOAA Fisheries, Alec has completed stock assessments for many depleted rockfish species along the west coast of the United States (MacCall 2005). Early in his career, Alec studied forage fishes and developed the theory of dynamic geography for northern anchovies.
Nathan Mantua, Ph.D.
Board of Directors
A native of Bodega Bay, California, Nate is currently a Research Professor with the
School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and a Research Scientist with the Joint Institute
for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (JISAO) at the University of Washington in
Seattle. As a climate scientist Nate’s varied work includes collaborating on seminal
studies on decadal-scale climate variability and effects of changing ocean climate on
salmonid production and related ecosystem regime shifts in the North Pacific (
Mantua et al. 1997;
Hare and Mantua 2000
). As an expert climatologist, Nate has testified before the U.S. Congress on
environmental change and its effects on fish populations and fisheries.
Kyra L. Mills, M.Sc.
Farallon Institute Scientist
Raised in Ecuador, Kyra received her graduate degree from the University of California Irvine, where she studied the foraging behavior of seabirds in the inshore waters of the Galápagos Islands, including the foraging ecology of Galápagos Penquins using time-depth recorders. Kyra worked as lead biologist on the Farallon Islands, California between 1999 - 2001. With great interest in the concept of seabirds as indicators and predictors of forage fish populations, Kyra and collaborators
(Mills et al. 2007)
developed the “multivariate rockfish index (MRI)”, a novel method to assess rockfish productivity in the central-northern California coastal marine environment. Kyra has also worked on seabirds as indicators of the ecosystem conditions that influence the survival of salmonids and herring during the ocean-going phase of their life cycle
(Roth et al. 2007).
Kyra wrote, edited, and coordinated the California Current Marine Bird Conservation Plan, an ecosystem-based approach for seabird conservation along the west coast of North America.
Sarah Ann Thompson, M.Sc.
Farallon Institute Scientist
Sarah Ann began her marine science career at Oregon State University as a research technician conducting large-scale rocky intertidal biodiversity surveys along the west coast of the U.S. She earned a Master of Science degree at Sonoma State University, studying the effects of commercial collection on the sea palm kelp, Postelsia palmaeformis, a vulnerable species valuable in the health-food market, for which there is little regulation or management of take. Sarah Ann enjoys working with rocky intertidal species and has a great appreciation for seaweeds. Her general research interests lie in working to find an appropriate balance between conservation and economic use of the marine ecosystem.
Michael Henry, Ph.D.
Farallon Institute Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Mike completed his Ph.D. in phytoplankton ecology and biodiversity at the University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, in 2005. Currently residing in Montreal, Canada,
Mike’s research is focused on the macro-ecology (large-scale distribution and abundance) and
interactions of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and marine birds in the North Pacific (
Batten et al. 2006
; Hyrenbach et al. 2007). In his current research, Mike is determining how lower trophic
level diversity and
production influences seabird diversity and abundance between the Gulf of Alaska,
southern Bering Sea, and western Pacific gyre, and assessing the effects of climate
variability and change on these North Pacific ecosystems. Since 2002, Mike has spent over 330 days at sea on the container ship M/V Skaubryn surveying seabirds and marine mammals and deploying a Continuous Plankton Recorder 3 times per year along a 7,500 km transect stretching from Victoria, British Columbia to Tokyo, Japan.
Jarrod A. Santora, Ph.D.
Farallon Institute Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Jarrod completed his Ph.D. in zooplankton patch dynamics and predator-prey interactions at the City University of New York, in 2007. Jarrod’s research concerns the spatial ecology of predators and prey at relatively small scales, comparative analyses of the foraging behavior of top predators relative to krill patches in the Antarctic and California Current, and management of Southern Ocean krill fisheries.
Sonia D. Batten, Ph.D.
Collaborator
Sonia completed her PhD. at the University of Southampton, UK in 1994. After working with the
North Atlantic Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) data set at the
Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science
(SAHFOS) for six years she transferred to the west coast of Canada to set up
and coordinate the Pacific CPR survey. Sonia is a biological oceanographer with a focus on
zooplankton and their role as indicators of the marine environment
(Batten and Welch, 2004)
and their place in the food chain
(Batten et al. 2006). The
Pacific CPR survey has completed
its eighth year of sampling and in that time has collected plankton along transects totalling
over 200,000 km of the north Pacific.
Robert Suryan, Ph.D.
Collaborator
Rob is an Assistant Research Professor at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center and has been conducting research in the North Pacific Ocean for over 15 years. His research interests include marine ecosystem processes and their effect on foraging ecology, reproduction, and population dynamics of mid to upper trophic-level consumers, particularly seabirds
(Suryan et al. 2006).
Additional investigations include satellite remote sensing applications to study atmospheric and oceanographic effects on apex predator distribution
(Suryan et al. 2006),
identification of biological “hotspots,” and the effects of climate change. Some of Rob’s studies also involve seabird- fishery interactions
(Suryan et al. 2007).