Hi there! My name is Sara (she/her/hers) and I'm an Ocean Scientist at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in California. I provide scientific and technical leadership for conservation projects, designing scientific monitoring plans and measuring conservation outcomes for projects within TNC's California Oceans program. I love surfing, camping, reading, and used to work as a PADI Divemaster in Thailand and the Bahamas 🌊 🤿.

Currently working on:

• 🌱 Enable large-scale ecosystem restoration in California for kelp forests, seagrass, and native oysters through development of cost-effective scalable restoration tools, advancing policy to streamline regulations and permitting, and unlocking new state and federal funding to support habitat restoration.
• 🪸 Working with technology experts and coral restroration practioners to develop innovative technologies that automate the process of coral gardening to unlock accelerated pace and scale of coral reef restoration.
• ♻️ Investing ways to reduce plastic pollution through advancing state-level single-use plastic policy, examining opportunities for reducing agricultural plastic, and developing methods for tracking microfiber emissions from textile manufacturing.

Previous:

• 🔭 Project Scientist at the Environmental Markets Lab (emLab), investigating how big data can support sustainable fisheries by leveraging satellite-based vessel tracking (i.e. Automatic Identification Systems), Electronic Monitoring, and Synthetic Aperature Radar in research related to bycatch mitigation, fisheries transparency, and protected area design
  • Check out emLab's GitHub for repositories related to our published research
• 🐟 Ocean Health Index fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, working with partners at the Nature Conservancy to complete an Ocean Health Index (OHI) assessment of Palmyra Atoll
• 🐠 Oceanographic intern with the Coral Reef Advisory Group collecting and analyzing data to develop a management plan for coral reefs in the National Park of American Samoa

• Masters of Environmental Science and Management: Bren School at UC Santa Barbara (2020)
• B.S. Zoology: Oregon State University (2014)