Habitat Ecology Team Staff

Mary Yoklavich  Leader
Habitat Ecology Team Leader
Phone: (831) 420-3940
Fax: (831) 420-3977
E-mail: mary.yoklavich@noaa.gov

Mary Yoklavich is a supervisory research biologist and leader of the Habitat Ecology Team in the Fisheries Ecology Division of SWFSC. She has conducted research from California to Alaska for thirty years, and is well known for her research on habitat assessments of West Coast rockfishes. She has been named NOAA Fisheries Employee of the Year and has received three NOAA Bronze Medal Awards for her innovative research to characterize deepwater habitats off California; for her efforts as part of the Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations in the Gulf of Alaska; and for protecting US West Coast essential groundfish habitats. She has produced close to eighty scientific publications, and is a co-author of "The Rockfishes of the Northeast Pacific". Mary has received the NMFS award for Best Publication, is a Distinguished Fellow in Science and Technology at California State University Monterey Bay, and received the Science/Research Award from the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Mary and her team are part of a growing cooperative of researchers from British Columbia to southern California, who conduct coastwide visual surveys of demersal species and their habitats in deep water. Her current research includes baseline surveys using manned submersibles to monitor fishes, coral communities, and habitats associated with Marine Protected Areas off central and southern California. Mary has served on the Science Advisory Team of California’s Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, and currently serves on the Pacific Fisheries Management Council’s Essential Fish Habitat Review Committee.

Andrew Taylor
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail:

Andrew Taylor joined the Habitat Ecology Team in 2010 to help with video cataloging. Andrew received his BS in Marine Biology from California Polytechnic San Luis Obispo in 2008. While at NMFS he has helped to analyze HD video obtained from ROV footage, as well as complete population density analysis of Christmas tree corals. Andrew also works for the Department of Fish and Game collecting biological data on various local marine fishes and invertebrates.

Diana Watters
Phone: (831) 420-3934
Fax: (831) 420-3977
E-mail: diana.watters@noaa.gov

Diana Watters joined the Habitat Ecology Team in August 2005. Her background includes studies of rockfish and herring age and growth, nearshore and deepwater assemblages of rockfishes and other species caught by the marine recreational fishery in central and northern California, and long-term monitoring and assessment of Pacific herring population dynamics and spawning habitat in San Francisco Bay. Her current research includes surveys of deepwater benthic habitats and fish assemblages inside and outside of marine protected areas off central California, and marine debris in deepwater benthic habitats off central and southern California. She has published 15 scientific, technical, and popular articles.

Lisa Krigsman
Phone: (831) 420-3971
Fax: (831) 420-3977
E-mail: lisa.krigsman@noaa.gov

Lisa Krigsman joined the Habitat Ecology Team to work as a liaison between NMFS and USGS, as the biologist for the California Seafloor Mapping Project. Lisa earned her BA in Marine Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her MS in Marine Biology at San Francisco State University. Lisa has done subtidal work in Australia, Baja, Bahamas, and Mexico as well working extensively throughout California. In addition to spending time in the water Lisa has also spent time in the lab ageing newly recruited and adult rockfish with the use of otoliths. In addition to the work with the California Seafloor Mapping Project Lisa is also involved in the Deepsea Coral Project which the Habitat Ecology Team recently began.

Lisa Wedding
Postdoctoral Scholar - Marine Spatial Ecologist
Phone: (831) 420-3993
Fax: (831) 420-3977
E-mail: lisa.wedding@noaa.gov

Lisa Wedding joined the NOAA Fisheries - Habitat Ecology Team and the UCSC Institute of Marine Sciences to work as Postdoctoral Scholar in the Fall of 2011. She has a special interest in applying a geospatial approach to study marine biogeographic patterns in support of marine conservation and management. Lisa earned her PhD in Geography with a specialization in Marine Landscape Ecology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2010. Her dissertation research involved spatially predictive modeling and mapping of coral reef fish assemblages in Hawaii using bathymetric LiDAR (Light detection and ranging) data. Working with the Habitat Ecology Team, she will continue to focus her marine landscape ecology research efforts on spatial modeling of demersal fishes. This work will spatially integrate remotely sensed habitat data to create predictive models and maps of rockfish density and biomass in order to delineate areas of critical habitat, support marine spatial planning and provide a robust fisheries independent approach to support the assessment and management of critical habitats and fish stocks.

Tom Laidig
Phone: (831) 420-3942
Fax: (831) 420-3977
E-mail: tom.laidig@noaa.gov

Tom Laidig works in the Habitat Ecology Team of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service at the SWFSC Fisheries Ecology Division. Tom earned his BS in Aquatic Biology at University of California, Santa Barbara and his MS in Marine Biology at San Francisco State University before beginning his career with NMFS as a biological technician in 1988. His first duties were to daily age juvenile rockfish otoliths. He soon advanced to a Research Biologist and worked on such projects as distribution and diet relationships between large deep and shallow slope fish, aging lingcod for an 8-year age and growth study along the California and Oregon coasts, and juvenile rockfish recruitment studies. He has completed more than 25 publications. Tom became a NOAA diver in 1995 and Unit Diving Supervisor in 1996. He currently runs the diving program at the lab and he uses his diving abilities to study different aspects of rockfish biology, especially juvenile settlement to the nearshore environment. In 2000, he joined Mary Yoklavich in the new Habitat Ecology Team. This was a good pairing since both researchers studied rockfish in situ, with Mary studying the deeper living ones and the Tom the shallower species.