- Ashley Knight
- California State University Monterey Bay
Although I grew up in land-locked Arizona, I headed for the coast as soon as I graduated from high school. After obtaining my Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Systems from the University of California San Diego, I went to work for a non-profit research group in Oceanside, California. Working at the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research (PIER) was a dream come true. When I wasn’t SCUBA diving in Southern California’s Channel Islands, I was towing ROVs off of San Francisco or diving in the Florida Keys. My work at PIER with Dr. James Lindholm opened my eyes to the study of applied science; I was especially interested in understanding the efficacy of marine protected areas (MPAs) as they become a more popular management tool. Through this work, I experienced my first Aquarius saturation mission in November 2005. Now, I am a graduate student at California State University Monterey Bay and work in the Institute for Applied Marine Ecology. My thesis research focuses on MPA monitoring; Central California recently implemented an MPA network that will eventually spread to cover coastal waters throughout the state.
I thought that my previous saturation mission was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I am thrilled to be able to go again. Our first mission involved tracking three species of reef fish (hogfish, black grouper, and blue parrotfish) using acoustic telemetry technology. This allowed us to observe the movements of these fish species across Conch Reef over a year and a half period. This provided data on how these species move across the MPA boundary located near the habitat. This time, we will be looking at finer-scale movements of the same three species. Building upon the larger-scale data we have already collected, now we will be observing feeding, swimming, and other behaviors in the context of the habitat over which these behaviors are exhibited.
