In one of the world’s most urbanized coastal environments—the waters around Hong Kong—pressure from human activities is threatening the vulnerable Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, known locally as the Chinese white dolphin.
“Evidence shows—clearly and unequivocally—that Chinese white dolphins are hanging on by a thread, clinging on to their last remaining habitat refuge in Hong Kong,” says Stephen C.Y. Chan of the Cetacea Research Institute, who calls the dolphins “important sentinels of coastal ecosystems.”
“Just as canaries in the mines alert coal miners of the presence of dangerous gas, a rigorous understanding of the well-being of these animals serves as indicators” of the impacts of a changing environment, Chan says.
He now has the support, resources, and time to develop a scientific body of research that will lead to recommendations for conservation measures for the dolphins. Chan has just been named one of six recipients of the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation. The program—35 years old this year—enables breakthroughs in marine science that address critical conservation issues on land and in the sea. One of the oldest marine science fellowship programs in the world, it also acts as a convening forum, allowing past and current recipients to share their findings and knowledge and collaborate with other experts in the community.
The new fellows, announced in March, will work on a vast array of subjects, such as investigating the epaulette—or “walking”—shark in the archipelago of Raja Ampat in Indonesia, conserving sandy beach ecosystems in the Western Indian Ocean, using the expertise of local communities and Indigenous people to preserve biologically rich marine sites in Indonesia, and employing community-friendly protocols to help restore reefs in the Philippines.
Another project will look at the corals—those colorful, hard-shell organisms that may look like rocks to some but are actually living animals—that make up reefs. Corals have been dying at an alarming rate and need to recoup their numbers.
“Most of the big reef-building corals in the world have stopped having babies,” says Kristen Marhaver, a marine biologist with the CARMABI Marine Research Station in Curaçao in the Dutch Caribbean, where she grows corals in a lab. “Imagine if no human had successfully had a baby in the last 30 years—we would be so scared for the future of our communities, cultures, and entire species. But corals can have babies when humans lend a hand.”
With research from her fellowships, Marhaver wants scientists throughout the world to grow more corals—foundations for biodiversity in so many marine ecosystems—and faster.
She’s learning what corals need in nature to become parents on their own and knows from working with the most fragile corals that fertilization often fails. But she also knows about a whole array of innovations that could help coral eggs fertilize and grow into baby corals, which will go on to provide shelter, nurseries, and feeding grounds for untold marine species.
Chan, Marhaver, and the four other 2025 fellows will join the community of 208 scientists who have received the Pew marine fellowships since 1990. The fellowship provides a boost to midcareer scientists and other marine experts who have research experience, advanced degrees, and strong records of achievement and are working on innovative, interdisciplinary work in marine conservation. To select the recipients, an independent advisory committee composed of experienced global experts and leaders identifies individuals whose future scientific contributions will be significantly enhanced by their fellowships. Each recipient receives a $150,000 grant, allocated over three years, to complete an original marine conservation research project, test viable solutions, and offer them to the global marine body of knowledge, marine scientists and conservationists, and the public.
The time yields valuable dividends, as past fellows can attest. During his fellowship, 2020 fellow Andrianus Sembiring, from Yayasan Biodiversitas Indonesia, developed advanced tools to monitor the shark trade in Indonesia. Global demand for shark fins, used in luxury food products and traditional medicine, poses a serious threat to shark populations in his country, which prohibits the sale of 12 shark species. Because mostly shark body parts, such as fins or tails, are exported from Indonesia, the species can’t be identified and regulated.
With Pew’s support, Sembiring built a reliable genetic test that quickly identifies fins from the protected species of sharks that are sold in international markets and allowed him to test his methods off the coast of Bali. He then trained government staff, university scientists, representatives from nongovernmental organizations, and others to use the tools to improve monitoring and enforcement of the shark fin export market, an opportunity that was “a game changer,” according to Sembiring.
Further north, a 2019 fellow also made a breakthrough with how she approached the study of sharks, as well as the closely related rays.
Rima Jabado, lead scientist from the Gulf Elasmo Project in the United Arab Emirates, used her fellowship to study guitarfishes and wedgefishes, sharklike species of rays, in Mauritania, Senegal, India, and Sri Lanka, countries where the fish were under pressure from commercial fisheries. Support from the fellowship allowed her to learn more about the major threats to these understudied and often misunderstood species that seldom receive attention. “There’s so many population declines over the years,” Jabado says of sharks and rays, “but we don’t talk a lot about that because we see them more as a fisheries commodity, something we can eat on our plate, rather than wildlife.”
Motivated to help improve management of the species, Jabado used her fellowship to gain firsthand knowledge from those who witness the decline of marine wildlife—the fishers and traders who are catching on a daily basis. “They are the ones that are at sea every single day,” she says. “They are the ones that know and see differences. The scale of what’s happening is only understood by them.
“Fishermen don’t usually have a lot of people interested in the work that they’re doing, and they want to talk about it and explain what they’re seeing,” says Jabado. “But if you show them that you care about what they’re doing, they want to contribute. They’re the most amazing contributors because they know exactly what’s happening and why it’s happening.”
Sangeeta Mangubhai, a 2018 fellow from Fiji, also spent her fellowship learning from those doing the work—in her case, the people who catch fish for small-scale fisheries and for their communities and families in the Pacific region. An analysis in Fiji had shown that small-scale fishers had low bargaining power, limited access to technology and market information, and poor knowledge of techniques for adding value to their products. In addition, they often have low incomes and are vulnerable to exploitative business practices and the impacts of natural disasters.
Women make more than half of small-scale catches in the Pacific region.
So Mangubhai, a biologist by training, brought a social science approach to her work. During the three years of her fellowship, she tapped the vast knowledge that women in the Pacific region have that affects subsistence and commercial fisheries. She interviewed more than 100 people in Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands and used her findings to make fisheries management more accurate and effective.
For Mangubhai, the fellowship altered the course of her life’s work. It “opened up many, many doors,” she says. “And as a result, my career feels like it’s shifted. I feel empowered as a woman from the Pacific to produce research that is pushing some of those ‘glass ceilings.’”
The work done by individual fellows is multiplied as they bring their research and ideas into the global network of Pew marine fellows.
“Receiving the fellowship is the first door into a worldwide network of marine biologists and conservationists who care deeply about ocean management,” says Donna Frisby-Greenwood, Pew’s senior vice president for scientific advancement. “The connections made throughout the fellowship and for years after allows the scientists to keep sharing what they’ve learned and foster new ideas and approaches to investigation.”
The marine fellows gather once a year in different locations around the globe for a Pew-sponsored annual meeting, for the express purpose of fostering such collaborations. There, they can build on past work, learn about additional funding, and continue to build their networks.
“By gathering this brainpower and curiosity about marine life and the seas every year at the annual meeting—and allowing it to mix—the benefits to ocean conservation are exponentially multiplied,” says Frisby-Greenwood.
Conversations lead to collaboration. Through the network, Mangubhai met 2018 fellow Katherine Mills, from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, who develops strategies for fisheries to adapt to warming waters. Now, the two are working on a project that will help build resilience in fisheries in Fiji, engaging both men and women fishers in the process.
At the program’s 2019 annual meeting in Hilo, Hawaii, 2017 fellow Ester Serrão and Jabado established a plan to conduct joint fieldwork in Mauritania’s Banc d’Arguin National Park, a World Heritage Site and hot spot of marine biodiversity in North Africa facing growing threats from illegal industrial fishing and the wildlife trade. The team collected DNA samples from traded sharks and rays to help park managers identify species present in the park so they could improve monitoring and help protect threatened fish. Serrão and Jabado also collected genetic samples from sediments in the park’s seagrass beds—some of the largest and most pristine meadows in the world—to assess changes in shark and ray populations over time and identify recent declines. The fellows also held conservation training sessions on genetic sampling and new data collection methods for employees of a national research institute and the national park.
More recently, following a chat at breakfast at the program’s 2022 annual meeting in California, 2016 fellow Kerry Sink, a professor at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, teamed up with Stefano Mariani, a former member of the program’s selection committee, to study coelacanths, an ancient and critically endangered fish that lives in deep, tropical marine caves. The team recently published a study that demonstrated using environmental DNA as a noninvasive tool to monitor the iconic species.
Cross pollination of expertise is a big draw for Mangubhai. “You need those diverse perspectives, people working in different fields, to try and find solutions to some of our pressing environmental issues,” she says. “I might be working in a session and sitting next to someone who’s an expert on penguins or polar bears or Arctic treaties, and they have different viewpoints to bring that might be applicable in my country in the tropics in the Pacific.”
“We get to meet at least once in a year at this meeting, and that’s huge!” says 2008 fellow Rashid Sumaila, an economist specializing in oceans and fisheries at the University of British Columbia, Canada. “Otherwise, we’re all too busy in our own corners. But you get these days here, away from home, together with colleagues you respect, share great ideas, and you can even create new projects.”
As it has for more than three decades, the Pew marine fellows program will continue to support those connections among the scholars whose work is crucial to conserving delicate marine species and habitats that underpin essential resources and food for billions of people—expanding exponentially the potential for bringing about positive change to secure the world’s waters.
Carol Kaufmann is a Trust staff writer.
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